I was very interested in Freud's interpretation of dreams and how he even got interested in studying the minds of people. In the video, it mentioned how dreams give us a sense of freedom. Anything can happen in dreams, and dreams often help us to fulfill our own unconscious desires. According to Freud, there is something known as a sensor in our minds, which edits our dreams. Various processes, such as displacement, condensation, and projection, help to alter the dream. The ego within our minds helps to reorganize our dreams in order for us to get a better understanding of them. The most interesting thing that I caught in the videos was Freud’s comparison of a dream to an unopened letter. There is something in the letter that we don’t know unless we open it. Dreams are the same way. We must be able to analyze them more in order to get a better understanding of them. I did not find it surprising at all that Freud was not popular amongst the public, even after he published his book, “Interpretation of Dreams”. Freud started off his career observing different patients and trying to get a better understanding of the human mind himself. It was interesting to see how Freud’s dream about his patient led him to develop new theories of dreaming. Dreams are something that we will never fully understand because of how difficult they can be to understand and interpret. However, Freud was able to start a revolutionary movement of psycho analysis, and push for people to study the human mind and try to interpret dreams for themselves.
Freud believed that dreams were the entrance into the understanding of the subconscious part of the mind. He studied the dreams of both the well and the people with mental illness. He also believed that dreams were to help protect ourselves during sleep. By having dreams, he thought we could block out all of the other things around us leaving us to get the sleep we needed. He thought that that things such as negative emotions, hidden desires and hidden thoughts were disguised by dreams so that we could sleep without becoming distressed and waking up. Therefore he thought this could be the opening into the subconscious part of the mind. Freud said that there were two parts that make up a dream:
The Manifest content- the things you remember as soon as you get up (He thoughts this part of the dream had no meaning and served as a disguise)
and
The Latent content- which holds the true meanings of our dreams (This can be in the Manifest content but its hidden).
Dreams could be hidden in three different ways:
Condensation- Two or more things in your dream are combined
Displacement- The emotion thats intended for one thing gets switched to something else thats meaningless
Symbolism- Complicated concepts are changed to dream form
Freud’s interpretation of dreams included the subconscious mind and a series of events. There is a sensor in the brain that takes in the desires and without the sensor they would become emotions and then they would wake you up. In a way to not wake the person up he said that the sensor goes and disguising the meaning by playing around with it and transforming it into a dream. Also called dream work that has four stages displacement, condensation, symbolization and projections. The dream is displaced in the way that it is taking the ideas from the person and making something out of it. Then the condensation includes the taking of several ideas and fusing them together to create one centralized idea. Symbolizing is used to make the dream look real and then the projection is when you are actually experiencing the dream. Freud also went and categorized a dream as something that has another story inside and is building on top of others. The two worlds the subconscious and conscious have the same importance.
I found this short, and funny video about psychoanalysis on the side bar in youtube. I originally looked at the dreams because I personally find dreams extremely interesting. Freud believed that dreams were the royal road to the subconscious. He believed that dreams were showing instinctual feelings that are suppressed by society. In the video a dream was mentioned in which a man stabbed another man and killed him. The man said he felt that he had actually stabbed someone. Obviuosly, stabbing someone is not morale in society. This is an example of an id. It is personal and can go against the morale codes of society. It was also interesting seeing Freud's dreams. I also found it interesting that Freud would publish his "Interpretation of Dreams" in the year 1900. He chose this year because he wanted this book to represent a new age of thinking for this new century. This book goes hand in hand with other theories at this time. They all were new ways of looking at things. An example would be the theory of relativity. Scientists have not really been able to test it, but it is new thought on a realm that was often overlooked.
I also found this website which summed up the theories of dreams for Freud. Freud said that dreams are not always remembered because the superego is doing its job and protecting the subconscious. The superego censors the id or dream. This protectst the subconscious realm.
I looked into another theory and found this good website which explains some of Freud's other theories. For example, it explains defense mechanisms and the famous freudian slip. This website helped clear up some confusion about some of his theories.
What interested me the most about Freud’s dream interpretations was that the mind conveys our deepest thoughts in different scenarios and symbols in order to prevent the raw emotion from waking us up. If that’s the case, then there is a whole world of knowledge locked inside our brains that we don’t have access too. The amount of information we might have in our heads is an uncanny idea, and it reminds me of what Nietzsche was talking about human potential. Humans could have the ability to do so much more if they could unlock the information our minds are capable of holding, and, like they are the route to understanding psychological disorders like hysteria, dreams could be the key to human advancement.
Freud didn’t necessarily “invent” dream interpretations; people were trying to understand dreams for hundreds of years, and Freud was the most successful at establishing rules for the process. In the popular Bible story, Daniel and the Lions’ Den, Daniel is called upon by King Darius to interpret his dreams. Of course, Darius’s dreams were messages from God, and Daniel was able to read these messages through His wisdom. This shows the advancement of science, and how God’s power isn’t needed anymore to help people learn about nature, thus proving Nietzsche’s point about how God is dead. That’s another interesting link to what people of the “revolt against reason” were thinking. It’s also a reason why Freud’s work was so controversial. He was proving with science that he could do the same things that previously only God could do.
