Since, the nineteenth century, dreams have largely been the subject of research for Psychology. We'll begin with the crucial figure who dragged the topic of dreams into the field of psychology and made it primarily an object of study for psycholoanalysts and psychiatrists.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud(1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of Psychiatry, his work methods give crucial importance to thoughts at the preconscious and unconscious level, the theory of unconscious mind given by Freud is the heart of Psychoanalysis. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious. In order to access this storehouse, Freud believed that dreams can play an important role.
He says: "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind"
According to Freud, emotions buried in the unconscious surface in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried feelings. But what is his opinion on the cause of dreams? He was convinced that dreams are a form of wish-fulfillment, and most of the wishes being unconscious; i.e. most people don't even realize that they have those wishes. He was also convinced that all dreams have an underlying sexual content and they're meant for the fulfilment of sexual desires, he later dropped this idea though - but maintained the concept of wish-fulfilment till the end.
However, as far as wish-fulfilment goes, you might be asking yourself how does wish-fulfilment fits in the context of 'nightmares' ? Well, in the opinion of Freud, you don't only seek pleasure in order to fulfill your wish but sometimes you wish to impose punishment on yourself too. So, when you deserve a punishment and you aren't getting one, still, your unconsciosus mind is aware of the fact that you do deserve a punishment; hence the nightmares. In his view, bad dreams allow the brain to gain control over the feelings that are a result of distressful experiences.
For Freud, dream interpretation relies great deal on the associations of the dreamer with respect to objects and actions in it, and with these associations can we unravel the repressed wishes and desires residing in the unconscious mind of that person.
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung(1875-1961), a Swiss psychiatrist and perhaps one of the most well known pioneers in the field of dream analysis. He was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and even though he agreed to Freud's idea of an unconscious, yet their primary disagreement was due to their differing concepts of the unconscious.
Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as incomplete and unnecessarily negative. According to Jung, Freud conceived the unconscious solely as a repository of repressed emotions and desires. Jung agreed with Freud's model of the unconscious, what Jung called the "personal unconscious", but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious underlying the personal one. This was the collective unconscious, where the archetypes themselves resided, represented in mythology by a lake or other body of water, and in some cases a jug or other container.
Jungian analysis defined the dream not as a symptom of a disease that required a cure but rather as a link to archetypal images shared by all of humanity.
He says: "...there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents"
Thus, Carl Jung sheds light on the significance of the images, symbols and expressions represented in the dreams by introducing the concept of collective unconscious which is a universal way of perceiving things. Jung believed that archetypes manifest themselves in dreams, as dream symbols or figures. Such figures can take the form of an old man, a young maiden or a giant spider as the case may be. Each represents an unconscious attitude that is largely hidden to the conscious mind.
However, Jung cautioned against blindly ascribing meaning to dream symbols without a clear understanding of the patient's personal situation. Moreover, symbols must be explored for their personal significance to the patient, instead of having the dream conform to some predetermined idea.
To conclude, Jung was convinced that the scope of dream interpretation was large: reflecting the richness and complexity of the entire unconscious, both personal and collective. He stressed on the significance and meaningfulness of dreams; he believed that dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, irrational experiences and even telepathic visions. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we experience as conscious life, it has an unconscious nocturnal side which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
Fritz Perls
Friedrich Perls(1893-1970), a German psychotherapist, developed his famous Gestalt Therapy in 1950s, which takes a very holistic approach to psychotherapy. The core of the Gestalt Therapy process is enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion and behavior, in the present moment. Relationship is emphasized, along with contact between the self, its environment, and the other.
According to Perls, the dream is the most spontaneous expression of the existence of the human being. In his opinion, a dream represents an unfinished situation, it contains and existential message regarding oneself and one's current struggle. Since, the Gestalt therapy is all about living in the moment, therefore, it approaches dream differently in the sense that it encourages the dreamer to relive the dream and by doing so get a grasp over his or her own feelings. Under Gestalt therapy the dream is acted out in the present and dreamer becomes a part of his or her dream. According to Perls, each part of the dream is assumed to be a projection of the self and all of the different parts of a dream are expressions of the dreamers's own contradictory and inconsistent sides. Thus, in acting out the dream in present and creating scripts for encounters between the various characters or parts of the dream, the dreamer engages in a dialogue between these opposing and inconsistent sides of his personality and gradually becomes more aware of his or her own emotions.
