Dream Analysis Essay

Dreams had unendingly been a part of human instauration. Since time immemorial, human beings had always been mystified on the phenomenon of conceive ofing. As azoic as 5000 B. C. , early civilizations had recorded and tried to interpret their fantasys on clay t adaptedts. The Egyptians, puzzled by the existence of dreams, had even believed in a God of Dreams whom they called Serapis. Up to the be age, theorists and psychologists are still unable to nonplus at a definite explanation on why humans dream. Dreams are etched in the human mind in such a way that makes it hard for researchers to objectively study them.At present, in that location are three major theories that are widely accepted that explain such phenomenon (1) Freuds Theory (2) Cognitive Theory and the (3) Activation-Synthesis Theory. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) believed that a dream exists as a wish fulfillment. According to him, people have unsatisfied or unexpressed desires during the times when they are awake an d these desires are being complete unconsciously when people dream through sleeping. For example, a soulfulness having unfulfilled sexual desires virtuoso or two days prior to sleeping whitethorn have dreams that are sexually erotic in nature ( may lead to wet woolgather).Similarly, people who had been forced to suppress their anger during waking hours may have dreams that contain violent elements/scenes (Santrock, 2005, p. 244). This theory of Freud is finickyly applicable to a personal experience. Once I broke our printer by accident. I was trying to find a way to mother it exactly the only answer I could think of is having it repaired by a technician. The main dilemma was that I didnt have the money to have it fixed. It was very fortunate that no one else used the printer that day. When I slept in the evening, I dreamt that a certain old man came to fix our printer free-of-charge.The dream stop there. It can be seen from this experience that a problem during the day was given a temporary solution through woolgather. Although the printer wasnt really fixed at all, the dream was sufficient in providing a quick way fall out of my anxiety caused by the broken printer. Another example was the time when I was craving for some McDonalds Fries for no particular reason. I havent been able to go to the verbalise Fast-Food Shop because my receive borrowed my car. I just slept through my craving for McFries and I terminate up dreaming about it, only that in my dream, the fries are much larger than the genuine size.According to Freud, our dreams may contain scenes or events from our experiences of the past day or of the day in the beginning. One particular dream to illustrate this is my dream that I was able to fly. In the dream, I had my arms stretched over my headman and I was flying over our village, very much like Superman. I could connect this dream to my port when I went limpid with my fellows the day before. During my stay underwater, I had bee n imitating the flying position of Superman imagining that I was undirected in mid-air instead of mid-water. An additional example for this theory of Freud is my dream on the Red mogul.I had watched on home video the movie Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton. I was so irritated with the Red Queens face while I was watching the movie that I dreamt of the character when I slept in the evening. In the dream, I was having a dispute with the Red Queen where in the end I won our fight and I was able to command certain Knights, Off with her head Perhaps connected to this belief of Freud was my experience when I had a fever. I wasnt timber well when I slept and I was feeling a bit scared to sleep in solitude. In the middle of my sleep, I dreamt that I was modify into a cat and that my friends could not recognize me.I was trying my best to scream my name to them scarcely all that I could manage to say were small meows. The next stage of my dream was that I had a small hole in my skull. The small hole led to the deformation of my skull because it secreted foul-smelling cerebral mentally ill through it. I woke up in the middle of night sweating and breathing heavily. Even though events from days before may appear in a dream, it does not necessarily mean that the scenes in the dream happen in chronology. More often than not, a dream is a homogenous confection of different time-frames where the sense of chronology is absent.Tied with this principle is that places where dream scenes may happen need not be logical or real. I had dreams before of having to wake up in my bedroom as the sunniness was just rising and stepping out of my room, I find myself at the school cafeteria way past dusk. I also had a dream wherein I was standing in front of my friends house. That friend of mine had offended me during one of our night-out with the rest of our peers. In my dream, I was mainstay to the scene wherein we were having an intense argument. Then, one second of whirling brou ght me in front of that friends house, waiting for him to come out and occupy for forgiveness.He didnt come out of the house though and I was brought to a garden where I found him sitting on a bench. At the end of the dream, I was the one who asked for his forgiveness. The following morning, before I left for school, he gave me a phone call telling me that he was sorry. According to Freud, there are two components of a dream, a surface