Like Jackie said, this got me thinking what exactly is in my deep thoughts and in the back of my mind. The fact that we cannot begin to think or discover what is in our minds interests me a great deal. You could have the cure to the common cold back there or where you left your keys or what you did when you were three years old and it will most likely never come out. I found the man talking about his mother dying very alarming because I personally have heard of an instance of this happening. It is as if you could look into the future and get a hint as to what is going to happen. That power is disturbing in its own sense as well for whoever is having the dream. This reminds me of a movie called Limitless. It is about a pill that is created that helps you access 100% of your brain. It is said that you only access 10% of your brain. This allows the character to make a killing in the stock market and become a senator as well. He becomes so much smarter and come up with ideas that no one could have ever. This is more in relation to the brain and not dreams but, imagine if humans had the power to access that in dreams. The world would be in pure chaos. That power would be overwhelming. Ironically enough the Kanye West song Power was played in the previews. No one man should have all that power.
Like Chris, I am fascinated by dreams. "The laws of logic that rule our waking rule do not apply to the kingdom of sleep." Dreams give a person the ability to be and live with no boundaries. The video also mentions that a dream not analyzed is like a letter unopened, but my question is what happens if you cannot analyze it? How do we know that what Freud has discovered is what our dreams are actually trying to tell us. That is a reason why he was not as popular when he first discovered these theories and ideas. It also said in the video that dreams are how our conscious alerts us what we really want. There was a man in one of the videos who said that he dreamt about stabbing and killing man, he described in detail how it felt, that it was so real like. Now this may sound crazy and no one judge me on this but, I don't think it's crazy. I've always wondered if I could kill someone just to see if I could get away with it....maybe it's because I watch too many cop shows but I promise I will never in a million years try it, i'm just curious to see if I am capable of doing it (probably not). perhaps this guy was living it in his dream because morally it is wrong, yet he was still subconsciously curious.
My sister is a psychology major in college and I figured who better to ask about Freud. Although she said that Freud’s explanations are not as widely accepted as much anymore, she said that Freud looked into the manifestation of the dream. He looked for it to explain a part of the mental state of a person, whether that be good or bad. Take depression or something of that nature, he would look into your dreams to try and explain why you were feeling the way you were. He would look for certain symbols or keys to explain things to patients. He also believed highly in the childhood experiences of a person explaining certain things about their current state of mind. For instance, if a person is deathly afraid of water and is having certain scary dreams about water, they might have had a terrible experience when they were younger with water or someone they know may have drowned, something of that nature. He also believed that letting the thoughts out in the open would be the first part in helping the person. By the patient feeling comfortable and putting their trust in the analyzer, the patient has taken the first step in helping them find a solution to their problems.
I really like Jeff's explanation. When I was about six or seven my room was taken over by terminates, but they covered all my toys, my bed, and even got into my fish tank, somehow killing most of the fish. I remember being so focused on playing with my new toys that I did not even realize what was going on until they started to crawl on me. After freaking out and getting my room debugged, I would have nightmares about all different creepy crawlers trying to kill me. Even since then I have developed such a fear of bugs that it has almost cause two car accidents and has required my father to come save me from the spider in the corner. To get to the point, I never noticed that, that one incident has sacred me for the rest of my life. I still have nightmares of that night, and it just proves that Freud knew what he was talking about and that his theory can be applied to situations. What he is saying makes sense and his categories can help analysis a personality or dream, which like Jeff said is the first step to recovery.
Jackie's on to something, relating Nietzsche to Frued. I think what she's trying to say is that this wasn't a new idea at all, it was just something that was expanded upon. No one has really taken the time to examine what dreams could tell, and in a time where advancement in thought and science increased exponentially, Frued took the advantage of going deeper into this.
Dreams are very much a letter waiting to be opened as aid before. To open it is another step to unlocking human potential in Nietzsche's word. But what exactly is our sensors protecting us from is what i want to know. What can be hidden in our heads that could be so life changing that our minds are literally hiding it from us in Frued's words. I think that our own minds are preventing our own advancement in society much like Christianity and democracy (Nietzsche again).
Are our minds so deep and intricate to the point where we hold secrets from our conscious beings. We dream a dream that isn't anything important, but could hold something that can change our whole perspective on the world. I think that's what this whole era is about, radical perspective and tampering our inner potential whether it lies in our awareness or in our subconscious minds that yearns to be noticed.
Same as everyone else who commented before me, I am also interested in dreams. I fascinates me that dreams are mental images that you brains creates on its own. Brains, in general peak my interest. It is truly amazing that while you are unconscious, you mind is still awake and working. This video on Freud interested me due to the fact that he wasn't the slightest bit popular when he first debuted. Actually, to this day, he still isn't all that popular; the only difference is that he is now well known. His methods and ideas have been widely spoken for your over one hundred years. At the time, his ideas were harshly criticized. Many doctors and theorists at the time didn't feel his studies were correct. This may have something to do with the fact that he was testing his dream analysis on psychiatric patients. Most of the dreams he analyzed were those of individuals whom weren't sane; which was the entire reason as to why he was listening to their dreams in the first place.
Also, Freud as a person was a very interesting character. He was known as an arrogant man, someone who fought for their point to the bitter end. This would make sense, considering he held firm to his revolutionary ideas, in terms of the brain. In the video, one of the people being interviewed called Freud a "truly committed genius". This seems to perfectly portray Freud, because he dedicated his life to describing the analysis on dreams. Compared to Nietzsche, Freud's ideas were a lot less radical. Although I feel that Nietzsche's harsh assumptions about the Christian faith were mainly just to capture the population's attention, Freud continued on his quest to discover the brain as much as he could, whether he gained people's attentions o not. This point, I felt, is one of the more important ones, due to the fact that Freud wasn't experimenting with dreams for popularity, he truly believed what he was publishing.
