Plan: Dreams and philosophical realism

Dynamic psychiatry

See also: Dynamic psychiatry

Freud's view

In the late 19th century, psychotherapist Sigmund Freud developed a theory (since discredited) that the content of dreams is driven by unconscious wish fulfillment. Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious."^[67] He theorized that the content of dreams reflects the dreamer's unconscious mind and specifically that dream content is shaped by unconscious wish fulfillment. He argued that important unconscious desires often relate to early childhood memories and experiences. Freud's theory describes dreams as having both manifest and latent content. Latent content relates to deep unconscious wishes or fantasies while manifest content is superficial and meaningless.^[68] Manifest content often masks or obscures latent content.^[69]

In his early work, Freud argued that the vast majority of latent dream content is sexual in nature, but he later moved away from this categorical position. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle he considered how trauma or aggression could influence dream content. He also discussed supernatural origins in Dreams and Occultism, a lecture published in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.^[70]

Late in life Freud acknowledged that "It is impossible to classify as wish fulfillments" the repetitive nightmares associated with posttraumatic stress disorder. Modern experimental studies weigh against many of Freud's theories regarding dreams. Freud's "dream-work" interpretation strategies have not been found to have empirical validity. His theory that dreams were the "guardians" of sleep, repressing and disguising bodily urges to ensure sleep continues, seems unlikely given studies of individuals who can sleep without dreaming. His assertions that repressed memory in infants re-surface decades later in adult dreams conflicts with modern research on memory. Freud's theory has difficulty explaining why young children have static and bland dreams, or why the emotions in most dreams are negative. On the plus side, modern researchers agree with Freud that dreams do have coherence, and that dream content connects to other psychological variables and often connect to recent waking thoughts (though not as often as Freud supposed).^[71] Despite the lack of scientific evidence, dream interpretation services based on Freudian or other systems remain popular.^[72]