Hall
In 1953, Calvin S. Hall developed a theory of dreams in which dreaming is considered to be a cognitive process. Hall argued that a dream was simply a thought or sequence of thoughts that occurred during sleep, and that dream images are visual representations of personal conceptions. For example, if one dreams of being attacked by friends, this may be a manifestation of fear of friendship; a more complicated example, which requires a cultural metaphor, is that a cat within a dream symbolizes a need to use one's intuition.
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler(1870-1937), was also a contemporary of Freud and a co-founder of the pscyhoanalytic movement. Adler retained a lifelong admiration of Freud's ideas on dreams and credited him for creating a scientific approach to their clinical utilization. Nevertheless, even with dream interpretation, Adler had his own theoretical and clinical approach. The primary differences between Adler and Freud centered on Adler's contention that the social realm is as important to psychology as is the internal realm. The dynamics of power and compensation extend beyond sexuality and the arena of gender and politics are important considerations that go beyond libido.
For Adler the main driving force in life was to overcome our insecurities, inferiorities and imperfections. Thus for him, dreams were a way of addressing our insecurities. In a dream we can safely face things that would otherwise scare us. We can try out strategies for overcoming our shortcomings or simply compensate for them via wish-fulfillment.
Adler believed people to be more conscious than unconscious. What we are and how we relate to the world is a conscious choice not one we can blame on unconscious influences. Therefore, in Adler's world, dreams have but little influence on our conscious lives, yet in studying and overcoming the unconscious inferiorities dreams are a helpful means and resource for the person.
Allan Hobson
Allan Hobson is an American psychiatrist and dream researcher who is known for his research on REM sleep. he believes that dreams are created when random energy signals reach the brain's cortex during REM sleep. He believes that dreams are created when random energy signals reach the brain's cortex during REM sleep. The cortex attempts to make sense of the random inputs it is receiving, which causes dreams. Dr. Hobson clearly dismisses the idea that there are deep, nonphysiological, or hidden meanings in dreams.
He holds that perception and imagination are radically different activites. Dreaming is specifically an imaginative act in which consciousness is unable to reflect on itself in the process of dreaming. Thus the dream world is not known as is the waking world, but is rather an object of belief.
According to him,
"Dreaming is properly considered delusional because most subjects have virtually no insight regarding the true nature of the state in which they have these sensory experiences. During a dream, one tends to consider dream events as if they were completely real, even though, upon waking, one promptly recognizes them as fabrications. This loss of critical perspective is doubly significant since one believes in the reality of dream event in spite of their extreme improbability and even physical impossibility. Contributing to this state of credulity in dreaming is the fact that one lacks the reflective self-awareness that helps us test reality during waking state. Instead, the dreamer is of but one mind, and that mind is wholly absorbed by the dream process"
Thus, Allan Hobson shares the same idea presented by Jean Paul Sartre in his essay: 'The Psychology of Imagination' that a dreaming consciousness is paradoxically imprisoned.
Keith Stevens and Antti Revonsuo
Two other researchers, Keith Stevens and Antti Revonsuo, have postulated that dreams have a biological function, where the content requires no analysis or interpretation. That content provides an automatic stimulation of the body's physiological functions underpinning the human instinctive behavior. So dreams are part of the human and animal survival and development strategy.
Ann Faraday
Ann Faraday is a psychologist and author of two books on dream interpretation. Faraday focused on the application of dreams to situations occurring in one's life. For instance, some dreams are warnings of something about to happen, for example a dream of failing an examination, if one is a student, may be a literal warning of unpreparedness. Outside of such context, it could relate to failing some other kind of test.