Even though I commented on the other 2 posts I just really wanted to put this post up for all of the people that are interested in psychoanalysis. The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:
1. Human behavior, experience and cognition are largely determined by irrational drives.
2. Those drives are largely unconscious.
3. Attempts to bring those drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms.
4. Beside the inherited constitution of personality, one's development is determined by events in early childhood.
5. Conflicts between conscious view of reality and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.
6. The liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the consciousness (via skilled guidance).
This video was also very good. It is about the view of psychoanalysis in America in the 1940’s. Please check it out!!!!
This is all too crazy. It completely blows my mind. Just think, you don't actually know what goes on in your own mind each night. You are a stranger to yourself. You don't know or understand half of the desires you have. Doesn't that idea just sound ridiculous? So many people criticized this idea and insisted that it isn't true, but there is no concrete evidence that it is or is not true, and that just adds to the mysteriousness and creepiness of it all. It's crazy how powerful our minds are, and how we constantly have subconscious thoughts running through our minds even though we may not realize it. The videos don't talk about this, but I find the idea of the Freudian Slip to be interesting because it proves that you can have different levels of subconscious thought occurring simultaneously. In the videos, hearing these guys talking about things they dream about actually happening in real life sounds like a bunch of bologna, but if you start thinking about how powerful our minds are, or have the potential to be, it could actually make sense. The idea of psychic powers completely intrigues me, and it makes me think like...we might all have psychic powers...but only some of us have the ability to reveal them. Does that make sense? Okay, anyway...these videos also made me think of the movie Inception..but I probably shouldn't veer too much off topic and talk about that. Now I really want to take a course about this in college...
This was, by far, the most fascinating aspect of Freudian psychology. Dreams have fascinated the masses since the beginning of time. The spectrum ranges from some viewing them as means by which we can predict the future (omens, etc) and others believing they are the uncovering of the unconscious (Freud).
As others previous mentioned, Freud was one of the first people to examine dreams scientifically and, being a rationalist, believed that they must have a reasonable, scientific explanation. He concluded that dreams allow unconscious wished, desires, and drives to enjoy free range in the mind. They are kept secret from the individual due to their repression due to censors and the complexity of various symbols. Freud was convinced that there was more than meets the eye when it came to dreams.
I really liked what Jackie mentioned about Nietzsche. He and Freud would’ve been on the same page when it came to dreams. I found this quote which I think poignantly illustrates this similarity; “All men of action are dreamers” – James Huneker. Nietzsche believed that the whole individual and his/her heroic potential was suppressed by society’s institutions. There true desires and instinct was suppresses, and Freud provided the outlet through which they may be explored and liberated. Simply, the desires and primitive drives hidden in our unconscious are able to have free range in out dreams.
One again, I would like to mention how hauntingly interesting this whole topic is. Like Mallory mentioned about her one experience, the mind is mysteriously powerful. Who knows how our experiences really affect us and what truly lies in the unconscious.
Freud analysis of dreams and how it relates back to the core tenements of his new science of psychology. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yT337GXoVc
Well, I don’t know where to put this… But it’s Freud speaking about his own profession and studies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk0qKMZaHSE&feature=related
I know it’s a little off topic, but the awesomely awesome Michio Kaku goes on about the “crushing force” of society of humans as children. Society’s “science” crushes human curiosity and their innate desire to discover. These experiences carry on throughout their adult life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LelNYqVEOZQ&feature=related
btdubs, the second link that was provided to us was really informative and enjoyable to watch. It also was a little creepy and makes it clear about how groundbreaking and controversial his ideas were.
In my research on Freud’s interpretation of dreams I kept coming across Hamlet. Naturally, I was intrigued. Shakespeare was acutely aware of human beings and preceded Freud in psychoanalysis. In a Freudian sense, Hamlet is a real person whose psyche can be analyzed. Hamlet’s madness merely disguised as the truth is parallel to the way dreams disguise unconscious realities. Some of the greatest literary figures of all time have predicted the emergence of Freud and his psychology! (Shakespeare, Sophocles, etc.)
These conversations intrigue me as they do for everyone else. I find the inner mind, and its ability to convey secret messages and desires absolutely interesting. In AP English we have just finished the Glass Menagerie; this caused me to think of memory. Freud said that we could use our dreams in order to attempt to remember an experience event that has taken place in our mind. In Williams’ play, music becomes a trigger to spark a memory in one’s mind, yet the narrator Tom also describes memory as non-realistic, this is because we cannot always remember all the truths of our past experiences, and tend to remember what we wish to remember and forget the rest. This had me thinking of music and dreams. If a person can use music as a trigger for a spark in their memory, what can a song do if you listen to it before you go to bed? If everyone picked a song to listen to that they used to hear when they were younger, does that mean that through the night they will be able to remember memories to their fullest, and if so will they trigger another memory or desire? This goes for scent as well; my sister and I decided to buy a Frebreze that we had never smelt before when we went to California for the first time this summer. We sprayed the Frebreze at each new location we went to in order to create a trigger, and every time I smell something like that Frebreze I remember a location or memory that we experienced in California. Is the mind able to remember the tiniest details of a memory if it is triggered by a scent or sound before going to rest?
