The superego operates on the morality principle and motivates us to behave in a socially responsible and acceptable manner. The basic dilemma of all human existence is that each element of the psychic apparatus makes demands upon us that are incompatible with the other two. Inner conflict is inevitable.
For example, the superego can make a person feel guilty if rules are not followed. When there is a conflict between the goals of the id and superego, the ego must act as a referee and mediate this conflict. The ego can deploy various defense mechanisms Freud, , to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed by anxiety. In many cases, the result was some form of neurotic illness. Freud sought to understand the nature and variety of these illnesses by retracing the sexual history of his patients.
This was not primarily an investigation of sexual experiences as such. Freud believed that children are born with a libido — a sexual pleasure urge. To be psychologically healthy, we must successfully complete each stage. This particular theory shows how adult personality is determined by childhood experiences.
Freud considered dreams to be the royal road to the unconscious as it is in dreams that the ego's defenses are lowered so that some of the repressed material comes through to awareness, albeit in distorted form. Dreams perform important functions for the unconscious mind and serve as valuable clues to how the unconscious mind operates.
On 24 July , Freud had his own dream that was to form the basis of his theory. He had been worried about a patient, Irma, who was not doing as well in treatment as he had hoped. Freud, in fact, blamed himself for this, and was feeling guilty. Freud interpreted this dream as wish-fulfillment. He had wished that Irma's poor condition was not his fault and the dream had fulfilled this wish by informing him that another doctor was at fault.
Based on this dream, Freud went on to propose that a major function of dreams was the fulfillment of wishes. Freud distinguished between the manifest content of a dream what the dreamer remembers and the latent content, the symbolic meaning of the dream i. The manifest content is often based on the events of the day. The process whereby the underlying wish is translated into the manifest content is called dreamwork. The purpose of dreamwork is to transform the forbidden wish into a non-threatening form, thus reducing anxiety and allowing us to continue sleeping.
Dreamwork involves the process of condensation, displacement, and secondary elaboration. For example, a dream about a man may be a dream about both one's father and one's lover.
A dream about a house might be the condensation of worries about security as well as worries about one's appearance to the rest of the world. Displacement takes place when we transform the person or object we are really concerned about to someone else.
Freud interpreted this as representing his wish to kill his sister-in-law. If the patient would have really dreamed of killing his sister-in-law, he would have felt guilty. The unconscious mind transformed her into a dog to protect him. Secondary elaboration occurs when the unconscious mind strings together wish-fulfilling images in a logical order of events, further obscuring the latent content. According to Freud, this is why the manifest content of dreams can be in the form of believable events.
Some of these were sexual in nature, including poles, guns, and swords representing the penis and horse riding and dancing representing sexual intercourse. However, Freud was cautious about symbols and stated that general symbols are more personal rather than universal.
In an amusing example of the limitations of universal symbols, one of Freud's patients, after dreaming about holding a wriggling fish, said to him 'that's a Freudian symbol - it must be a penis! Freud explored further, and it turned out that the woman's mother, who was a passionate astrologer and a Pisces, was on the patient's mind because she disapproved of her daughter being in analysis.
It seems more plausible, as Freud suggested, that the fish represented the patient's mother rather than a penis! Freud attracted many followers, who formed a famous group in called the "Psychological Wednesday Society. At the beginning of , the committee had 22 members and renamed themselves the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
Is Freudian psychology supported by evidence? A system's state is generally determined based on many variables that describe its different aspects. Under certain conditions, the interactions between different components will cause the system to reach a critical state at which most of these variables vanish quickly.
To put it another way, few variables survive, but those that do reflect the state of this system. These variables i. The formation of order parameters is therefore the key channel through which self-organization can successfully continue see Haken, ; Fingelkurts et al.
Emotion is a pivotal factor during sleep. Several investigations have revealed that dreams are often accompanied by emotions, especially negative ones e.
Many researchers have identified a close relationship between dreams and emotions e. For instance, Reiser noted that images serving as nodal points in an individual's memory network are connected by similar types of affect, indicating that affect plays an essential role in memory organization.
