Freuds theory of dreaming

• Holistic theory
• Subjective theory
• Freud believed that the human mind is mainly made up of the unconscious mind (we are not consciously aware of – despite being the key drive behind many of our behaviours).
• Actions do not happen randomly but they are motivated by unconscious urges and desires. The best way to understand an individual’s behaviour was to understand their unconscious.
• Freud believed that our dreams were a product of our unconscious mind, thus by analysing them we would have a way of assessing what is happening in our unconscious mind
• Id


  Division of our personality which represents all our instinctive urges (aggression and sex)
• Urges represented by the id are repressed in the unconscious mind to keep them in check, making sure that people do not say or do inappropriate or offensive things</b>
• The defence mechanism of repression only works to a certain degree and these urges eventually need to be released through dreams
• Ego


  The reality part of our personality
• Dreams challenge the ego


  Dreams are more likely to occur when the ego's defences are weakened
• Freud believed dreams act as wish fulfilment; people cannot often fulfil their deepest desires and so they dream about them instead. This becomes a way of releasing some of the anxiety around these urges. E.g. Argument with their boss, they do not fight back because they do not want to lose their job, so have a dream about it instead – partly fulfils their wish, meaning they have a way of dealing with a potentially difficult situation. 
• Dreams had a manifest and a latent content. Manifest content is the actual content of the dream and the latent content is the underlying meaning of the dream.