The mind works in many mysterious ways and to have the mind have the capability to dream of things and use its own versions of symbolism to create hidden messages is unbelievable. I am particularly interested in the inner thoughts. Do the dreams that we can’t remember have a narrator? And will we ever be able to retrieve the thoughts that our mind has when we dream? Another thing that I find very interesting is the mind’s ability to control when a person will be able to remember a dream, and when we can only remember blackness, as if we never had a dream. Some people spend their whole lives looking for their purpose in life, what if our brains are telling us how to achieve our most sacred and desired goals during the ‘blackout” moments of our sleep? In the novel 1984, the main character Winston breaks his society’s law by writing down his feelings and opinions in a diary, and later gets penalized for his actions. But the idea that during our sleep we can formulate ideas and opinions makes me think of our own mental on-going diary. We as humans have experienced so many things, and as we take our history courses, we learn about the past in order to see how it will affect our future. Does our mind take notes of our failures and accomplishments and formulate the successes into a plan towards greatness. Freud’s depiction of the human mind and the capability of a dream’s meaning makes me also question whether our minds are working to remember what our dreams plans for us to accomplish. Lastly Freud’s depiction of how powerful the mind is makes me think of the new television show premiering called Awake. The main character was in a horrible car crash with his wife and son, he wakes up to two lives, in one his son lived and wife died. In the other, his son died and wife lived, he has two different shrinks, and cannot tell which life is a dream and which is a reality. This show really intrigued me because it shows the powerful capability of the mind, and how clueless humans really are to what our “lives” are like, and what our greatest desires are. Everyone has dreams where they feel as if they were really occurring; this show exemplifies the power of the mind and its capability to disguise its memories to be shown as reality. How do we know what is real, and what is just a figment of our mind’s imagination?
NOTHING YOU DO OCCURS BY CHANCE! The main principle of Freud's theories is that your subconscious motivates every action you take on some level. Dreams are a way for your mind to release these urges and impulses. Going back to id, ego and superego, when awake your id is thwarted by your super ego but this is not so while asleep. It is hard to remember your dreams because your superego is attempting to protect the mind from disturbing imagery. Freud went as far as to say that cryptic images of our dreams can be easily interpreted. In a basic way it looks like this: 1. Displacement This occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.
2. Projection This happens when the dreamer propels their own desires and wants onto another person.
3. Symbolization This is characterized when the dreamer's repressed urges or suppressed desires are acted out metaphorically.
4. Condensation This is the process in which the dreamer hides their feelings or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief dream image or event. Thus the meaning of this dream imagery may not be apparent or obvious.
5. Rationalization This is regarded as the final stage of dreamwork. The dreaming mind organizes an incoherent dream into one that is more comprehensible and logical. This is also known as secondary revision.
I like this topic because I think dreams are very mysterious. I think it's really interesting that Freud came up with an explanation for why it's hard to remember some dreams. I never understood why that happened until learning about Freud's theories. I remember learning in health class that everything on the body serves some kind of purpose, usually for protection, such as eybrows and eyelashes. That said, I feel there's a lot of credibility to Freud's theory because he basically says that the superego is the protection for the mind from disturbing images. Another interesting point is the fact that the subconscious mind retains a lot of thoughts that might not be easily remembered normally. That said, an argument could be made that the subconscious mind and the superego sort of protect people from doing unintentional things. Without the superego, people might accidentally say things to people they never wanted to and wouldn't have control over that. In a way, the superego protects people from others as well. Not sure if that made a lot of sense but to me it did haha.
I found Freud's interpretations of dreams to be very interesting. Though he was not the first as people have pointed out he was the only one to form a way of analyzing dreams in a manner that has been acredited through the century its been around. People like shakepeare did give their own commentary on dreams however they were his own opinions, Freud based his observations on countless cases that he listened to. This is why he is such a credible source. He turned his professsion into a science and has helped generation foer years with his interpretations. I also found it interesting how the video compared dreams to a letter. They also then said the ego is responsible for cataloging your dreams. The imagery is that of youir dreams and mind working as a file cabinet that is acessed at will and some dreams are stored while others are shreded and forgotten.
Dreams, in Freud's view, are all forms of "wish fulfillment," or attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past. However, because the information in the unconscious is in an unruly and often disturbing form, a "censor" in the preconscious will not allow it to pass unaltered into the conscious.
During dreams, the preconscious is more lax in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must distort and warp the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. As such, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious.
I find it interesting how there are common experiences in everyone's dreams, such as being chased, falling, and flying through the sky. I was curious about the meaning of falling in dreams, so I did a little research and found this very informative video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY8InzzULVk
According to this modern psychologist, the sensation of falling in dreams can result from many things, such as a drop in blood pressure while falling asleep, lack of confidence in yourself, and maybe even an innate fear of our archaic monkey minds of falling from trees.
