Freud - "the interpretation of dreams
is the royal road to a knowledge of the
unconscious activities of the mind"
Freud proposed that dreams
have meanings that manifest
themselves through symbols in
the content of the dream
saw dreams as being the
channel for psychic/sexual
energy which he called libido
energy is like an
electrical current;
could build up and
try to find release
if not released in a satisfying way, it
could result in physical or mental pain
aspects of
dreams
Anotações:
Wish fulfilment - a dream may be seen as an expression of unconscious wishes; if the desire for something is socially / personally prohibited, it may present itself in a dream,
Dreamwork - dreams often symbolically represent something that is prohibited,
Manifest content - what can be remember and reported,
Latent content - hidden part of the dream; often found in symbols,
Condensation - 2 or more ideas may be represented by one object, word or situation,
Displacement - in the dream, a person / object is replaced with another,
Representation - thoughts are changed into images,
theory is
difficult to
falsify
theory is based on culturally /
historically biased sample of neurotic
Viennese women; can't generalise
Cartwright's
problem solving
theory
Cartwright - dreams
reflect our major
emotional concerns
dreams are the body's way of reviewing,
revising, rehearsing, and repairing
present and past experiences
dreams provide
coping strategies for
emotional problems
Barrett (1993) studied students
who were instructed to solve a
problem; a panel of judges found
50% of students dreamt a solution
however, it's only 50%
Neurobiological theories
Activation
synthesis
sleep is prompted by
natural cycles of activity in
the brain; REM and NREM
during sleep, body cycles between
NREM and REM; dreams occur in
REM; REM is a mixture of brain states
of excitement and muscular immobility
activiation
Hobson & McCarley (1977) - during
REM sleep, the brainstem generates
random signals that are indistinguishable
from external stimuli
synthesis
bizzare nature of
dreams is due to the
mixing of the electrical
signals from the brain
stem with stored
images in memory
Hobson (1988) supports activation
synthesis; he found that PP's' REM
sleep and dreaming both increased
when they were infected with drugs
that increased acetylcholine
Reverse
learning
Critch & Mitchison (1983) -
reverse learning model relates
to the brain switching off during
the dreaming process
reverse learning model helps us
dream in order to forget; large amounts
of info received during the day makes
the cortex unable to function without
'parasitic' thoughts starting to develop
unwanted connections in the
cortical networks during REM sleep
are destroyed by impulses
parasitic thoughts are represented by
the content of the dreams as they are
then erased from memory