Reading Analysis: Dreams

When we sleep, we see dreams. Someone believes in them being predictions of things to come, so they write them down and try to find an explanation for them. Other people consider this practice to meaningless. There are some people who say that they never see dreams, but this is not true from a scientific standpoint. Such people simply do not remember them. Thus, they are protected from everything incomprehensible and refer to dreams as nonsense. People simply do not understand the language of dreams, do not discern their symbols, and do not want to acknowledge their problems, because they strive tp avoid admitting to their shortcomings. Modern psychoanalysts say that people who do not remember dreams cannot express their feelings with the help of words. Sigmund Freud was the first to engage in a scientific analysis of dreams and gave them a psychological explanation. The scholar endowed them with a protective function, which was considered important to mental health. According to Freud, dreams are encrypted unconscious trains of thoughts or suppressed desired that appear in the form of symbols and metaphors.

The protection of sleep is one of the functions of dreams. Indeed, a dream is a compromise between the need for sleep and the longing to break it with unconscious desires. Thus they are hallucinatory execution of cravings, the function of which is to protect sleep. To understand the nature of dreams that arise during a state of sleep, one should first of all understand the meaning of the dream itself, as well as its purpose. The biological meaning of sleep is rest; a tired body relaxes after a day of work. The psychological meaning of sleep lies in the loss of interest in the external world. There is an unconscious hidden dream, which is manifested in the mind in the form of a clear dream. The content of a persons unconscious is repressed desires.

It is interesting that, according to Freud, all mental processes of a person obey the principle of satisfaction. The person initially seeks to get pleasure, and dissatisfaction causes negative emotions. However, there are several types of desires. For instance, Freuds ideas referring to the sexual attraction are considered strange by modern researchers. Moreover, the set of longings as defined by the psychologist included only the sexual inclinations, but the desire for life and to continue the genus. However, there is another type of attraction that is considered abnormal from the position of a prudent person; it is the desire to die. If the purpose of sexual desire is continuation of life, then the desire to die is founded on the task of all living organisms to return to the inanimate state. Its purpose, in other words, is to restore the former state of matter. I have not noticed such a connection between my desires and dreams before, but after analyzing Freuds ideas I discovered a lot of interesting things that the psychologist had described.

Freud studied human psychology and paid considerable attention to dreams. I share the idea that our dreams are first and foremost a reflection of human desires in real life. Dreams depend on experience. In addition, it should be noted that the role of stimuli affects both the body and mental processes of a sleeping person. Dreams have different functions, which include psychical, biological, etc. I believe that a dream is a special mental activity that manifests itself in the field of memory. Doctors tend to believe that dreams are a mental manifestation, the causative agents of which are carnal stimuli. They can occur in the external environment as well as directly in the person itself. From this position, I can explain the dream as the incoherent work of individual organs or groups of brain cells, which are in the state of sleep.

I tend to look for some symbolic meaning in dreams, just as the majority of people do, believing that it will help predict the future and understand the problems. A similar view of things, of course, is shrouded in superstition, but there is truth in such perception from a scientific point of view. Long before Freud, some people thought that dreams were a manifestation of violations of the human psyche, but in reality every normal person sees dreams. Few people said that sometimes dreams are erotic; if normal dreams are deviations, then dreams of sexual content are an even more extreme form of the process. Freud was the first who spoke about the normal nature of dreams. All dreams have certain meaning, and a person should analyze them to identify it. Interpretation of a dream for each patient should be individual, because people feel different emotions and feelings; each of them has different ideas about life, so the dreams must be different. Therefore, it is first necessary to establish which associations a dreamer has.

After reading Freuds research, I am convinced that in a state of wakefulness a person does not pay attention to any associations and outsiders thoughts; they all belong to the field of subconsciousness. In a dream, these emotions come to life and appear in the form of obscure images and symbols. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand what a particular image means and somehow connect it to reality. One needs a lot of imagination to creatively comprehend a particular dream. The information that the brain receives is processed in a specific way. First, the concentration of different images takes place, then they are distorted, and finally symbols are formed. Freud called the obtained dream image condensed. Sometimes, it is difficult to discover the connection between the image and the meaning of the dream. For example, lightning symbolizes a passionate romance, which can be a high point of any relationship. It seems that there is no connection between these concepts. However, having analyzed the dream, it is possible to note that lightning strikes suddenly and it is impossible to understand where it falls. Similarly, a person does not know how deep is their passion and they do not know when it will end. Additionally, it is not surprising that a person who sees wax in their dreams has a sexual partner. One can make anything with wax. It is easy to unravel the dream, because it is enough to analyze ones own attitude to life and try to associate all events with the images that one has witnessed.

The stage of the dream symbolizing is likewise quite interesting. Freud believed that dreams allow the realization of any desires, including sexual ones. It surprised me that those desires appear very brightly and emotionally. For example, you might dream that you are eating a delicious pineapple. This means that you prefer to enjoy sex, but rarely bring pleasure to a partner. And you will feel the taste of pineapple very clearly as if you are eating it in reality.

The task of dreams is to translate the hidden meaning into an explicit one. Interpretation, on the contrary, is an attempt to get to the hidden meaning of dreams. In order to correctly interpret a dream, one needs to know the basic principles of their work. Among the various laws of the work of dreams, Freud highlights three main ones: thickening/condensation, shifting dreams, and transforming thoughts into visual images. Condensation means that an apparent dream contains less information than a hidden one, because it is the abbreviated translation of the latter. Displacement is the result of the work of censorship, replacing the true meaning of dreaming with symbols. Finally, the third result of the work of dreams is the regressive transformation of thought into visual images. Such explanation of the work of dreams is understandable for me and helps me to analyze my own dreams better, make the right conclusions, and solve problematic situations

The main method of studying dreams is the method of free association. When analyzing dreams, Freud considered it necessary to adhere to three basic rules that I would like to describe. One should not pay attention to the external meaning of the dream, regardless of whether it is clear to the patient or it seems absurd, because it still in no way corresponds to the desired unconscious. The dream should be divided into elements, each of which is studied separately. At the same time, the patient is asked to explain every element of the dream by saying the first words that come to mind. Thus, in the analysis of dreams, I should be patient and wait until hidden, originally unconscious thoughts and desired will arise. The key to deciphering the hidden meaning of dreams is deeply rooted in mythology, anthropology, linguistics, and established translations, which is to some extent unified and suitable for the decoding of any dreams among different people.

In conclusion, people’s dreams prove the correctness of psychoanalysis. In my opinion, dreams are a second life of a person, which is completely impossible to decipher, no matter what theories we use. And those dreams that embody reality, often called prophetic dreams, are only a remnant of the time during which a person lives. It is possible to say that people act in two lives represented by day and night, which should not overlap. It is similar to the same pictures in two different scenes that create one movie.

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