I was very interested in Freud's interpretation of dreams and how he even got interested in studying the minds of people. In the video, it mentioned how dreams give us a sense of freedom. Anything can happen in dreams, and dreams often help us to fulfill our own unconscious desires. According to Freud, there is something known as a sensor in our minds, which edits our dreams. Various processes, such as displacement, condensation, and projection, help to alter the dream. The ego within our minds helps to reorganize our dreams in order for us to get a better understanding of them. The most interesting thing that I caught in the videos was Freud’s comparison of a dream to an unopened letter. There is something in the letter that we don’t know unless we open it. Dreams are the same way. We must be able to analyze them more in order to get a better understanding of them. I did not find it surprising at all that Freud was not popular amongst the public, even after he published his book, “Interpretation of Dreams”. Freud started off his career observing different patients and trying to get a better understanding of the human mind himself. It was interesting to see how Freud’s dream about his patient led him to develop new theories of dreaming. Dreams are something that we will never fully understand because of how difficult they can be to understand and interpret. However, Freud was able to start a revolutionary movement of psycho analysis, and push for people to study the human mind and try to interpret dreams for themselves.
ReplyDeleteFreud believed that dreams were the entrance into the understanding of the subconscious part of the mind. He studied the dreams of both the well and the people with mental illness. He also believed that dreams were to help protect ourselves during sleep. By having dreams, he thought we could block out all of the other things around us leaving us to get the sleep we needed. He thought that that things such as negative emotions, hidden desires and hidden thoughts were disguised by dreams so that we could sleep without becoming distressed and waking up. Therefore he thought this could be the opening into the subconscious part of the mind. Freud said that there were two parts that make up a dream:
ReplyDeleteThe Manifest content- the things you remember as soon as you get up (He thoughts this part of the dream had no meaning and served as a disguise)
and
The Latent content- which holds the true meanings of our dreams (This can be in the Manifest content but its hidden).
Dreams could be hidden in three different ways:
Condensation- Two or more things in your dream are combined
Displacement- The emotion thats intended for one thing gets switched to something else thats meaningless
Symbolism- Complicated concepts are changed to dream form
Freud’s interpretation of dreams included the subconscious mind and a series of events. There is a sensor in the brain that takes in the desires and without the sensor they would become emotions and then they would wake you up. In a way to not wake the person up he said that the sensor goes and disguising the meaning by playing around with it and transforming it into a dream. Also called dream work that has four stages displacement, condensation, symbolization and projections. The dream is displaced in the way that it is taking the ideas from the person and making something out of it. Then the condensation includes the taking of several ideas and fusing them together to create one centralized idea. Symbolizing is used to make the dream look real and then the projection is when you are actually experiencing the dream. Freud also went and categorized a dream as something that has another story inside and is building on top of others. The two worlds the subconscious and conscious have the same importance.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkWikN3fl7g&feature=related
ReplyDeleteI found this short, and funny video about psychoanalysis on the side bar in youtube.
I originally looked at the dreams because I personally find dreams extremely interesting. Freud believed that dreams were the royal road to the subconscious. He believed that dreams were showing instinctual feelings that are suppressed by society. In the video a dream was mentioned in which a man stabbed another man and killed him. The man said he felt that he had actually stabbed someone. Obviuosly, stabbing someone is not morale in society. This is an example of an id. It is personal and can go against the morale codes of society. It was also interesting seeing Freud's dreams. I also found it interesting that Freud would publish his "Interpretation of Dreams" in the year 1900. He chose this year because he wanted this book to represent a new age of thinking for this new century. This book goes hand in hand with other theories at this time. They all were new ways of looking at things. An example would be the theory of relativity. Scientists have not really been able to test it, but it is new thought on a realm that was often overlooked.
http://www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/dreamtheory/freud.htm
I also found this website which summed up the theories of dreams for Freud. Freud said that dreams are not always remembered because the superego is doing its job and protecting the subconscious. The superego censors the id or dream. This protectst the subconscious realm.
Chris, I really enjoyed your links! The 2nd one really does a stellar job of outlining Freudian psychology. Thanks for sharing!
DeleteI looked into another theory and found this good website which explains some of Freud's other theories. For example, it explains defense mechanisms and the famous freudian slip. This website helped clear up some confusion about some of his theories.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.healthguidance.org/entry/10736/1/Sigmund-Freuds-Psychodynamic-Theories.html
What interested me the most about Freud’s dream interpretations was that the mind conveys our deepest thoughts in different scenarios and symbols in order to prevent the raw emotion from waking us up. If that’s the case, then there is a whole world of knowledge locked inside our brains that we don’t have access too. The amount of information we might have in our heads is an uncanny idea, and it reminds me of what Nietzsche was talking about human potential. Humans could have the ability to do so much more if they could unlock the information our minds are capable of holding, and, like they are the route to understanding psychological disorders like hysteria, dreams could be the key to human advancement.
ReplyDeleteFreud didn’t necessarily “invent” dream interpretations; people were trying to understand dreams for hundreds of years, and Freud was the most successful at establishing rules for the process. In the popular Bible story, Daniel and the Lions’ Den, Daniel is called upon by King Darius to interpret his dreams. Of course, Darius’s dreams were messages from God, and Daniel was able to read these messages through His wisdom. This shows the advancement of science, and how God’s power isn’t needed anymore to help people learn about nature, thus proving Nietzsche’s point about how God is dead. That’s another interesting link to what people of the “revolt against reason” were thinking. It’s also a reason why Freud’s work was so controversial. He was proving with science that he could do the same things that previously only God could do.