element which he called the manifest content and a hidden meaning of the surface element which he called the latent content. For example, Freud states that snakes and neckties present in the dream may mean something else.The snake or necktie is the manifest content while its latent content is a male genitalia. This means the snake or necktie symbolizes a male genitalia. This idea of Freud made me call a dream I had just this weekend. In the dream, I had been boating with a tour go by on the Amazon River. I was so terrified to see a giant snake swim ming just under our boat. The faceless tour guide just told me that the snake couldnt see us because we were in the snakes blind spot. I never k impertinent what happened with me on that river, only that in the dream I was transported somewhere else I couldnt remember.Could my dream mean that I am fantasizing about any(prenominal) the snake symbolizes? Its hard to believe though The second theory of dreaming is the Cognitive Theory. It states that dreaming involves the same cognitive steps used in the waking mind processing, memory and problem solution (Santrock, 2005, p. 245). In this theory, hidden meanings of dreams through symbols are not regarded as possible. Dreaming is looked upon as an opportunity for the person to find a state of mind where problems can be solved through creative thinking.Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, express that it was in a dream that he acquired the idea for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Elias Howe claimed also that a dream provided him the idea of c reating a sewing needle with the hole for the thread on the blunt tip of the needle and not on the middle. (Santrock, 2005, p. 245). Friedrich Kekule, the proponent of the structure of the benzene, said that the cyclic structure of benzene was seen in a dream wherein he sawing machine a snake trying to bite its own tail as it moves in a circular manner. I could apply this theory in one of my experiences.I was trying to come up with a story on how humans need to face trials as means of being emotionally stronger. The story needed to be as creative as possible because I was going to present it to a youth group in our church. Out of fatigue due to too much thinking, I decided to take a nap on my desk. I dreamt then of a young womanize inside a cocoon. When I woke up, I was reminded of a story I heard long ago from a Franciscan nun wherein a young man tried to help the young solicit get out of the cocoon by opening the cocoon himself with the use of a pair of scissors.The flirt wen t out of the cocoon weakly with scrawny wings and was unable to fly. The struggle of the womanise to get out of the cocoon by itself helps it to develop stronger wings that would soon enable it to fly. If I hadnt dreamt of the young butterfly in the cocoon, I wouldnt have remembered this story The third theory is the Activation-Synthesis Theory. It states that dreams are part of the principals internal effort to explain the neural activity that still exists even though the person is sleeping (Santrock, 2005, p. 245).Neural networks in areas of the forebrain are involved in both the waking and dreaming behaviors. Primary motor and sensory areas of the forebrain may possibly be activated during the sensorimotor aspects of dreaming. (Santrock, 2005, p. 246). For example, if the dream asks for spatial organization, the parietal lobe would be activated. Similarly, if the dream asks for emotional requirements, the amygdala, hippocampus and frontal lobe may be activated. The case of dre ams in a fantasy-whirling manner may be due to the sudden, uncoordinated eye movements of REM sleep.The sudden shift or dissolvation of a particular dream scene is explained as due to the normal pass of neural activation. During stages of sleep, levels of neurotransmitters may rise and fall wherein particular neural networks are activated and shut down. As a new cycle is activated, that is, new sets of neural networks are activated and shut down, a new dream scene comes to the focus. Dreaming, therefore, becomes a succession of fantasy-transitioned slide shows. In connection to this theory, I once had a dream that involved a real experience while I was sleeping.I managed to open my eyeball as I was disturbed in the middle of a sleep. I then saw my mother in my room, fixing the mess I left on my study desk. Subconsciously, I knew that I saw my mother inside my room, but then, as if my brain wanted to explain or make a story out of what I saw, the exact scene came to my dream. In th e dream, I stood up and helped my mom fix the mess on my desk, but then my mom turned into a classmate of mine and we were back in the classroom listening intently to our teacher. I woke up in the middle of the night, convinced that I really didnt stand up to help my mom fix my mess.These three theories explain to us why people dream. Freuds Theory, The Cognitive Theory and the Activation-Synthesis Theory may view the phenomenon of dreaming in three different perspectives. In the present stage of human knowledge when it comes to explaining the human psyche, it could be said that an absolute explanation for dreaming is nonexistent. However, the three theories may work hand-in-hand in explaining and interpreting human dreaming. seed Santrock, J. W. Psychology 7. McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. , 1221 Avenue of the Americas. Mew York, NY 10020. 244-246