Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

dreams-for-survival theory
The 
theory suggesting that dreams permit 
information that is critical for our daily 
survival to be reconsidered and 
reprocessed during sleep.
FIGURE 8 
According to Freud, dreams contain common symbols with universal meanings.
Symbol (Manifest Content of Dream)
Interpretation (Latent Content)
Climbing up a stairway, crossing a bridge, riding 
an elevator, flying in an airplane, walking down a 
long hallway, entering a room, train traveling
through a tunnel
Apples , peaches grapefruits
Bullets, fire, snakes, sticks, umbrellas, guns, hoses,
knives
Ovens, boxes, tunnels, closets, caves, bottles, ship 
Sexual intercourse
Breasts
Male sex organs
Female sex organs
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Module 14 
Sleep and Dreams 
149
to bed, but awakened at certain times during the night. 
When they were awakened at times that did not interrupt 
dreaming, their performance on the memory task typically 
improved the next day. But when they were awakened dur-
ing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—the stage of sleep 
when people dream—their performance declined. The impli-
cation is that dreaming, at least when it is uninterrupted, can 
play a role in helping us remember material to which we 
have been previously exposed (Karni et al., 1994; Marshall 
& Born, 2007; Nishida et al., 2009).

NEUROSCIENCE EXPLANATIONS OF DREAMS: 
ACTIVATION-SYNTHESIS THEORY

Using the neuroscience perspective, psychiatrist J. Allan 

Hobson has proposed the activation-synthesis theory of 
dreams. The