Do dreams represent unconscious wish fulfillment?

Psychoanalytic explanations of dreams;

Do dreams represent unconscious wish fulfillment?

Using psycholoanalytic theory, Sigmund Freud viewed dreams as a guide to the unconscious.

Unconscious wish fulfillment theory

In his unconscious wish fulfillment theory, Sigmund Fraud’s proposed that dreams represent unconscious wishes that dreamers desire to see fulfilled.

Latent content of dreams

According to Freud, the ‘disguised’ meanings of dreams, hidden by more obvious subjects.

Manifest content of dreams

According to Freud, the apparent story line of dreams.

To Freud it was an important to pierce the armor of a dream’s manifest content to understand its true meaning. To do this, Freud tried to get people to discuss their dreams, association symbols in the dreams with events in the past. He also suggested that certain common symbols with universal meanings appear in dreams.

For example, to Freud, dreams in which a person is flying symbolize a wish for sexual intercourse.

Many psychologists reject Freud view that dreams typically represent unconscious wishes and those particular objects and events in a dream are symbolic. Rather, they believe that the direct, overt action of a dream is the focal point of its meaning. 

For example, a dream in which we are walking down a long hallway to take an exam for which we haven’t studied does not relate to unconscious, unacceptable wishes. 

Instead, it simply may mean that we are concerned about an impending test. Even more complex dreams can often be interpreted in terms of everyday concern and stress (PIcchioni et al., 2002; Cartwright, Agargum, & Kirkby, 2006)

       Moreover, some dreams reflect events occurring in the dreamer’s environment as he or she is sleeping. 

For example, sleeping participants in one experiment were sprayed with water while they were dreaming. Those unlucky volunteers reported more dreams involving water then did a comparison group of participants who were left to sleep undisturbed (Dement & Wolpert, 1958).

 Similarly, it is not unusual to wake up to find that the doorbell that was heard ringing in a dream is actually an alarm clock telling us it is time to get up.

       However, PET brain scan research does lend a degree of support for a wish fulfillment view.

For example, the limbic and paralimbic regions of the brain, which are associated with emotions and motivation, are particularly active during REM sleep. At the same time, the association areas of the prefrontal cortex, which control logical analysis and attention, are inactive during REM sleep.

The high activation of emotional and motivational centers of the brain during dreaming makes it more plausible that dreams may reflect unconscious wishes and instinctual needs, as Freud suggested (Braun et al., 1998; Occhionero, 2004; Wehrle et al., 2007).

(Note)

The material provided in the post is taken from the book “UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGY”   (10^th edition)

All credit goes to the author; Robert S. Feldman 

 (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)