Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Freud: Psychoanalysis © The McGraw−Hill^57
Companies, 2009
iety dreams: the embarrassment dream of nakedness, dreams of the death of a
beloved person, and dreams of failing an examination.
In the embarrassment dream of nakedness, the dreamer feels shame or embar-
rassment at being naked or improperly dressed in the presence of strangers. The
spectators usually appear quite indifferent, although the dreamer is very much em-
barrassed. The origin of this dream is the early childhood experience of being naked
in the presence of adults. In the original experience, the child feels no embarrass-
ment but the adults often register disapproval. Freud believed that wish fulfillment is
served in two ways by this dream. First, the indifference of the spectators fulfills the
infantile wish that the witnessing adults refrain from scolding. Second, the fact of
nakedness fulfills the wish to exhibit oneself, a desire usually repressed in adults but
present in young children.
Dreams of the death of a beloved person also originate in childhood and are
wish fulfillments. If a person dreams of the death of a younger person, the uncon-
scious may be expressing the wish for the destruction of a younger brother or sister
who was a hated rival during the infantile period. When the deceased is an older per-
son, the dreamer is fulfilling the Oedipal wish for the death of a parent. If the
dreamer feels anxiety and sorrow during the dream, it is because the affect has been
reversed. Dreams of the death of a parent are typical in adults, but they do not mean
that the dreamer has a present wish for the death of that parent. These dreams were
interpreted by Freud as meaning that, as a child, the dreamer longed for the death of
the parent, but the wish was too threatening to find its way into consciousness. Even
during adulthood the death wish ordinarily does not appear in dreams unless the af-
fect has been changed to sorrow.
A third typical anxiety dream is failing an examination in school. According
to Freud (1900/1953), the dreamer always dreams of failing an examination that has
already been successfully passed, never one that was failed. These dreams usually
occur when the dreamer is anticipating a difficult task. By dreaming of failing an ex-
amination already passed, the ego can reason, “I passed the earlier test that I was
worried about. Now I’m worried about another task, but I’ll pass it too. Therefore, I
need not be anxious over tomorrow’s test.” The wish to be free from worry over a dif-
ficult task is thus fulfilled.
With each of these three typical dreams, Freud had to search for the wish be-
hind the manifest level of the dream. Finding the wish fulfillment required great cre-
ativity. For example, one clever woman told Freud that she had dreamed that her
mother-in-law was coming for a visit. In her waking life, she despised her mother-
in-law and dreaded spending any amount of time with her. To challenge Freud’s no-
tion that dreams are wish fulfillments, she asked him, “Where was the wish?”
Freud’s (1900/1953) explanation was that this woman was aware of Freud’s belief
that a wish lies behind every nontraumatic dream. Thus, by dreaming of spending
time with a hated mother-in-law, the woman fulfilled her wish to spite Freud and to
disprove his wish fulfillment hypothesis!
In summary, Freud believed that dreams are motivated by wish fulfillments.
The latent content of dreams is formed in the unconscious and usually goes back to
childhood experiences, whereas the manifest content often stems from experiences
of the previous day. The interpretation of dreams serves as the “royal road” to knowl-
edge of the unconscious, but dreams should not be interpreted without the dreamer’s
Chapter 2 Freud: Psychoanalysis 51