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Unit 1a Freud’s (1900) Dream Theory
Unit 1a Freud’s (1900) Dream Theory
1a Freud’s (1900) Dream Theory
Learn about
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Freud’s dream theory
•
Manifest content, latent content
and dream work
• Our unconscious thoughts, wishes and desires
guide a lot of our behaviour
Freud said the unconscious is very important and
makes up around 90% of our thinking. So it is very
important to find out about our unconscious. The
way we investigate it is through our dreams.
Features of dreams
According to Freud:
• Our unconscious thoughts, wishes and desires
can be uncovered from dreams
Sigmund Freud believed in analysing dreams
Dream work
It seems that everyone dreams. Do you remember
your dreams? Some people don’t but most do. Do
you wonder what your dreams mean?
Freud is the name you need to remember when
talking about dreams having meaning. Sigmund
Freud was the first to say that unconscious
thoughts have power. He also said dreams could
represent hidden thoughts and desires and he
called them ‘the royal road to the unconscious’.
The power of the unconscious
Dream work is the dream – it is what is in the
dream and the processes within it.
It is the dream work that tells us what is taking
place during the dream? Freud did not say that
dreams always meant something specific. He
believed individual’s dreams had to be analysed
to find their individual unconscious thoughts and
desires.
Dream work includes condensation, displacement,
and secondary revision. These are terms you need
to understand and they are used in analysis.
An eagle swooping to
pick up a mouse, just
missing it, the mouse
running, just reaching
shelter, insects buzzing
around as if to attack
the eagle. A house
nearby, a baby crying
outside, the eagle
refusing to go away.
What did it mean?
Condensation: ‘insects buzzing around’ could be one idea hiding many, like
attacking to protect, feeling reluctant to do it, making a lot of noise, feeling
helpless…
Displacement: The focus is on the eagle, but perhaps it is the running
mouse that is the main feature…
Secondary revision: In interpretation the eagle, mouse and insects seem to
make a story but the house and baby do not ‘fit’. Maybe the dream was less
of a story and only told as a story to try to make it make sense…
Other ideas: You would need to know more about her family, to interpret
the importance of the baby perhaps…
The analyst firstly listens to a description of the
remembered dream (the manifest content). Then
analysis takes place.
• Dreams have a latent content, which is the
underlying meaning of the dream – the hidden
content of the dream
• By uncovering the unconscious meaning behind
dreams through therapy we can be freed from
their control and become more mentally healthy
Possible ideas
Analysing dreams
• Dreams have a manifest content, which is the
story of the dream that the dreamer tells
• The latent content is what is hiding behind the
manifest content
Dream work
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• The latent content can be uncovered by
analysing the manifest content
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• Unconscious desires ‘leak’ into the dream via
symbols to protect the sleeper
• If mental health comes from uncovering
unconscious desires then dream analysis can be
part of the therapy
Freud’s therapy is called psychoanalysis.
Condensation means many ideas appearing as
one idea
Displacement means something unimportant
seeming to be important, to shift attention from what
is really important
• We have conscious thoughts – that we know
about and can describe
• We have unconscious thoughts – that we do not
know about and cannot describe
Freud talked about the unconscious not the
subconscious. Don’t make the mistake of using the
term ‘subconscious’.
Freud’s ideas are criticised because he worked
mainly with reasonably well off Viennese families
so he did not find out about lots of different people
in different circumstances. So it might not be a
good idea to say his findings were true of everyone
in the world. (Another way of saying this is to say
his results are not generalisable).
Also the unconscious is not something that exists
and can be tested so his ideas are not testable.
This means his ideas are ‘not science’, meaning not
objective or reliable.
Many people also think that Freud interpreted
dreams of individuals and this interpretation was
likely to be subjective – another analyst might have
come up with a different interpretation. There are
also other theories of dreaming look at biological
reasons for dreaming and so these other theories
(spread XXX) contradict Freud’s ideas.
Secondary revision means using muddled ideas
from dream work to build a whole story
According to Freud:
Examiner’s tips
Evaluation of Freud’s ideas,
including what he said about dream
analysis
Questions
1. What are three features of dream work?
Examiner’s tips
2. Explain the terms ‘manifest content’ and ‘latent
content’
Many students, in an exam, write ‘Vietnamese’ not
‘Viennese’. Don’t make this mistake.
