World of Dreams

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World of Dreams
2
You Do Dream!

• 80-100 of subjects awoken during REM reported
  vivid dreams.

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Dream Theories

1. Freuds Theory of Dream Interpretation
2. Extensions of Waking Life
3. Activation-Synthesis Theory
4. Carl Jung

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Early Dream Theories

• Prior to 1900 Dreams were considered meaningless
  images.

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Freud

• 1900 The Interpretation of Dreams
• Dreams way to achieve wish fulfillment
• Free Association

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Freuds Theory

• Censor protects us from realizing unconscious
  desires (sex or aggression)
• Censor transforms thoughts into harmless dream
  symbols
• Will not disturb sleep or conscious thoughts
• Dreams are meaningful
• Dreams can be interpreted

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Freud Says

• Two types of dream content
• Manifest What you remember about a dream.
• Latent what the dream was actually about.
• Displacement emotional feelings displaced from
  one object to another.
• Symbols Latent content is converted in to
  symbols
• Male long objects (sticks, bats, pencil,
  umbrellas)
• Female Hollow things (cave, jar, bucket)

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Male or Female
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What Do They Mean?

• Psychoanalyst would decode symbols to release a
  patients unconscious desires.

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Jungs Theory

• Neo-Freudian
• Personal Dreams
• Collective Dreams
• Collective Unconscious shared human experience
• Relies on traditional human conflicts
• Archetypes emotionally charged images with
  universal meaning
• Anima v. animus female v. male struggle.
• Foundation of multiple personalities.

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Extensions of Waking Life

• Rosalind Cartwright (Cognitive Problem Solving)
  Dreams reflect waking thoughts, fears, emotions,
  and problems.

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Like Chapters in a book..

• Sleep lab dreams flow like chapters in a book
  focused on current concerns and feelings.

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Activation-Synthesis Theory

• Random/meaningless activity of nerve cells
• Biological
• Nerve impulses are sent to brain cortex which
  then tries to make sense of them
• RESULT random feelings, images, scenes

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Brain Scans

• During REM
• Pre-frontal cortex (off) planning and reasoning
• Limbic system (on) emotions
• Visual Cortex (on) visual experience
• RESULT dreams are emotional and visual but
  bizarre and disorganized.