The Interpretation of Dreams Essay Example for Free

The Interpretation of Dreams Essay Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 and died in 1939. He was an Austrian psychologist who marked the beginning of a modern psychology by providing the first well-organized explanation of the inner mental forces determining human behaviour. Sigmund Freud is universally considered the father of psychoanalysis and many date the birth of pychoanalystic theory from the 1899 publication of The Interpretation of Dreams ; which sold a minimal number of copies and received a number of copies and received a number of mixed reviews. The book introduces Freud? Theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation and also first discusses what would later become the theory of the â€Å"Oedipus Complex†. Throughout the book, Freyd analyzes his own dreams as examples to prove his new theory of the psychology of dreams. He posits that all dreams represented the fulfillment of a wish on the part of the dreamer and nightmares are expressions of unconscious desires. â€Å"[ ] every dream turns out to be meaningful, psychical formation which can be given an identifiable place in what goes on within our walking life [ † He considered the interpretation of the dream an unexplored science which only Aristotle had investigated about in his book: On dreams and dream interpretation. Freud asserts that, contrary to the reigning scientific opinion, he will prove that is possible to interpret dreams using a scientific method. Freud makes an important distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind: The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. The unconscious mind contains our biologically based instincts fot the primitive urges for sex and agression. It con ins all sorts of significant and disturbing material which we need to keep out of awareness because they are too threatening to acknowledge fully. There is another type that is; the subconscious mind which contains thoughts and feelings that a person is not currently aware of, but which can easily be brought to consciousness. It exists just below the level of consciousness before the unconscious mind. This is what we mean in our everyday usage of the world avaliable memory. Freud applied these systems to his structure of the personality, or psyche – the id,ego and superego. Freud also regarded the mind to be like an iceberg, where the greatest part is hidden beneath the water or unconscious.