The dream interpretation it’s something psychologists have trouble agreeing on. Many believe that dreams point to unconscious desires. While others advocate a cognitive approach in which dreams reflect different parts of our waking life.
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The truth is that dreams are vital for living beings, according to some research. Interrupting the dreaming process could cause serious damage to our health and could even endanger our lives. Do you want to know what is the dream interpretation according to psychology? Or, if there is some psychological explanation for what we dream? Keep reading! Next, we will tell you what the most important psychologists and psychoanalysts say about the dream interpretation.
First,whatwhat are dreams?
Dreams are a series of images, emotions, thoughts and sensations that occur when we sleep. They are involuntary and usually occur during rapid eye movement sleep, known as REM sleep. Although dreams can occur at other points in the sleep cycle, they are most vivid and memorable during this phase.
Not everyone remembers their dreams, but researchers believe that everyone has three to six dreams a night and that each dream lasts between 5 and 20 minutes. It is believed that even people who remember their dreams forget 95% of them when they wake up.
What does psychology say about dreams?
Psychologists offer many reasons why we dream. Some suggest it’s simply to erase useless memories from the day before and put important ones into long-term storage. On the other hand, many psychologists, especially those involved in therapy, argue for more than that and insist on the value of their analysis.
So while dreams can help sort through information in our brains, they can also help us consider information that we ignore when we’re awake. So maybe during the day, we focused on tasks that had nothing to do with what we dreamed about, but that night during our dreams we worked on how we felt about the information.
On the other hand, psychologists such as G. William Domhoff stated that dreams have no psychological function. However, he also said that dreams have meaning because their content is unique to the individual, and therefore analyzing an individual’s dreams can provide a very good psychological portrait of that individual.
Take a look at how to interpret dreams
What is the interpretation of dreams according to psychology?
Many psychologists and psychoanalysts have dedicated themselves to explaining the dream interpretation. Everyone has their own theory about whether what we dream has any meaning in our lives or if they are simply a reflection of our unconscious. Let’s see what three of the most important: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Calvin S Hall say about dreams and their meaning.
The interpretation of dreams according to Sigmund Freud
Freud’s perspective on dream interpretation, is still popular today. Freud believed that dreaming was a way of fulfilling wishes that reflected the unconscious of a dreamer. He also stated that the real or visible content of a dream disguises the symbolic or hidden meaning of the dream. For example, if a person dreams that he is flying, it may actually mean that he longs to be free from a situation that he considers oppressive.
Freud called the process of transforming the hidden content of a dream into visible content “dream work” and suggested that it includes several processes:
- Condensation: it is about combining several ideas or images into one. For example, a dream about an authority figure could represent parents or the boss.
- The displacement: it implies changing what really worries us into something else. For example, if an individual is considering leaving the country or buying a house, he may dream of two large animals fighting, which represents the dilemma he feels about the decision.
- Symbolization: it has to do with one object replacing another.
- The Secondary Revision: This is about rearranging the elements of a dream into an integrated whole. This takes place at the end of a dream and results in the actual content of the dream.
Freud also made some suggestions about the universal symbols that can be found in dreams. He suggested that the individual was often symbolized by a house, while parents appear as royal figures or other highly respected people. Meanwhile, water often refers to birth and embarking on a journey represents death.
However, Freud did not attach much importance to universal symbols. He said that the symbolism in dreams is often personal, and therefore the interpretation of dreams requires an understanding of the individual circumstances of the dreamer.
Carl Jung’s approach
Like Freud, Jung believed that dreams contain a hidden meaning disguised by content that is evident. However, Jung also believed that dreams symbolized a person’s desire to maintain balance in their personality, not wish fulfillment.
Jung gave more weight to the visible content of a dream than did Freud, as he felt that important symbols could be found there. Furthermore, Jung postulated that dreams were expressions of the collective unconscious. And, they could help anticipate future problems in his life.
Jung approaches the analysis of dreams in three stages. The personal context of the dreamer is considered first. Second, the cultural context of the dreamer, including her age and background. Finally, any archetypal content is evaluated in order to discover links between the dream and humanity as a whole.
Calvin S. Hall’s Approach to Dream Interpretation
Unlike Freud and Jung, Hall did not believe that dreams have any hidden meaning. Instead, he proposed a cognitive theory that dreams are simply thoughts that pop into the mind during sleep.
As a result, dreams represent our personal life through the following cognitive structures:
- Conceptions of the self or how we see ourselves. A person can dream that he becomes a successful person who loses everything. This suggests that she sees herself as strong, but is concerned that she may not be able to maintain that strength.
- Conceptions of others or how the individual sees other important individuals in his or her life.
- Conceptions of the world or what your environment looks like. For example, if the individual finds the world cold and unresponsive, his dream may take place on a desolate, snowy tundra.
- Conceptions of impulses, prohibitions and penalties or how the dreamer understands his repressed desires.
- Conceptions of problems and conflicts or own conceptions of the challenges one faces in life. For example, if someone considers his mother to be grumpy, his dream may reflect his dilemma in coping with what he perceives to be irrational demands from his mother.
Psychology offers us some explanations about the dream interpretation, some have to do with their hidden meaning, others with a more cognitive approach. Currently, dreams and their interpretation are widely used in behavioral therapies. Since, according to experts, this can help to overcome some unresolved problem or to assimilate a situation that is costing them to face.