Theories on Dreaming:
Sigmund Freud:
The most significant figure in modern dream interpretation would undoubtedly be Sigmund Freud. He was in the business of psychoanalysis, and therefore he involved himself upon making sense of the human mind, which included in part dream analysis. His profession therefore, led him to use dream interpretation as a therapeutic process. His psychological approach to dreams has earned him the credit of being the "revealer" of the human subconscience.
His theories on dream interpretation were based on the assumptions that we all retain information from every situation presented to us, however this information is more often than not "forgotten" from our conscious memory, but according to Freud, it is still held in our subconcious memory. Since memories are only in the forefront of our minds by way of some sort of stimuli or association of circumstances. This "free-association" between a current circumstance and that of a past memory could in theory be related to the interpretation of dreams. However minuit the onset of connections may be the symbolism in a dream could be related somehow to the individual's past, present and hypothetically their future as a series of associated memories.
The fact that people do not consciously remember all aspects of any situation was addressed by Freud in the theory that the human consciousness was composed of two sections. One that holds the memories, and one that decides whether we will remember or forget. He believed that dreams do have meaning but they need to be translated into the language of the waking consciousness. Dreams were the subconscious' way o fulfilling wishes that are being suppressed, in order to understand these wishes the dream must be deciphered. The adult mind is also capable of distorting the unconscious wish and would need help therefore to express it.
Freud determined that their were four main elements to dream interpretation:
1) The Manifest Content: the basic description of the dream by the dreamer before any attempt at working with the dream is made.
2) The Day's Residue: images associated with the previous day's experiences.
3) The Latent Content: the true "purpose" of the dream which is understood by the association of unconscious thoughts. This portion often reveals the hidden wishes.
4) The Dreamwork: describes the processes used in dealing with both the latent content and the day's residue that the mind used to create the dream.
He also identified four devices
the mind uses in dreams that distort reality:
- Condensation: the effect
of a single image having more than one idea presented in it
- Displacement: the mind uses
a less complex image to replace that of one that would
be more emotive but is representative
of the complex image.
- Representability: images
that are often in place of metaphors, or figures of speech
that maintain an idea.
- Sceondary Revision: the images
can be rearranged to make more sense to the
dream itself, this has more
to do with the dreamer's own sense of logic than
intuitive processes.
Due to his mindset that a symbol in a dream was only valid if there was no proper association which could be made by the dreamer lead many of Freud's interpretations to relate to sexuality. If for example a weapon was present in a dream, an association would be looked for before it became a symbol of masculine aggression. This resulted in most issues being reduced to sexual symbols.
Carl Jung:
Carl Jung would be reputably the next most important figure in the development of dream analysis. He initially was in agreement with Freud that unconscious fantasies were useful for psychoanalytical technique and that parallels between these unconscious desires were made sense of by psychoanalytic methods. However, Jung believed that dreams enter the consciousness as a complex structure that is made of elements whose connection with each other is not easily recognizable. He believed that dreams were the key to the way that neuroses were formed and it wasn't until later on that he recognised the role in which they played in the development of the spiritual self. This lead to the concept of "big" (important) and "little" (unimportant) dreams.
- "big" dreams: Originate from a collective unconscious of a group or society, these are characterized by collective imagery. (images which have the appearance of cosmic aspects) In these cases it was necessary not to take the dreams literally but to analyse them for a greater or hidden meaning.
- "little" dreams: Would be similar to that of Freud's "The Day's Residue" in that the imagery would mean either very little or be simply a collection of memories from previous experiences that occured the day(s) previous to the dream.
Jung recognised that dreams held important symbolic value and as such all aspects of the dreamer's personality and circumstances need to be considered when analysing the dream. They may be a series of images that might seem contradictory or meaningless but could contain a symbolic meaning and should therefore be examined thoroughly.
He is probably remembered the
most for his acknowledgement of the validity of the spiritual content in
dreams. This perspective has resulted into much of the current methods
of interpretation. The unconscious (inner-self) and conscious (outer-self)
portions were also examined in depth by Jung. He believed that the inner-self
had a much greater understanding than the outer-self.