Second year student of the Faculty of Accounting and Economics,

Ovsova Ekaterina

PhD in Philosophy, Petrova Yulia Andreevna

Rostov State University of Economics (RIPE)

Principles of defining dreams in Psychology.

Multiple researches on the topic «dreams» took a significant place in science for the last thousand years. Such sciences as: psychology, philosophy, medicine, cognitive anthropology, linguistics, sociology were interested in this phenomenon. During this period of time, different ideologies, scientific paradigms and approaches were offered. According to psychology, the elements of dreams are closely related to the settings. It has been proved that the presence of colors in our dreams is the result of appearance of colored media. Psychologists believe that people of the black and white media era used to have black and white dreams more often than colored ones. In the XX century the foundation of modern approach to a subjectivity problem on the topic «dreams» in anthropology and linguists brought new theories to this research. A great contribution to this investigation was based on the book «Interpretation of Dreams» (1899) written by S. Freud. [1]

Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, a method through which an analyst «unpacks» unconscious conflicts, based on free associations, dreams and fantasies of the patient. His theories on child’s sexuality, libido and ego, among other topics, were some of the most influential academic concepts of the XXth century.

In his book «Interpretation of Dreams», Sigmund Freud introduced the theory of «unconscious» relatively to the interpretation of dream, and also at first discussed phenomenon, which later became the theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud enlarged the content of his book at least eight times and, in the third edition, added an extensive section which described dream symbolism very literally. [2]

Freud began his book from the first chapter titled «The Scientific Literature on the Problems of the Dream» by reviewing different scientific views on the interpretation of dreams, which he found interesting but not adequate. Then he made an argument by describing a number of dreams which illustrated his theory. Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams suggested, that dreams - is a presentation of instinctive thoughts, desires and motivations. According to Freud’s psychoanalytical view, people are flown by aggressive instincts that are repressed from conscious realizations. While these thoughts are not consciously expressed, Freud suggested that they find their way into our realization of dreams. He consolidated that bad dreams allow the brain to gain control over the feelings emerging from distressful experiences. He also described two different important components of dreams: «obvious content» and «latent content». The obvious content is made up of the actual thoughts, images and content contained in dreams. All the same time the latent content is introduced by the hidden psychological meaning of our dreams. The hidden dream - is a part of day impressions (the perceived images, the considered thoughts, experiences), which people experience during the day time, in the waking state, and completely realize what has happened with them (conscious), or actually don’t realize, but can remember them freely (preconscious). Another main part of our hidden dreams is situated in unconscious part of our brain - in that sphere of mentality where unconscious desires live. The content of unconscious, unlike the content of preconscious, a person can't realize according to his wish. Freud’s theory of the interpretation of dreams gave the first step in the study of this problem and still remains popular and very interesting nowadays. [3]

«Dreams…are not meaningless…they are completely valid psychological phenomenon, the performance of wishes… constructed through highly complicated intellectual activity» Sigmund Freud.

Freud laid the foundation of the theory, which fathered a great number of other researches in this sphere: analytical psychology of K.G. Jung, individual psychology of A. Adler, Freydo-Marxism of E. Fromm. [1]

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist suggested that dreams compensate for one-sided feelings, which transfer into conscious. He considered that the dream should be understood not simply as the difficult riddle invented unconscious which should be deciphered for disclosure of the causal factors standing behind it. Dreams can't serve as lie detectors, which would open dishonesty of conscious installation. Dreams are unconscious, they have their own language. Being representations of unconscious, the images in dreams are self-sufficient and have their own logic. Jung believed that dreams may contain important messages, philosophical ideas, illusions, wild ideas, memory, plans, irrational experience and even telepathic enlightenments. Another interesting view of interpretation of dreams was enlightened by Ferenczi, a Hungarian psychoanalyst. «A dream expresses something that cannot be expressed directly». Other theories suggest that dreams involve one's repressed emotions that are fantasized during our sleep. Hartmann believes that dreams give a person an opportunity to organize thoughts. Griffin, in his research has proposed the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming, according to which dreaming completes patterns of emotional expectations. [4]

In the conclusion, we would like to point out that Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung made a great contribution in studying of psychology of dreams. In everyday life we allocate significant value for psychological sense of dreams, than for biological. Under activity of dreams we consider processes which transform unrealized experiences of the person and dream during wakefulness to a dream where all experience and imaginations are implemented. The dream doesn’t arise without reasons in our life, its presence is connected with any problems of a person. Also we share the point of view of analytical psychology of Jung, that unconscious in dreams shows us the conceptions expressed by metaphorical language, the main purpose of which is to restore the broken mental balance.

Literature

1. Львов, Александр Валерьевич «Диссертация на тему: Феномен сновидения в философской антропологии», 2007.

2. http://ezoterik.org/sonnik_Fryeida/sonnik_Fryeida.php

3. Фрейд З. Введение в психоанализ: Лекции. М.: Наука, 1991. 456 с.

4. Jung, C.G. (1902) The associations of normal subjects. In: Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 3–99.