World of Dreams

80-100% of subjects awoken

during REM reported vivid

dreams.

You Do Dream!

Dream Theories

1. Freud’s Theory of Dream Interpretation

2. Extensions of Waking Life

3. Activation-Synthesis Theory

4. Carl Jung

Early Dream Theories

• Prior to 1900 Dreams were considered meaningless images.

Freud• 1900 The Interpretation of Dreams • Dreams: way to achieve wish fulfillment• Free Association

Freud’s Theory

• Censor protects us from realizing unconscious desires (sex or aggression)

• Censor transforms thoughts into harmless dream symbols – Will not disturb sleep or

conscious thoughts

• Dreams are meaningful • Dreams can be interpreted

Freud Says…• Two types of dream content:

– Manifest: What you remember about a dream.

– Latent: what the dream was actually about.

• Displacement: emotional feelings displaced from one object to another.

• Symbols: Latent content is converted in to symbols– Male = long objects (sticks, bats, pencil, umbrellas)

– Female = Hollow things (cave, jar, bucket)

Male or Female

What Do They Mean?

• Psychoanalyst would decode symbols to release a patient’s unconscious desires.

Jung’s Theory• Neo-Freudian

– Personal Dreams– Collective Dreams

• Collective Unconscious – shared human experience

• Relies on “traditional” human conflicts:– Archetypes – emotionally

charged images with universal meaning

– Anima v. animus – female v. male struggle.

– Foundation of multiple personalities.

Extensions of Waking Life

Rosalind Cartwright (Cognitive Problem Solving): Dreams reflect waking thoughts, fears,

emotions, and problems.

Like Chapters in a book..

Sleep lab dreams flow like chapters in a book focused

on current concerns and feelings.

Activation-Synthesis Theory

Random/meaningless activity of nerve cells– Biological

– Nerve impulses are sent to brain cortex which then tries to make sense of them

RESULT: random feelings, images, scenes…

Brain Scans

• During REM: – Pre-frontal cortex (off) {planning and

reasoning}

– Limbic system (on) {emotions}

– Visual Cortex (on) {visual experience}

RESULT: dreams are emotional and visual but bizarre and disorganized.