Main Components

• Dream analysis - Main components

  1. Wish fulfillment
  2. Symbolic nature of dreams
  3. Dreamwork
• Wish Fulfilment

  • Freud believed that dreams were the unconscious fulfilment of wishes that could not be satisfied in the conscious mind
  • Dreams protect the sleeper (primary process thought) but also allow some expression to these buried urges
  • Occurs when unconscious desires are repressed by ego + superego
• Symbolic nature of dreams

  • According to Freud, although dreams represent unfulfilled wishes, their contents are expressed 'symbolically'
  • The real meaning of a dream (latent content) is transformed into a more innocent form (manifest content)

  For example:

  • A penis is represented by a snake or a gun
  • In order to understand these meanings a trained psychoanalyst must interpret them
  • However 'sometime a cigar is just a cigar' so not everything is always symbolic
• Dreamwork

  • The latent content of a dream is transformed into manifest content through the process of dreamwork
  • Processes such as symbolism, displacement + representation (thoughts-visual images)
  • The role of the therapist is to reverse this dreamwork
  • Most psychoanalysts discourage the use of dream dictionaries + other resources when you try to analyse the elements of your dreams