3. Outline two criticisms of Freud’s ideas about
dreams
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Why psychology matters
Eyewitness memory 1
Reconstructive memory
Bartlett’s study showed that memory is
reconstructive (spread XXX). This means that
a memory is more than just a ‘copy’ of the
information we have seen or heard that is simply
retrieved. Instead, incoming information is stored
and when it is remembered it is ‘rebuilt’.
Learn about
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How eyewitness memory can be influenced by schemas
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The importance of these influences for society
This rebuilding process can be affected by extra
information and ideas we already have. For
example, when Bartlett’s volunteers tried to recall
the ‘War of the Ghosts’ story they reconstructed
it using their knowledge of things that were
familiar to them. Because the story was unfamiliar
their own ideas tended to make their memories
inaccurate.
Palmer found the same effect with perception.
His participants were more likely to accurately
recognise items if they were in an appropriate
context. This shows that the participants’
expectations affected the way they saw the scene.
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Someone who sees a crime in
an eyewitness
Suppose you are coming home from school and
you notice someone walking ahead of you. They
slow down and look through the open window of
a car on the roadside. Glancing around, they reach
in, pick up something from the seat, walk quickly
away and turn down a side street. You could be an
eyewitness.
facts such as what individuals looked like, what
they were doing and whether they were carrying
anything.
Eyewitnesses
• context
An eyewitness is somebody who has seen a crime
and can help the police to solve it. What an
eyewitness can remember about what they have
seen is therefore very important. The statement
the eyewitness gives to the police is called their
testimony. Sometimes an eyewitness’s testimony
is not very accurate. This matters because either
an innocent person could be accused of a crime
or a criminal could go free. Psychology helps
us to understand what can go wrong with an
eyewitness’s perception and memory of the scene.
• additional information
Eye witnesses are often important in robberies and
fights. They need to be able to accurately report
In the studies conducted by Palmer (1975), Bartlett
(1932) and Carmichael et al (1932) (spread XXX), we
explored how perception and memory can change
depending on:
• expectations.
These three factors also affect eyewitnesses.
eyewitness: somebody who sees a crime or
aspects of a crime scene who helps the police to
find out what has happened or to catch whoever
was responsible.
schema: a framework for knowledge about
something such as an event or a group of people. It
helps us to organise information and influences the
way we perceive and recall what we have seen.
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Eyewitnesses and schema
One reason why people tend to misidentify and
misremember things and events is because they
have schema. A schema is our knowledge about
something in the world, such as an event or a
group of people.
This Framework affects our understanding, it can
help us to organise information and influence the
way we perceive and recall what we have seen. For
example, you probably have schemata (plural for
schema) for each of your teachers. Perhaps one is
very strict and always sets homework. If so, you
would probably also expect them to be cross when
you forgot your textbook.
You might apply this schema to a new teacher who
also seems strict, perhaps believing that they will
set hard tests. Schemata are useful because they
help us to predict what will happen in the future.
- we might guess that the new teacher might get
angry if we talk in class.
As schemata affect the way we interpret situations,
they can affect memory. If we saw a new teacher
telling someone off, we would think that they were
being harsh because that would fit our expectation.
We might then remember the incident as the
new teacher shouting at the student, even if they
weren’t.
This tendency for schemas to affect the way we
perceive and recall is a problem for eyewitnesses
because it affects the way the memory of an event
is reconstructed.
Activity
Questions
Put some key words such as
‘teacher at a blackboard’ into
an image search like Google
images. Print out about four
different pictures. Ask everyone
in your class which teacher
they think looks (a) the most
fun (b) the strictest. Do the
people’s responses suggest that
they have stereotyped views
about teachers based on their
appearances?
1. Joe believes that old people are crafty. He sees an old lady walking
out of a shop carrying a loaf she hasn’t paid for. Will Joe think she
was forgetful or that she was stealing?
2. Betty sees some young people in hoodies wandering around in the
park. Later that day, she hears a report on the local radio that says
someone was mugged in the park and had their wallet stolen. If
Betty had a schema about young people in hoodies, how might it
affect her recall?
3. A possible schema might relate bikers to violent crime. Explain how
this schema could distort a witness’s memory if they see two men
fighting and a biker trying to split them up.
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