Interpretation of Dreams

Interpretation of Dreams

Introduction

The phenomenon of dreaming is often taken lightly as insignificant and common phenomenon. However, dreams represent a powerful source that provides an insight to the subconscious mind of a person. Apart from being a succession of ideas, sensations, emotions and ideas combined into sometimes broken or nonsensical forms that occurs in involuntary mind state, dreams provides a window to the uncensored and raw feelings and perspectives of a person. According to scientific explanations, dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep when the activity of brain is high (Solms, 2001). The dream varies from normal and ordinary to extraordinary or bizarre and can have distinct natures including excitement, terrifying, exploratory, magical or even sexual which are typically outside the control of dreamer. Also, the dreams are realized to be unique and distinct as no two individuals can have same personal background, emotions, experiences or circumstances which provide the basis of a dream.

There exists many research and studies on dreams and their interpretation. The purpose of dreams remains a debatable topic that whether dreams are random impulses of brain or it is the activity of brain to work on the issues of daily life and a copying mechanism of our regular activities. The interpretation of dreams as remains a widely researched area as according to many experts, the development of a proper understanding of dreams can provide a better understanding and discovery of one's true self and has the power of unifying the body, spirit and mind (Spanjaard, 1969).

Freud's Interpretation of Dreams

In his book “The Interpretation of Dreams” Freud provided a scientific thinking about the mind and proposed a hypothesis that the dreams are controllable in nature and a person is able to control his/her dreams. Theory of Freud provided the base of the studies on the purpose of dreaming and unconscious dealing of the problems that a human mind in its conscious state is unable to perform.

Dream-work Theory of Freud

According to Freud, human brain acts as a fundamental guardian of sleep by reacting to external as well as internal stimuli by manufacturing of dreams, however, theory of Freud is mainly concerned with internal stimuli which includes the emotional, sexual, satisfaction and fear feelings. According to Freud's hypothesis, dreams are composed of two parts: manifest and latent content. Manifest contents refer to the extent of memorization of dreams when the person wakes up and acts as a disguised representation of main theme of the dream. The latent content, on the other hand represents the true meaning of dream including the forbidden feelings and unconscious desires (Freud, 2004). Freud in his theory presented a phenomenon of translation of latent contents to the manifest contents referred to as dream work. Dream work has significant influence for the distortion and masking of latent thought which is based on four critical elements as follows.

Condensation

Condensation refers to the phenomenon in which the combinations of two or more than two latent thoughts occur for the formation of a single manifest image ...