Freud and Dreams

Here are a few facts about Freudian Dream Therapy, feel free to add your own

• Insistence on the dreams being mainly of a sexual nature.

• Psychoanalysis.

• Dreams are wish fulfilment usually related to sexual desire.

• A Freudian slip-when you say one thing but mean another.

• Dreams are found in the event of the day.

• Children dreams are straightforward.

• A dream is a compromise which ensures that sleep is not interrupted 'a disguised fulfilment of repressed wishes'.

• Interpretation a dream is like putting together a jigsaw, once one is able to put some of the pieces together, an inkling of the overall picture emerges which helps you piece the rest of the puzzle together.

• "The royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious".

• In order to interpret a dream, one has to reason backwards in a process of Interpretation known as 'Free Association'.

• He believed that dreams hold important clues to the way our minds work, which could lead to more effective ways of treating mental illness.

• His theory is Biological in origin but Psychological in Practice.

• In a nutshell, Freud showed how dreams reflect basic instincts that are common to humans, but repressed in polite society.

• Tabooed thoughts and desires cause anxiety, phobias and even mental illnesses.

• Dreams provide a relief to this internal conflict by discharging desires into cloak form that is acceptable to the conscious mind.

• Freud did not suggest that all dreams are sexual in nature. Other conflicts are aggression and selfish drives.

• A lot of dreams are composed of day residue or fragments of experiences we remember from the last few days.

• Dreams have a role in learning.

• Freud believes that nightmares are really wishes. He believed that suffering in the dream is fulfilling that secret desire for humiliation and pain.