ReplyDeleteLike Jackie said, this got me thinking what exactly is in my deep thoughts and in the back of my mind. The fact that we cannot begin to think or discover what is in our minds interests me a great deal. You could have the cure to the common cold back there or where you left your keys or what you did when you were three years old and it will most likely never come out. I found the man talking about his mother dying very alarming because I personally have heard of an instance of this happening. It is as if you could look into the future and get a hint as to what is going to happen. That power is disturbing in its own sense as well for whoever is having the dream. This reminds me of a movie called Limitless. It is about a pill that is created that helps you access 100% of your brain. It is said that you only access 10% of your brain. This allows the character to make a killing in the stock market and become a senator as well. He becomes so much smarter and come up with ideas that no one could have ever. This is more in relation to the brain and not dreams but, imagine if humans had the power to access that in dreams. The world would be in pure chaos. That power would be overwhelming. Ironically enough the Kanye West song Power was played in the previews. No one man should have all that power.
ReplyDeleteLike Chris, I am fascinated by dreams. "The laws of logic that rule our waking rule do not apply to the kingdom of sleep." Dreams give a person the ability to be and live with no boundaries. The video also mentions that a dream not analyzed is like a letter unopened, but my question is what happens if you cannot analyze it? How do we know that what Freud has discovered is what our dreams are actually trying to tell us. That is a reason why he was not as popular when he first discovered these theories and ideas. It also said in the video that dreams are how our conscious alerts us what we really want. There was a man in one of the videos who said that he dreamt about stabbing and killing man, he described in detail how it felt, that it was so real like. Now this may sound crazy and no one judge me on this but, I don't think it's crazy. I've always wondered if I could kill someone just to see if I could get away with it....maybe it's because I watch too many cop shows but I promise I will never in a million years try it, i'm just curious to see if I am capable of doing it (probably not). perhaps this guy was living it in his dream because morally it is wrong, yet he was still subconsciously curious.
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ReplyDeleteMy sister is a psychology major in college and I figured who better to ask about Freud. Although she said that Freud’s explanations are not as widely accepted as much anymore, she said that Freud looked into the manifestation of the dream. He looked for it to explain a part of the mental state of a person, whether that be good or bad. Take depression or something of that nature, he would look into your dreams to try and explain why you were feeling the way you were. He would look for certain symbols or keys to explain things to patients. He also believed highly in the childhood experiences of a person explaining certain things about their current state of mind. For instance, if a person is deathly afraid of water and is having certain scary dreams about water, they might have had a terrible experience when they were younger with water or someone they know may have drowned, something of that nature. He also believed that letting the thoughts out in the open would be the first part in helping the person. By the patient feeling comfortable and putting their trust in the analyzer, the patient has taken the first step in helping them find a solution to their problems.
ReplyDeleteI really like Jeff's explanation. When I was about six or seven my room was taken over by terminates, but they covered all my toys, my bed, and even got into my fish tank, somehow killing most of the fish. I remember being so focused on playing with my new toys that I did not even realize what was going on until they started to crawl on me. After freaking out and getting my room debugged, I would have nightmares about all different creepy crawlers trying to kill me. Even since then I have developed such a fear of bugs that it has almost cause two car accidents and has required my father to come save me from the spider in the corner. To get to the point, I never noticed that, that one incident has sacred me for the rest of my life. I still have nightmares of that night, and it just proves that Freud knew what he was talking about and that his theory can be applied to situations. What he is saying makes sense and his categories can help analysis a personality or dream, which like Jeff said is the first step to recovery.
ReplyDeleteJackie's on to something, relating Nietzsche to Frued. I think what she's trying to say is that this wasn't a new idea at all, it was just something that was expanded upon. No one has really taken the time to examine what dreams could tell, and in a time where advancement in thought and science increased exponentially, Frued took the advantage of going deeper into this.
ReplyDeleteDreams are very much a letter waiting to be opened as aid before. To open it is another step to unlocking human potential in Nietzsche's word. But what exactly is our sensors protecting us from is what i want to know. What can be hidden in our heads that could be so life changing that our minds are literally hiding it from us in Frued's words. I think that our own minds are preventing our own advancement in society much like Christianity and democracy (Nietzsche again).
Are our minds so deep and intricate to the point where we hold secrets from our conscious beings. We dream a dream that isn't anything important, but could hold something that can change our whole perspective on the world. I think that's what this whole era is about, radical perspective and tampering our inner potential whether it lies in our awareness or in our subconscious minds that yearns to be noticed.
Same as everyone else who commented before me, I am also interested in dreams. I fascinates me that dreams are mental images that you brains creates on its own. Brains, in general peak my interest. It is truly amazing that while you are unconscious, you mind is still awake and working. This video on Freud interested me due to the fact that he wasn't the slightest bit popular when he first debuted. Actually, to this day, he still isn't all that popular; the only difference is that he is now well known. His methods and ideas have been widely spoken for your over one hundred years. At the time, his ideas were harshly criticized. Many doctors and theorists at the time didn't feel his studies were correct. This may have something to do with the fact that he was testing his dream analysis on psychiatric patients. Most of the dreams he analyzed were those of individuals whom weren't sane; which was the entire reason as to why he was listening to their dreams in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Freud as a person was a very interesting character. He was known as an arrogant man, someone who fought for their point to the bitter end. This would make sense, considering he held firm to his revolutionary ideas, in terms of the brain. In the video, one of the people being interviewed called Freud a "truly committed genius". This seems to perfectly portray Freud, because he dedicated his life to describing the analysis on dreams. Compared to Nietzsche, Freud's ideas were a lot less radical. Although I feel that Nietzsche's harsh assumptions about the Christian faith were mainly just to capture the population's attention, Freud continued on his quest to discover the brain as much as he could, whether he gained people's attentions o not. This point, I felt, is one of the more important ones, due to the fact that Freud wasn't experimenting with dreams for popularity, he truly believed what he was publishing.
