Freudian Theory of dreaming (copy)

Freudian Theory

Theory looking at behaviour as a product of dynamics of different parts of personality

Unconscious mind

Part of the mind that people aren’t aware of but holds thoughts and memories

Parts of the unconscious mind

• Id

• Ego

• Super-Ego

ID

Drives our instincts and selfish needs

Ego

Part of the brain that keeps us in touch with reality

Super-Ego

Our morals

Repression

Process of pushing unpleasant thoughts and experiences into the unconscious mind

Wish fulfilment

Satisfying urges and desires

Unconscious mind & our desires

Large part of the unconscious mind is the division of the personality called the ID. A lot of our urges are repressed into the unconscious mind to keep them in check making sure that people do not do inappropriate things. Freud states that dreams were wish fulfilments of our wishes that could not be fulfilled in real life.

Dream analysis

Method used by Freud to help uncover unconscious thoughts by analysing dreams and uncovering symbols

Effects of wish fulfiment

Dreams help us to release anxiety we may experience due to our urges. Some urges may be repressed because it could cause us problems so we dream about it so it does not cause us these problems.

2 parts of a dream

• Latent

• Manifest

Manifest content

Actual content of the dream

Latent content

Symbolic meaning of the dream

Theory is too subjective

• Dream interpretation is open to personal opinion

• Different people may have different ways of explaining the meaning of the same dream

Theory based on unreliable research

• Evidence came from a case study

• It lacks generalisability

Theory difficult to test

• Concepts aren’t objective enough due to the fact that dreams can’t be easily verified

• This theory relies on the unconscious mind which can not be scientifically observed → Unreliable

Condensation

Many ideas are merged into one.

Displacement

Something really unimportant might appear as important in your dream, stopping you from noticing what really is important.

Secondary elabaration

The dreamer builds up a story so that the dream seems to make sense. They may add or change some bits to help with this. 

Strength

His data was qualitative.

Weakness

Freud’s idea cannot be easily tested