The importance of dreams in Freudian theory and the role the

Perls says:

‘Royal road to integration’

(not the unconscious)

Existential message

(not ‘wishful thinking’)

MANIFEST & LATENT

CONTENT

Faraday’s theory of dreams

She rejects Freud’s Wish Fulfilment & Disguise Elements

Three levels of interpretation:

• Looking outward
• Thru Looking glass
• Looking inward

Wish-Fulfilment

infantile dream

JUNG says:

Dreams are normal, creative expressions of the unconscious

(not disturbed mental activity)

Censorship

Repression

RESISTENCE

DREAMWORK

The mental activity that translates

the latent wish-seeking unconscious material

into the manifest imagery that disguises it.

Dreamwork is NOT the work one does on a dream!

Dreamwork includes:

Condensation,

Displacement of affect,

Symbolism

Secondary Revision.

Guide to Dream Interpretation

"While you, the dreamer, are the best potential interpreter of your own dreams, you can also hold yourself back" (Freud)

This practical exercise will allow you to interpret your own dreams (please see handout)

Modern research suggests:

• Dreams are dull and bland-not repressed wishes
• We sleep through explicitly sexual/aggressive content
• Function of sleep is to ALLOW dreaming

And what do YOU say?

Freudian Method

Freud believed that dreams represented unconscious desires and allowed the gratification of certain drives from the id. He analysed dreams in order to understand aspects of personality as they related to pathology.

Symbolic Method

By

Anita, Laura and Natalie

The symbolic method held that dreams had to be considered in their entirety

"The virtuous man contents

himself with dreaming that

which the wicked man does

in actual life."

Importance in Therapy

* Gain 1 - Insight.

*Gain 2 - The significance of a dream's 'pleasant' or 'unpleasant' content.

*Gain 3 - Increased involvement of the client in the therapeutic process.

What vs Why?

* Where Freud used dream analysis to discover WHAT the client is hiding, the modern view is to understand WHY they are hiding?

Importance in Therapy

3 Gains

Meaning

* Freud believed that the latent content could be revealed by using free association.

* Contemporary analysts believe these associations are a disguise against the client's primitive conflicts.

* They use the manifest content to understand the client's unconscious.

Contemporary Thought

Modern analysts base their understanding of dreams on Freud's discoveries but believe his focus on the oedipal conflicts fails to pay adequate attention to the emotional experiences of the first three years of life.

Decoding Method

The decoding method considered events and objects in dreams as symbols which are translated into broader symbols using a key as a guide.

Psychoanalytic Dream Interpretation

• Freud's method of dream interpretation
• the symbolic method
• the decoding method

By the Looooove Doctor

(Freud's nickname)

"The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900) represents the birth of the theory of Freudian dream analysis, a psychological technique for interpretation of dreams

Dreams are the disguised fulfilment of a repressed, infantile wish, expressed as a hallucinatory experience in the course of sleep.

Internal influences

A Desire to Sleep

External influences

• Physiological
• Psychological

We try to fall asleep by

disconnecting

from all sources

of external stimuli

Under the influence of superego,

it transforms and hides id's

aspirations, because the task of

dream is to maintain sleep and

protect the sleeper from being

disturbed

Dreams

'Guardian of Sleep'

&

'Safety valve' for

unacceptable wishes

SOURCES

The importance of dreams in Freudian theory and the role they play in therapy

Importance in therapy -

The 3 Gains

* Gain 1 - Insight

* Gain 2 - The significance of a dream's 'pleasant' or 'unpleasant' content

* Gain 3 - Increased involvement of the client in the therapeutic process

Brlizg. 2014. “ Dreams as viewed by Freud and Jung”

Available at http://www2.arnes.si/~uljfdv15/library/art06.html

(Accessed 8th March, 2014)

Cushway. D. & Sewell. R (1992) Counselling with Dreams and Nightmares. London. Sage

Rowell, M.H. 1998-2013 “The Freud Page: Dreams”

http://www.freudpage.info/dreams.html

(Accessed 8th March, 2014

Wilson, K. 2014. “Introduction to Sigmund Freud’s Theory on Dreams”

Available at <http://www.insomnium.co.uk/dream-theory/introduction-freud-theory-on-dreams/>

(Accessed 8th March, 2014)

Dream Symbolism (Manifest element symbols)

Freud derived symbols from the resistance of dream

interpretation

Freud maintains that "the very greatest majority of

symbols in dreams are sexual symbols"

The idea of dream symbolism is at the core of most popular accounts of dreams

The one clear message is that dreams are far too

important to be ignored