ReplyDeleteEven though I commented on the other 2 posts I just really wanted to put this post up for all of the people that are interested in psychoanalysis.
ReplyDeleteThe basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:
1. Human behavior, experience and cognition are largely determined by irrational drives.
2. Those drives are largely unconscious.
3. Attempts to bring those drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms.
4. Beside the inherited constitution of personality, one's development is determined by events in early childhood.
5. Conflicts between conscious view of reality and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.
6. The liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the consciousness (via skilled guidance).
This video was also very good. It is about the view of psychoanalysis in America in the 1940’s. Please check it out!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63JjP0qH9xQ
This is all too crazy. It completely blows my mind. Just think, you don't actually know what goes on in your own mind each night. You are a stranger to yourself. You don't know or understand half of the desires you have. Doesn't that idea just sound ridiculous? So many people criticized this idea and insisted that it isn't true, but there is no concrete evidence that it is or is not true, and that just adds to the mysteriousness and creepiness of it all. It's crazy how powerful our minds are, and how we constantly have subconscious thoughts running through our minds even though we may not realize it. The videos don't talk about this, but I find the idea of the Freudian Slip to be interesting because it proves that you can have different levels of subconscious thought occurring simultaneously. In the videos, hearing these guys talking about things they dream about actually happening in real life sounds like a bunch of bologna, but if you start thinking about how powerful our minds are, or have the potential to be, it could actually make sense. The idea of psychic powers completely intrigues me, and it makes me think like...we might all have psychic powers...but only some of us have the ability to reveal them. Does that make sense? Okay, anyway...these videos also made me think of the movie Inception..but I probably shouldn't veer too much off topic and talk about that. Now I really want to take a course about this in college...
ReplyDeleteThis was, by far, the most fascinating aspect of Freudian psychology. Dreams have fascinated the masses since the beginning of time. The spectrum ranges from some viewing them as means by which we can predict the future (omens, etc) and others believing they are the uncovering of the unconscious (Freud).
ReplyDeleteAs others previous mentioned, Freud was one of the first people to examine dreams scientifically and, being a rationalist, believed that they must have a reasonable, scientific explanation. He concluded that dreams allow unconscious wished, desires, and drives to enjoy free range in the mind. They are kept secret from the individual due to their repression due to censors and the complexity of various symbols. Freud was convinced that there was more than meets the eye when it came to dreams.
I really liked what Jackie mentioned about Nietzsche. He and Freud would’ve been on the same page when it came to dreams. I found this quote which I think poignantly illustrates this similarity; “All men of action are dreamers” – James Huneker. Nietzsche believed that the whole individual and his/her heroic potential was suppressed by society’s institutions. There true desires and instinct was suppresses, and Freud provided the outlet through which they may be explored and liberated. Simply, the desires and primitive drives hidden in our unconscious are able to have free range in out dreams.
One again, I would like to mention how hauntingly interesting this whole topic is. Like Mallory mentioned about her one experience, the mind is mysteriously powerful. Who knows how our experiences really affect us and what truly lies in the unconscious.
Freud analysis of dreams and how it relates back to the core tenements of his new science of psychology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yT337GXoVc
Well, I don’t know where to put this… But it’s Freud speaking about his own profession and studies.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk0qKMZaHSE&feature=related
I know it’s a little off topic, but the awesomely awesome Michio Kaku goes on about the “crushing force” of society of humans as children. Society’s “science” crushes human curiosity and their innate desire to discover. These experiences carry on throughout their adult life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LelNYqVEOZQ&feature=related
btdubs, the second link that was provided to us was really informative and enjoyable to watch. It also was a little creepy and makes it clear about how groundbreaking and controversial his ideas were.
DeleteIn my research on Freud’s interpretation of dreams I kept coming across Hamlet. Naturally, I was intrigued. Shakespeare was acutely aware of human beings and preceded Freud in psychoanalysis. In a Freudian sense, Hamlet is a real person whose psyche can be analyzed. Hamlet’s madness merely disguised as the truth is parallel to the way dreams disguise unconscious realities. Some of the greatest literary figures of all time have predicted the emergence of Freud and his psychology! (Shakespeare, Sophocles, etc.)
ReplyDeleteThese conversations intrigue me as they do for everyone else. I find the inner mind, and its ability to convey secret messages and desires absolutely interesting. In AP English we have just finished the Glass Menagerie; this caused me to think of memory. Freud said that we could use our dreams in order to attempt to remember an experience event that has taken place in our mind. In Williams’ play, music becomes a trigger to spark a memory in one’s mind, yet the narrator Tom also describes memory as non-realistic, this is because we cannot always remember all the truths of our past experiences, and tend to remember what we wish to remember and forget the rest. This had me thinking of music and dreams. If a person can use music as a trigger for a spark in their memory, what can a song do if you listen to it before you go to bed? If everyone picked a song to listen to that they used to hear when they were younger, does that mean that through the night they will be able to remember memories to their fullest, and if so will they trigger another memory or desire? This goes for scent as well; my sister and I decided to buy a Frebreze that we had never smelt before when we went to California for the first time this summer. We sprayed the Frebreze at each new location we went to in order to create a trigger, and every time I smell something like that Frebreze I remember a location or memory that we experienced in California. Is the mind able to remember the tiniest details of a memory if it is triggered by a scent or sound before going to rest?
