Sigmund Freud is a well-known Austrian psychiatrist, psychologist and neurologist. He became the founder of the psychoanalytic school, which studied the therapeutic direction in psychology. According to the postulating theory of the school, the emergence of neurotic disorders of the individual is associated with a multi-complex relationship between conscious and unconscious processes.
In the early nineties of the last century, Sigmund Freud took up the study of dreams. Freud's dreams are desires that have been fulfilled. This position of the theory of dreams, he brought out in 1895, in a small Viennese restaurant. The book "Interpretation of Dreams by Freud" was, as he believed, the border of his work. The theory of dreams represents a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis, because it was thanks to it that psychoanalysis was able to move to depth psychology. Freud's dreams occupied a dominant place in the entire collection of psychoanalytic theories.
In 1900, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams was first published. By the time the first edition was published, the theory of dreams was almost completely formulated and completed. In subsequent editions, Freud only made corrections and adjustments. On the fourth and subsequent editions, Sigmund Freud worked together with his best student - Otto Rank, who compiled notes for publications, bibliography, and to the sixth chapter of the book "Interpretations of Dreams According to Freud," he even attached several articles of personal writing. Freud touches upon the problem of dreams repeatedly, returning to it periodically. Five Lectures on the History of Psychoanalysis, The Psychology of Sleep, and An Introduction to Psychoanalysis - these simplified, popular expositions of Sigmund Freud's views perfectly conveyed general concepts and approaches to the study of dreams.
In the last years of his life, Freud again returned to the study of dreams. The work "Revision of the theory of dreams" is a collection of additional information about dreams and makes it clear what the author considered the main in his theory, and what was secondary to him. "Dreaming and the Occult" is quite distantly related to the problems of sleep, but it gives a clear idea of the attitude of Sigmund Freud to fortune telling, prophecy and astrology.
The interpretation of dreams according to Freud consists in the analysis of individual elements, words and images of a dream. The dreamer should focus on what comes to his mind when he thinks about a particular element of the dream. A person should be honest with himself, communicate everything, even the most ridiculous thoughts that arise in his head and relate to sleep. This method can be explained by the fact that psychological processes are deterministic, that is, if a certain object in a person causes some random associations, they cannot be random. According to Freud, the biological basis of sleep is rest, when the human body, tired during the day, relaxes. The psychological basis of sleep is the loss of interest in everything that happens in the outside world. Dreaming according to Freud is an opportunity to distance yourself from everything earthly.
Freud's interpretation of dreams has several main features:
- The number of objects that are symbolically depicted in dreams is quite small.
- Most of the symbols depicted in dreams are sexual in nature.
- Every dream contains a misunderstood moment.
According to the method of free association, which Sigmund Freud chose for the study of dreams, all human dreams are subject to the principle of pleasure. This is due to the fact that people, first of all, strive to get pleasure from life, while displeasure causes only negative, negative emotions. Dreams according to Freud can be interpreted in terms of several types of attraction, the most fundamental of which is sexual. Eros (sexual attraction) includes not only the sexual attraction that is familiar to us in this understanding, but also the desire to live and continue our race. Another type of attraction according to Freud is the death drive, which is explained by the desire of living organisms to return to a lifeless state, no matter how ridiculous it sounds to any sane person. In his works, Sigmund Freud notesthat the moment of the appearance of a child's sexual attraction coincides with his birth, despite the fact that he is aware of his gender only in adolescence.
Having studied in detail the postulates of Freud, one can come to the conclusion that he closely links dreams and emotions experienced in reality. Interpreting dreams according to Freud is a completely individual process, because each person experiences unique, inimitable sensations and emotions. Sigmund was convinced that all associations that did not receive worthy attention in the waking state, a person sees in a dream in the form of any symbols and images. Dreams according to Freud carry a certain semantic load, which is often quite difficult to analyze. In order to decipher his dream, a person must have a developed imagination and be able to think creatively.
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The stage of symbolizing dreams is considered the most important and most difficult. According to Freud, a person fulfills his desires during sleep, sexual dreams are no exception. For example, if in a dream you see yourself eating a juicy, delicious pineapple, this means that you love to take full pleasure from sex, but ignore the wishes of your partner.
Freud divided all dreams-desires into several types. The first type includes desires that are of an infantile nature, that is, this is a desire of an unmasked type (pronounced sexual scenes). Such dreams are most often seen by adolescents. He referred to the second type of desires in a disguised form, and to the third - poorly disguised desires that a person tries to displace at a subconscious level. Repressed wish-dreams include nightmares. For example, if a young girl dreams of being attacked by a maniac killer, this may mean that her desire to start having sex life as soon as possible was suppressed by her parents, and the desire was transformed into a dream.
The dream book of Sigmund Freud is one of the most interesting and original dream books in the world today. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that each person can interpret their dream by carefully analyzing their problems, secret desires and phobias.