154 CHAPTER 4
Dreams
“To sleep, perchance to dream” is a well-known and often-quoted line from Act II of
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Shakespeare & Hubler, 1987). But how important is
dreaming? What is the purpose of dreaming?Why Do We Dream?
4.7 Compare and contrast two explanations of why people dream.
Dreams have long been a source of curiosity. People of ancient times tried to find mean-
ing in dreams. Some viewed dreams as prophecy, some as messages from the spirits. But
the real inquiry into the process of dreaming began with the publication of Freud’s The
Interpretation of Dreams (1900).
FREUD’S INVTERPRETATION: DREAMS AS WISH FULFILLMENT Sigmund Freud (1856–
1939) believed that the problems of his patients stemmed from conflicts and events that
had been buried in their unconscious minds since childhood. These early traumas were
seen as the cause of behavior problems in adulthood, in which his patients suffered from
symptoms such as a type of paralysis that had no physical basis or repetitive, ritualistic*
hand washing. One of the ways Freud devised to get at these early memories was to
examine the dreams of his patients, believing that conflicts, events, and desires of the
past would be represented in symbolic** form in the dreams. Freud believed dreams tobe a kind of wish fulfillment for his patients. (^) to Learning Objective 13.1.
The manifest content of a dream is the actual content of the dream itself. For example,
if Chad has a dream in which he is trying to climb out of a bathtub, the manifest content
of the dream is exactly that—he’s trying to climb out of a bathtub.
But, of course, Freud would no doubt find more meaning in Chad’s dream than is
at first evident. He believed that the true meaning of a dream was hidden, or latent, and
only expressed in symbols. In the dream, the water in the tub might symbolize the waters
of birth, and the tub itself might be his mother’s womb. Using a Freudian interpretation,
Chad may be dreaming about being born.
APA Goal 2
interactive
Weight Gain and Sleep?
©The New Yorker Collection 1973 Dana Fradon
from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
*ritualistic: referring to an action done in a particular manner each time it is repeated, accord-
ing to some specific pattern.
**symbolic: having the quality of representing something other than itself.