Dream Interpretation Research Paper

Dream interpretation is a clinical process that has become increasingly popular to decipher the meanings of dreams. Many believe that your dreams reflect on your personality, and can have deep meaning in relations to one’s past. Dream interpretation has been deeply studied by one of psychology’s most famous theorists, Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that all thoughts and actions are propelled through one’s unconscious self to some extent. Dreams are one of the world’s greatest mysteries, and attempting to understand one’s dreams and relate them to personality can be extremely difficult to comprehend. They can be strange and terrifying which could lead to some people believing that they have something to do with past experiences. It is almost

But is dream interpretation as accurate as therapists claim it is, or are dreams not quite as relatable to our personalities and past experiences as we think they are? Mazzoni, Lombardo, Malvagia, and Loftus (1999) conducted a very interesting study about dream interpretation’s actual effect in the practice of psychotherapy. This study consisted of many participants who attended therapy sessions to find out if their recent dreams were related to some sort of traumatic childhood experience that occurred before the age of 3 years. A dream intervention took place where many participants became sure that they had a traumatic experience at that age, except not positive that the experience ever occurred. The study was conducted to find out if dream interpretation is accurate and effective in general, or if it is based off of false beliefs. The goal was to discover the true effects of dream interpretation, and to see if it produced incorrect interpretation of the patient’s actual life history and experiences. The theorists strongly believed that dream interpretation leads patients to have false beliefs and memories. The experiment started with 128 undergraduate students from the University of Florence, which was known as the Florence False

Freud strongly believed that dreams were related to the unconscious wishes and experience of the person. The chapter is dedicated to Freud’s studies and beliefs, particularly his belief that the dream itself produces a deeper emotional meaning that most people do not recognize. This could mean that repressed experiences that were forgotten, appear in one’s dreams without them being fully aware of the significance. This suggests that while dreaming, people can understand that the unconscious mind can portray past experiences and personality traits that one wouldn’t be able to see while awake. Freud’s psychoanalytic theories (which include dream interpretation) had a major effect in psychotherapy training in the mid 1900’s. He believed that the unconscious self can be just as powerful (or perhaps more powerful) than the conscious self. The idea of “repression” comes into play here because the participants in the research study began to believe that traumatic experiences were erased from their consciousness. Freud had a strong belief that repression can be overcome and conquered through therapy. We may never know if dream interpretation can accurately decipher repressed