Faraday noted that "One finding has emerged pretty firmly from modern research, namely that the majority of dreams seem in some way to reflect things that have preoccupied our minds during the previous day or two"
Psyche-logy of dreams:
After presenting all of the different opinions and views of prominent psychologists, it is hard to sum up an overall view of psychology on dreams, what we know for sure is that there is still a lot to be discovered about dreams. Moreover, it actually lies with individuals as to what they believe. In our opinion the best psychologist to analyse one's dreams lies basically within one's own self and the possibility of a dream to accomplish anything lies in one's belief in its possibility. You can give significance and meaning to your dream if you want, and if you want, you can ignore any such possibilities altogether.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud(1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of Psychiatry, his work methods give crucial importance to thoughts at the preconscious and unconscious level, the theory of unconscious mind given by Freud is the heart of Psychoanalysis. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious. In order to access this storehouse, Freud believed that dreams can play an important role.
He says: "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind"According to Freud, emotions buried in the unconscious surface in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried feelings. But what is his opinion on the cause of dreams? He was convinced that dreams are a form of wish-fulfillment, and most of the wishes being unconscious; i.e. most people don't even realize that they have those wishes. He was also convinced that all dreams have an underlying sexual content and they're meant for the fulfilment of sexual desires, he later dropped this idea though - but maintained the concept of wish-fulfilment till the end.
However, as far as wish-fulfilment goes, you might be asking yourself how does wish-fulfilment fits in the context of 'nightmares' ? Well, in the opinion of Freud, you don't only seek pleasure in order to fulfill your wish but sometimes you wish to impose punishment on yourself too. So, when you deserve a punishment and you aren't getting one, still, your unconsciosus mind is aware of the fact that you do deserve a punishment; hence the nightmares. In his view, bad dreams allow the brain to gain control over the feelings that are a result of distressful experiences.
For Freud, dream interpretation relies great deal on the associations of the dreamer with respect to objects and actions in it, and with these associations can we unravel the repressed wishes and desires residing in the unconscious mind of that person.
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung(1875-1961), a Swiss psychiatrist and perhaps one of the most well known pioneers in the field of dream analysis. He was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and even though he agreed to Freud's idea of an unconscious, yet their primary disagreement was due to their differing concepts of the unconscious.
Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as incomplete and unnecessarily negative. According to Jung, Freud conceived the unconscious solely as a repository of repressed emotions and desires. Jung agreed with Freud's model of the unconscious, what Jung called the "personal unconscious", but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious underlying the personal one. This was the collective unconscious, where the archetypes themselves resided, represented in mythology by a lake or other body of water, and in some cases a jug or other container.Jungian analysis defined the dream not as a symptom of a disease that required a cure but rather as a link to archetypal images shared by all of humanity.
He says: "...there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents"
Thus, Carl Jung sheds light on the significance of the images, symbols and expressions represented in the dreams by introducing the concept of collective unconscious which is a universal way of perceiving things. Jung believed that archetypes manifest themselves in dreams, as dream symbols or figures. Such figures can take the form of an old man, a young maiden or a giant spider as the case may be. Each represents an unconscious attitude that is largely hidden to the conscious mind.
However, Jung cautioned against blindly ascribing meaning to dream symbols without a clear understanding of the patient's personal situation. Moreover, symbols must be explored for their personal significance to the patient, instead of having the dream conform to some predetermined idea.
To conclude, Jung was convinced that the scope of dream interpretation was large: reflecting the richness and complexity of the entire unconscious, both personal and collective. He stressed on the significance and meaningfulness of dreams; he believed that dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, irrational experiences and even telepathic visions. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we experience as conscious life, it has an unconscious nocturnal side which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
Fritz Perls
Friedrich Perls(1893-1970), a German psychotherapist, developed his famous Gestalt Therapy in 1950s, which takes a very holistic approach to psychotherapy. The core of the Gestalt Therapy process is enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion and behavior, in the present moment. Relationship is emphasized, along with contact between the self, its environment, and the other.