Reiser further conjectured that strong affect during sleep evokes existing images that are loaded with similar affect and hence activate relevant earlier experiences to form a dream. Hartmann b stated that combinations of dream elements are not random but rather guided by emotion; accordingly, dreams are helpful for building and rebuilding an individual's emotional memory system.
In brief, emotions likely play the role of order parameters: they control and guide combinations of dream elements. Emotions can therefore serve as a springboard in comprehending dreams.
For instance, perhaps traumatic experiences constitute a core theme of a patient's dreams, suggesting an avenue for further treatment. The self-organization theory of dreaming offers a framework distinct from psychoanalytic theories to explain how dreams are generated and operate.
This theory proposes that dreams are a byproduct of the dreamer's physical and mental state during sleep, distinguishes between manifest and latent dream, and points out that the dream-work proposed by Freud is actually a result of information processing and self-organization in the sleeping brain. However, this theory allows the therapist to derive important information e. Therefore, dream analysis may still prove useful in the therapeutic process.
WZ is responsible for the writing of this paper. BG is in charge of the idea. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
We would like to express our thanks to the reviewer for his valuable comments. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Front Psychol. Published online Aug Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer.
Reviewed by: Caroline L. This article was submitted to Psychoanalysis and Neuropsychoanalysis, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Received Jun 11; Accepted Aug 6. Keywords: dream interpretation, self-organization, memory consolidation, dream-work, order parameter. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s and the copyright owner s are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. What are the materials of a dream? How do the materials of a dream work together? Conclusion The self-organization theory of dreaming offers a framework distinct from psychoanalytic theories to explain how dreams are generated and operate. Author contributions WZ is responsible for the writing of this paper.
Conflict of interest statement The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
References Blagrove M. System consolidation of memory during sleep. Dream imagery as a result of emotions matching with images. Cognitive and emotional processes during dreaming: a neuroimaging view.
Consciousness as a phenomenon in the operational architectonics of brain organization: criticality and self-organization considerations. Chaos Solitons Fract.
London: Hogarth Press;. The interpretation of dreams: a classic revisited. Dialogues 9 , — B 9 , — Meteorite or gemstone? Freud studied biology and medicine at the University of Vienna and specialized in clinical neurology. At that time Charcot was working on functional nervous diseases, mainly hysteria, and applied hypnotic treatments. During Freud returned to Vienna and worked for the first time with Breuer, a Viennese physician who worked in the same field as Charcot.
It was between and that Sigmund Freud developed the method and basic definitions of Psychoanalysis , and then applied his theories to the general interpretation of personality. In , the so-called Freudian theories reached North America, where the American Psychoanalytic Association was created. Before his death, Freud received the appointment of foreign member of the Royal Society of London. For many, this is the book that determined the beginning of psychoanalysis.
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud puts forward the theory that our dreams may be the way in which our non-conscious thoughts emerge to our consciousness, through messages emitted with the use of symbols. In this case dreams would be the manifestation of repressed desires that come to light when we sleep.
In this work Freud presented a mechanism to be able to interpret the images and contents. It was also in this work that the concept of the «ego» appears for the first time.
Freudian theory deals with the origin of the symptoms of serious mental pathologies and, at the same time, tries to explain the essential psychological mechanisms behind the actions of human beings in general. In Psychopathology of Everyday Life , Freud explains how, in his opinion, the functioning of our unconscious generates the appearance of small inconsistencies in our behavior: lapses, confused words and, in general, what the psychoanalyst called failed acts.
He also explains the possible failures in the functioning of the human psyche that, from his perspective, could be behind these phenomena. This group of three essays is very interesting and useful to comprehensively understand the legacy of the creator of psychoanalysis.
Freud used the theme of sexuality as the center of all psychological gear, which caused serious differences with several of his colleagues. It can be regarded as his interpretation of the novel Gradiva by the German writer Wilhelm Jensen, which the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung recommended to Freud. As the days go by, his thoughts are invaded by the image of this woman, dreaming of her and becoming obsessed with the idea of meeting her.
0コメント