...Analysis of Dreams Our Lady of Lourdes Written by Sarah Galante Abstract This paper contains multiple theories of why we dream and the dream theory I have created. It also describes one full week of dreams as well as an analysis of what one of my dreams mean. When describing the dream it will include the manifest and latent content. The Theories of Dreaming Throughout time, multiple theories of dreaming have been created as time has gone on. Some have been created by less known psychologists and one was created by Sigmund Freud. The five theories of dreaming are: wish fulfillment, information processing, physiological function, activation synthesis, and cognitive development. Information Processing and Physiological Function The information processing and physiological function theories are not commonly used when describing why we dream. Information processing is the idea that our dreams help us sort out the day's events and consolidate our memories. In addition, this is a cognitive form of dreaming. Information processing may occur when after a stressful day and these dreams could include some kind of anxiety(Psychology in Action, 180). An example of this type of dream would be getting lost on your way to class as this is common amongst college students. Another theory of dreaming is physiological function. This theory sates that regular brain stimulation from REM sleep may help develop and preserve neural pathways. This shows that the brain is always...
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...Theory #1 The Evolutionary Theory: We Dream to Practice Responses to Threatening Situations Ever notice that most dreams have a blood-surging urgency to them? In dreams, we often find ourselves naked in public, or being chased, or fighting an enemy, or sinking in quicksand. Antti Revonsuo, a Finnish cognitive scientist, has shown that our amygdala (the fight-or-flight piece of the brain) fires more than normal when we're in REM sleep (the time in sleep when we dream). In REM sleep, the brain fires in similar ways as it does when it's specifically threatened for survival. In addition to that, the part of the brain that practices motor activity (running, punching) fires increasingly during REM sleep, even though the limbs are still. In other words, Revonsuo and other evolutionary theorists argue that in dreams, we are actually rehearsing fight-and-flight responses, even though the legs and arms are not actually moving. They say that dreams are an evolutionary adaptation: We dream in order to rehearse behaviors of self-defense in the safety of nighttime isolation. In turn, get better at fight-or-flight in the real world. Theory #2 Dreams Create Wisdom If we remembered every image of our waking lives, it would clog our brains. So, dreams sort through memories, to determine which ones to retain and which to lose. Matt Wilson, at MIT's Center for Learning and Memory, largely defends this view. He put rats in mazes during the day, and recorded what neurons fired in what...
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...“Analysis dreaming according to the dream activation synthesis theory” The activation-synthesis theory explains us that the messages of dreams are not a meaning. They are only processing of brain system when we sleep. The chemicals in the brain transmit message from one nerve cell to another. This electrical energy randomly stimulates memories found in various area of the brain. Also, we have a need to make sense of our world and even while asleep. The brain takes these chaotic memories and creates a logical story line. This theory best explains my dream which I will describe as follows. In my dream, I met giant cockroaches which were taller than I was. I felt very scared because they were very big and they tried to attack me. I ran fast but I could not escape since there were many of them. Then I woke up with a start. On another day, I dreamed that I was driving on the road skillfully and quickly. While I drove past many cars from left to right and right to left, I felt very proud of my driving skill. Therefore, I will show the relation between real life and dream. In the first case, I had seen a cockroach while taking a shower before going to bed. It ran to my leg, and I very do not like them. That represents my concerns about cockroaches and I clearly remember according to the activation synthesis theory. The second dream happened when I was young. I wanted to be a sports car driver in that time because I thought it was very smart. Also at that time, I think about them...