According to Perls, the dream is the most spontaneous expression of the existence of the human being. In his opinion, a dream represents an unfinished situation, it contains and existential message regarding oneself and one's current struggle. Since, the Gestalt therapy is all about living in the moment, therefore, it approaches dream differently in the sense that it encourages the dreamer to relive the dream and by doing so get a grasp over his or her own feelings. Under Gestalt therapy the dream is acted out in the present and dreamer becomes a part of his or her dream. According to Perls, each part of the dream is assumed to be a projection of the self and all of the different parts of a dream are expressions of the dreamers's own contradictory and inconsistent sides. Thus, in acting out the dream in present and creating scripts for encounters between the various characters or parts of the dream, the dreamer engages in a dialogue between these opposing and inconsistent sides of his personality and gradually becomes more aware of his or her own emotions.Hall
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| A primer on Jungian Psychology by Hall |
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler(1870-1937), was also a contemporary of Freud and a co-founder of the pscyhoanalytic movement. Adler retained a lifelong admiration of Freud's ideas on dreams and credited him for creating a scientific approach to their clinical utilization. Nevertheless, even with dream interpretation, Adler had his own theoretical and clinical approach. The primary differences between Adler and Freud centered on Adler's contention that the social realm is as important to psychology as is the internal realm. The dynamics of power and compensation extend beyond sexuality and the arena of gender and politics are important considerations that go beyond libido.
For Adler the main driving force in life was to overcome our insecurities, inferiorities and imperfections. Thus for him, dreams were a way of addressing our insecurities. In a dream we can safely face things that would otherwise scare us. We can try out strategies for overcoming our shortcomings or simply compensate for them via wish-fulfillment.Adler believed people to be more conscious than unconscious. What we are and how we relate to the world is a conscious choice not one we can blame on unconscious influences. Therefore, in Adler's world, dreams have but little influence on our conscious lives, yet in studying and overcoming the unconscious inferiorities dreams are a helpful means and resource for the person.
Allan Hobson
Allan Hobson is an American psychiatrist and dream researcher who is known for his research on REM sleep. he believes that dreams are created when random energy signals reach the brain's cortex during REM sleep. He believes that dreams are created when random energy signals reach the brain's cortex during REM sleep. The cortex attempts to make sense of the random inputs it is receiving, which causes dreams. Dr. Hobson clearly dismisses the idea that there are deep, nonphysiological, or hidden meanings in dreams.
He holds that perception and imagination are radically different activites. Dreaming is specifically an imaginative act in which consciousness is unable to reflect on itself in the process of dreaming. Thus the dream world is not known as is the waking world, but is rather an object of belief.According to him,
"Dreaming is properly considered delusional because most subjects have virtually no insight regarding the true nature of the state in which they have these sensory experiences. During a dream, one tends to consider dream events as if they were completely real, even though, upon waking, one promptly recognizes them as fabrications. This loss of critical perspective is doubly significant since one believes in the reality of dream event in spite of their extreme improbability and even physical impossibility. Contributing to this state of credulity in dreaming is the fact that one lacks the reflective self-awareness that helps us test reality during waking state. Instead, the dreamer is of but one mind, and that mind is wholly absorbed by the dream process"
Thus, Allan Hobson shares the same idea presented by Jean Paul Sartre in his essay: 'The Psychology of Imagination' that a dreaming consciousness is paradoxically imprisoned.
Keith Stevens and Antti Revonsuo
Two other researchers, Keith Stevens and Antti Revonsuo, have postulated that dreams have a biological function, where the content requires no analysis or interpretation. That content provides an automatic stimulation of the body's physiological functions underpinning the human instinctive behavior. So dreams are part of the human and animal survival and development strategy.
Ann Faraday
Ann Faraday is a psychologist and author of two books on dream interpretation. Faraday focused on the application of dreams to situations occurring in one's life. For instance, some dreams are warnings of something about to happen, for example a dream of failing an examination, if one is a student, may be a literal warning of unpreparedness. Outside of such context, it could relate to failing some other kind of test.
Faraday noted that "One finding has emerged pretty firmly from modern research, namely that the majority of dreams seem in some way to reflect things that have preoccupied our minds during the previous day or two"
Psyche-logy of dreams:
After presenting all of the different opinions and views of prominent psychologists, it is hard to sum up an overall view of psychology on dreams, what we know for sure is that there is still a lot to be discovered about dreams. Moreover, it actually lies with individuals as to what they believe. In our opinion the best psychologist to analyse one's dreams lies basically within one's own self and the possibility of a dream to accomplish anything lies in one's belief in its possibility. You can give significance and meaning to your dream if you want, and if you want, you can ignore any such possibilities altogether.
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