ch. 3 psych test - theories and people

Freud’s wish-fulfillment theory

 dreams provide a “psychic safety valve” – expressing otherwise unacceptable feelings; contain manifest (remembered) content and a deeper layer of latent content (hidden meaning).

Information-processing theory

dreams help us sort out the day’s events and consolidate our memories.

Physiological theory

regular brain stimulation from REM sleep may help develop and preserve neural pathways

Activation-synthesis theory

REM sleep triggers impulses that evoke random visual memories, which our sleeping brain weaves into stories.

Cognitive theory

dream content reflects dreamers’ cognitive development – their knowledge and understanding

Social Influence Theory of Hypnosis

 Hypnotic subjects may simply be imaginative actors playing a social role.  

Hilgard’s Divided Consciousness Theory of Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a special state of dissociated (divided) consciousness.    

Eugene Aserinsky

discovered REM sleep when he hooked his son up to an EEG.

Sigmund Freud

wrote The Interpretation of Dreams.  Believed dreams are “the royal road to the unconscious.”  Said there were two levels of dreams: manifest and latent.

Ernest Hilgard

theorized that hypnosis induces a special state of dissociation, or divided consciousness.  

Anton Mesmer

an Austrian physician who is credited with hypnosis’s modern popularity.  He mistakenly thought he discovered an “animal magnetism”.

Crick & McCarley

 said dreams were “housekeeping” for our brains.

J. Allan Hobson

proposed the activation-synthesis theory of dreaming (the personal way in which a dream organizes images).