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...“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters”. -Henry David Thoreau Dreams have fascinated philosophers for thousands of years. You have often found yourself puzzling over mysterious content of a dream. Firstly let’s start by answering a basic question- What is a dream? A dream can include any of the images, thoughts and emotions that are experienced during sleep. Dreams can be filled with joyful emotions or frightening imagery, focused and understandable or unclear and confusing. Why do we dream? What purpose do dreams serve? While many theories have been proposed, no single consensus has emerged. Ernest Hoffman, suggests that, a possible (though certainly not proven) function of a dream to be weaving new material into the memory system in a way that both reduces emotional arousal and is adaptive in helping us cope with further trauma or stressful events. Psychoanalytic theory of dreams: Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams suggested that dreams were representation of unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. Dreams allows us to be what we cannot be, and say what we cannot say in our daily life. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic view of personality, people are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts that are repressed from conscious awareness. While these thoughts are not consciously expressed. He suggests that they find their way into our awareness via dreams. In his famous book ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ Freud wrote that dreams are disguised...
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..."USING CONTROL-MASTERY SND JUNGIAN THEORIES TO TREAT NIGHTMARE DISORDER: A KASE FROM THAILAND''. It is written by Elsegood, Wongpakaran, and Wannarit. This paper will give a brief background about dreams and what might cause them, and to what do they indicate. This paper also discuss the Control Mastery Theory (CMT), and the Jungian theory, in order to interpret a Thai woman's depressing dreams and treating her nightmare disorder. Then comes the therapy process, and different strategies to treat the patient. The article then gives a case example to a patient called Yani, it discusses her background, worries, and her struggles with the Naga Dreams, and her cultural influence. The article discusses her treatment plan, course of therapy, and the therapeutic outcome. After her treatment, the article displays the critique of theoretical approach. In the end it discusses the implications for mental health...
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...Psychoanalysts use many different methods to better understand and help their clients interpret their behaviors and dreams. "According to Freud the analysis of a dream is 'the royal road to unconscious.'" Our conscious mind is less active when we are asleep and though we do remember some parts of our dream, the process is altered. You may recall major parts of your dream, but when you wake up you will have a less accurate interpretation of your dream. Psychologists can help their clients bring major change to their perspective on life by using their dreams. The manifest content of dreams is the information the dreamer recalls from the dream. The latent content is the symbolic meaning in the dream. Psychologists uses the symbolic meaning to...
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...Dreams: What are dreams and what do they mean? Shanice Monteith The University of West Florida Abstract Dreams that take place while we sleep are one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness and are common among all of us. We all ask the same question, what is a dream? A researcher by the name of Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams gives us a good insight about dreams. His theory is one of the best-known models of dream interpretation. There are also other types of theories that suggest to us what a dream is. Some say that dreams are simply random firing of memory neurons. Others say differently. I will try to show both sides of this controversy. This paper will examine what a dream is and what people interpret a dream to mean. It should also give you a broader perspective of dreams, go into detail of different theories regarding dreams and give you more insight of such a fascinating but complicated topic. There is also the case of nightmares which will be discussed briefly and why they occur when we dream. What are dreams and what do they mean There have numerous studies on what is a dream. A lot of controversy has happened because of this. Some people say it could be just simply random firing of memory neurons as stated earlier but not everyone thinks the same way. Others say there is a lot of detail that could go into finding out more about this topic so they begin to do more research to come up with different ideas about such a debating issue...
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...Dreams Dreams have been objects of boundless fascination and mystery for humankind since the beginning of time. These nocturnal vivid images seem to arise from some source other than our ordinary conscious mind. They contain a mixture of elements from our own personal identity, which we recognize as familiar along with a quality of `others' in the dream images that carries a sense of the strange and eerie. The bizarre and nonsensical characters and plots in dreams point to deeper meanings and contain rational and insightful comments on our waking situations and emotional experiences. The ancients thought that dreams were messages from the gods. The cornerstone of Sigmund Freud's infamous psychoanalysis is the interpretation of dreams. Freud called dream-interpretation the via reggia, or the royal road to the unconscious, and it is his theory of dreams that has best stood the test of time over a period of more than seventy years (Many of Freud's other theories have been disputed in recent years). Freud reportedly admired Aristotle's assertion that dreaming is the activity of the mind during sleep (Fine, 1973). It was perhaps the use of the term activity that Freud most appreciated in this brief definition for, as his understanding of the dynamics of dreaming increased, so did the impression of ceaseless mental activity differing in quality from that of ordinary waking life (Fine, 1973). In fact, the quality of mental activity during sleep differed so radically from what we take...
