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Daniel J. Aversano Dr. Oral November 23, 2000 Modern Thought An Analysis of Dreams According to Freud Dreams are one of the most mysterious facets in life. Freud was intrigued with dreams.
Dreams became Freud's passion. Constantly analyzing and examining dreams, Freud tried to break dreams down into an exact science. While he did not completely succeed in his goal, Freud did, however, make many breakthroughs in the study of dreams. In Chapter 11 of On Dreams, Freud states that It is commonly said that sleep is disturbed by dreams; strangely enough, we are led to a contrary view and must regard dreams as the guardians of sleep. Many people believed that dreams interrupted sleep.
Freud, however, thought that dreams helped us to get a higher quality of sleep. Freud explains that, in children, sleep is either imposed upon them or it is brought about by sensations of fatigue. A childs dreams are somewhat simple. During the coarse of a day a child has desires or wants. Some of these desires are fulfilled and others are not. The desires, which are not fulfilled, become the subject matter for the childs dreams.
For instance Freud believed that if during the course of the day a childs desire for a candy bar is not fulfilled, then the child will dream about getting the piece of candy. Adults however are different from children in this way. Freud states Adults have learned to make this distinction; they have also grasped the uselessness of wishing, and after long practice know how to postpone their desires until they can find satisfaction by the long and roundabout path of altering the external world. In order to reach fulfillment adults to alter the external world.
Adults are not all like the children who use their dreams in order to achieve fulfillment. Next Freud claims -a differentiation has occurred in the psychical material, which was not present in children. A psychical agency has come into being, which, taught by experience of life, exercises a dominating and inhibiting influence upon mental impulses and maintains that influence with jealous severity, and which, owing to its relation to consciousness and to intentional movement, is armed with the strongest instruments of psychical power. A portion of the impulses of childhood has been suppressed by this agency as being useless to life, and any material of thought derived from those impulses is in the state of repression.
By this quote Freud argues that adults have formed a psychic agency. This agency is formed due to their vast life experiences. This agency helps suppress childhood impulses of wish fulfillment. On page 67 of On Dreams, Freud states We must in any case suppose that even during sleep a certain amount of free attention is on duty as a guard against sensory stimuli, and that this guard may sometimes consider waking more advisable than a continuation of sleep. Otherwise there would be no explanation of how it is that we can be waked up at any moment by sensory stimuli of some particular activity. Freud explains that even during sleep there is a certain amount of conscience thinking that still occurs.
This is the explanation of how certain things can always wake a person up. Freud gives us the example of a mother being woken by the mere winter of her new-born baby. Freud also states This view is not traversed by the fact that there are marginal cases in which the dream-as happens with anxiety dreams-can no longer perform its function of preventing an interruption of sleep, but assumes instead the other function of promptly bringing sleep to an end. In doing so it is merely behaving like a night watchman, who first carries out his duties by suppressing disturbances so that the townsmen may not be waked up, but afterward continues to do his duty by himself waking the townsmen up, if the causes of the disturbance seem to him too serious and of a kind that he cannot cope with alone. By this quote Feud is trying to explain that dreams can also help protect us. They can help to wake us up when the subject matter of our dreams get too serious too handle.
Our dreams in fact protect us from our nightmares. Freud's ideas on dreams are very intriguing. Freud helped us to better understand our dreams. He enlightened us. Dreams are perhaps one of the most captivating parts of life. They are mysterious and fascinating.
Freud helps shed some light into their mystery. Thanks to Freud we know understand that dreams are actually windows into our minds. Bibliography:
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