ReplyDeleteThe mind works in many mysterious ways and to have the mind have the capability to dream of things and use its own versions of symbolism to create hidden messages is unbelievable. I am particularly interested in the inner thoughts. Do the dreams that we can’t remember have a narrator? And will we ever be able to retrieve the thoughts that our mind has when we dream? Another thing that I find very interesting is the mind’s ability to control when a person will be able to remember a dream, and when we can only remember blackness, as if we never had a dream. Some people spend their whole lives looking for their purpose in life, what if our brains are telling us how to achieve our most sacred and desired goals during the ‘blackout” moments of our sleep? In the novel 1984, the main character Winston breaks his society’s law by writing down his feelings and opinions in a diary, and later gets penalized for his actions. But the idea that during our sleep we can formulate ideas and opinions makes me think of our own mental on-going diary. We as humans have experienced so many things, and as we take our history courses, we learn about the past in order to see how it will affect our future. Does our mind take notes of our failures and accomplishments and formulate the successes into a plan towards greatness. Freud’s depiction of the human mind and the capability of a dream’s meaning makes me also question whether our minds are working to remember what our dreams plans for us to accomplish. Lastly Freud’s depiction of how powerful the mind is makes me think of the new television show premiering called Awake. The main character was in a horrible car crash with his wife and son, he wakes up to two lives, in one his son lived and wife died. In the other, his son died and wife lived, he has two different shrinks, and cannot tell which life is a dream and which is a reality. This show really intrigued me because it shows the powerful capability of the mind, and how clueless humans really are to what our “lives” are like, and what our greatest desires are. Everyone has dreams where they feel as if they were really occurring; this show exemplifies the power of the mind and its capability to disguise its memories to be shown as reality. How do we know what is real, and what is just a figment of our mind’s imagination?
ReplyDeleteNOTHING YOU DO OCCURS BY CHANCE! The main principle of Freud's theories is that your subconscious motivates every action you take on some level. Dreams are a way for your mind to release these urges and impulses. Going back to id, ego and superego, when awake your id is thwarted by your super ego but this is not so while asleep. It is hard to remember your dreams because your superego is attempting to protect the mind from disturbing imagery. Freud went as far as to say that cryptic images of our dreams can be easily interpreted. In a basic way it looks like this:
ReplyDelete1. Displacement
This occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.
2. Projection
This happens when the dreamer propels their own desires and wants onto another person.
3. Symbolization
This is characterized when the dreamer's repressed urges or suppressed desires are acted out metaphorically.
4. Condensation
This is the process in which the dreamer hides their feelings or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief dream image or event. Thus the meaning of this dream imagery may not be apparent or obvious.
5. Rationalization
This is regarded as the final stage of dreamwork. The dreaming mind organizes an incoherent dream into one that is more comprehensible and logical. This is also known as secondary revision.
I like this topic because I think dreams are very mysterious. I think it's really interesting that Freud came up with an explanation for why it's hard to remember some dreams. I never understood why that happened until learning about Freud's theories. I remember learning in health class that everything on the body serves some kind of purpose, usually for protection, such as eybrows and eyelashes. That said, I feel there's a lot of credibility to Freud's theory because he basically says that the superego is the protection for the mind from disturbing images. Another interesting point is the fact that the subconscious mind retains a lot of thoughts that might not be easily remembered normally. That said, an argument could be made that the subconscious mind and the superego sort of protect people from doing unintentional things. Without the superego, people might accidentally say things to people they never wanted to and wouldn't have control over that. In a way, the superego protects people from others as well. Not sure if that made a lot of sense but to me it did haha.
ReplyDeleteI found Freud's interpretations of dreams to be very interesting. Though he was not the first as people have pointed out he was the only one to form a way of analyzing dreams in a manner that has been acredited through the century its been around. People like shakepeare did give their own commentary on dreams however they were his own opinions, Freud based his observations on countless cases that he listened to. This is why he is such a credible source. He turned his professsion into a science and has helped generation foer years with his interpretations. I also found it interesting how the video compared dreams to a letter. They also then said the ego is responsible for cataloging your dreams. The imagery is that of youir dreams and mind working as a file cabinet that is acessed at will and some dreams are stored while others are shreded and forgotten.
ReplyDeleteDreams, in Freud's view, are all forms of "wish fulfillment," or attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past. However, because the information in the unconscious is in an unruly and often disturbing form, a "censor" in the preconscious will not allow it to pass unaltered into the conscious.
ReplyDeleteDuring dreams, the preconscious is more lax in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must distort and warp the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. As such, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious.
I find it interesting how there are common experiences in everyone's dreams, such as being chased, falling, and flying through the sky. I was curious about the meaning of falling in dreams, so I did a little research and found this very informative video.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY8InzzULVk
According to this modern psychologist, the sensation of falling in dreams can result from many things, such as a drop in blood pressure while falling asleep, lack of confidence in yourself, and maybe even an innate fear of our archaic monkey minds of falling from trees.