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...Thesis Statement: Understanding how dreams occur, how they affect our lives and what they mean help us grasp what dreams actually are. Intro: I. (Attention Getter) Have you ever dreamt that you were walking along the side of a road or along a cliff and suddenly you trip? You’re falling for what seems like forever, but before hitting the ground, you wake up? This is considered to be a falling dream, and ironically, falling dreams occur when you are falling asleep. They are usually accompanied by muscle spasms and twitches of the entire body. Although these dreams occur while we are falling asleep, they interpret a completely different meaning. Falling can mean you are insecure, you are losing grip, or you simply have fears that need to be faced. Patricia Garfield, the author of Creative Dreaming states: “there is some problem that is making you feel helpless like you have no support, so next time when you wake up startled from a falling dream, ask yourself what upcoming events do I fear I will fail?” II. (Introduce Topic) Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to understand the different functions of the human body, how we move, talk, and even act. Many of these physiological behaviors have been explained to some extent. However, one area of the human body that has baffled researchers, is that of the mind. Many things that go on inside the mind that don’t make sense, and serves no real explanation as to why or how things happen. One of the most fascinating...
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...Theories of Jung and Freud Tiffinee Williams Southern New Hampshire University Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung both made significant impacts with their studies and theories regarding personality. Even though they did spend time together they had different ideas and theories about how personality develops and what it consists of. Sigmund Freud divided personality into three parts: the id, the ego and the superego. According to Freud traumatic events, repressed thoughts and sexual motivation are what personality consists of. The id, the ego and the super ego. The id forms our unconscious and is not bound by morality but instead only seeks to satisfy pleasure. The ego is our thoughts and ideas that help us deal with reality and the superego tries to find a balance between “socially acceptable behaviors” and the repressed desires and thoughts that exist in the id (Harley therapy 2013). Jung also agreed that the personality can be divided into three parts: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, the ego consists of conscious memories, the personal unconscious consisted experiences both recalled and suppressed from infancy and the collective unconscious consists of images or archetypes that are innate, universal ideas or projections that affect feelings and thoughts, but do not arise from personal experience. (Carl Jung Experience 2014). For example, the mother archetype is what governs the mother-child relationship in humans. Jung did...
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...How do dreams differ in people with schizophrenia to from those without the disorder? Kristin Staub Brookfield High School Dreaming is a vital part in sleeping, yet in some individuals it interferes in their waking state. For example, schizophrenics have hallucinatory images while they’re not sleeping causing some psychologists to speculate why this happens. People without the disorder and other people with other disorders have been found to dream while they’re in REM sleep which is a major mental process that allows people to dream. The following articles, “Sleep Fantasy in Normal and Schizophrenic Persons,” “An Extension of Freud and Jung’s Theory of Relation of Dream States to Schizophrenia,” “The Neurochemistry of Waking and Sleeping Mental Activity: The Disinhibition-Dopamine Hypothesis,” “Dream Content of Schizophrenics, Nonschizophrenic Mentally Ill, and community Control Adolescents,” “Sleep Disturbance in Schizophrenia” “Rorschach Responses Subsequent to REM Deprivation in Schizophrenic and Nonschizophrenic Patients,” attempt to explain the problem statement: How do dreams differ in people with schizophrenia to those without the disorder, through REM sleep in normal individuals and schizophrenics. Dream content will also be investigated to answer the problem statement and certain sleep habits. In addition Jung’s and Freud’s theory attempt to explain how dreaming is connected with schizophrenia in their conscious state rather than in their sleeping state through...
