Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud believed that he “occupies a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and marks a turning point, it was with it that analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being in depth-psychology” (Jones). Psychoanalysis is a theory or therapy to decode the puzzle of neurotic disorders like hysteria. During the therapy sessions, the patients would talk about their dreams. Freud would analyze not only the manifest content (what the dreamer remembers) of the dreams, but the disguise that caused the repressions of the idea. During our dreams, the decision making part of personality’s defenses are lowered allowing some of the repressed material to become more aware in a distorted form. He distinguished between

The brain changes the appearances of subjects so we stay relaxed and stay sleeping. There are examples of dreamwork: condensation, displacement, and secondary elaboration. Condensation is when you combine two or more ideas into one. An example of this is if the symbol is a house, so you are more worried about security and about one’s appearance to the rest of the world. Displacement is when you transform a person or object into someone or something else. Freud had a patient who was bitter about his sister-in-law and referred to her as a dog. The patient dreamt that he strangled a small white dog. Freud interpreted this as the patient wanted to kill his sister-in-law. The reason the patient’s mind dreamt her as a dog was to protect himself from feeling guilty about killing his sister-in-law. And finally secondary elaboration is when the unconscious mind strings together wish fulfilling images in logical order of events. Freud quotes “ This is why the manifest content of dreams can be in the form of believable

He oftenly put poles, guns, women’s hats, landscapes (especially bridges and wooded mountains), and swords represented a penis. Also horse riding and dancing represented sexual intercourse. In the book, The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, he quotes “In the dreams of men, often finds the necktie as a symbol for the penis; this is not because neckties hang down in front of the body, and are a characteristic of men, but also because one can select them as pleasure, a freedom which nature prohibits as regards the original of the symbol” (Freud). It One of Freud’s patients dreamt that were holding a wiggling fish. The patient jokingly mentioned that it was a freudian symbol so it must be a penis. Freud found out that the mother was an astrologer and a pieces, so the mother must of been on the patient’s mind because the mother disapproved of Freud’s analysis. Freud believed that symbols were not really universal, but very personal. He felt that you could not simply interpret the meaning of everybody’s manifest content the same because everyone has their own personal