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...of today. Dream Dreams are something we all experience every night, whether we remember them or not. 1/3 of your life is spent sleeping, and in an average life time you would have spent about 5 years of it dreaming and in that time, you all will experience thousands of dreams. In the next five or so minutes I'm going to tell you the most I can about dreams. . There are numerous theories about dreams, but whomever you are, where ever you live, you will dream. Whether it's a good dream or a nightmare is up to your mind, but there must be some reasoning behind dreams, right? Everyone may know the main idea of a dream, but few may know that the explanations behind dreams are far more intricate than it just being a simple random thought in your mind. Can you remember the last dream you had? Maybe you could fly or were falling down an endless dark tunnel. Perhaps you were awakened by a horrific dream in the middle of the night Sigmund Freud’s Theory 1 - Finding an unused room What it means: The rooms in a house represent different aspects of your character, so finding an unused room suggests that you’re discovering a talent that you were previously unaware of 2 - Out-of-control vehicle The vehicle represents your ability to make consistent progress toward a specific objective, so in waking life, you may feel that you don’t have enough control over your road to success. 3- Falling What it means: Feeling yourself falling in a dream indicates that...
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...Liao English 104 – 33 12 March 2013 Research Proposal: The Psychology of Dreams For my research project, I am investigating the abstract world of dreams and the theories behind those dreams. Why we dream what we dream, and how, and where dreams come from. There have been many different theories on where dreams come from and how to interpret the dreams of different people. I will be exploring the similarities and differences of those theories along with speculating which theories are the most accurate, taking into consideration recent research on the psychology of dreams and dream interpretation. My main focus will be the world-renowned psychologist, Sigmund Freud. His theories on dreams and the interpretation of dreams are the most widely known and socially accepted theories, but are those theories the most accurate? That is what my research paper will be discussing and examining. This paper will be objective, simply providing the facts about dreams and the different theories regarding dreams and the interpretation of them. I will go in depth with why we dream what we dream, some of the most common dreams that people have, and what the most popular theories are behind the psychology of dreams. My purpose of this paper is to inform my audience of the theories behind dreams and where they come from. I will provide information on the different interpretations of common dreams, the history of dreams, and the basics of the sleeping cycle. My readers are my class peers as well...
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...bath. What!? These are the kind of silly and seemingly unexplainable instances that occur in our unconscious sleep every night when we go to bed. Contrary to what you may think, these ridiculous dreams that almost resemble cartoons more than real life, do actually have a significant impact on our emotional state, and for the most part are based on our own anxieties, desires, and memories. In this essay I’m going to attempt to analyze a current dream I’ve had and interpret the meaning and origin of this dream using the sources available to me. I’m standing on a steep grass hill, looking out over a shallow and narrow valley that appears to have been cut of the landscape like a spoon would do to a tub of ice cream. Inside this crevice is a highway I’ve never seen before, with cars zooming down the road at high speeds. Above the highway is an overpassing bridge with more fast and noisy cars. On the opposite side of this speedway that I’m standing along is my beloved dog, who I’ve raised since he was six weeks old. He’s going into traffic and I’m scrambling to get to him on the other side of this speedway, but there’s too many cars coming for me to get across. Just before it seems my dog is going to become road kill, or I’m going to be flattened trying to save him, I either woke up or the dream stopped and switched to something else. So what does this mean? Sigmund Freud, who was a pioneer for...
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...Dreams, what causes us to dream certain dreams and why have remained mysteries for centuries. A multitude of tests and experiments have been conducted over the course of the past few decades in hopes to provide some answers; one in particular with a similar hypothesis such as these was a study conducted by the Canadian Anthropology Society, more specifically William F.S. Miles, called "Hausa Dreams," from the summer of. This study was inspired and strongly influenced by that of Robert A. LeVine's "Dreams and Deeds," which was also a Nigerian based study however conducted in the early 1960's. This study preformed included an analysis of dreams collected from a small village in Nigeria where he evaluated the root of motivation of ethnically...
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