Critically consider two psychological theories of dreams

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The two key psychological theories of dreams are Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, and Cartwright’s problem-solving theory. Freud’s psychoanalytic approach suggests that dreams are ‘primary process thoughts’. He proposed that personality is made up of the id, the ego and the superego. The id is associated with irrational, instinct-driven, unconscious thoughts: primary process thoughts. Freud said that these thoughts are unacceptable to the adult conscious mind so they are relegated to dreams (Freud called this repression) where we can act out our wishes. Freud believed if we did not dream, the energy from the desires would build up to unsafe levels that could threaten an individual’s sanity. This psychoanalytic approach stated that the main function of dreams is to unconsciously fulfil wishes that cannot be satisfied in the conscious mind. Freud distinguished between the real meaning behind dreams, the latent content, and the innocuous form that the dreamer remembers, the manifest content. The process of the underlying wish being converted into the manifest content is called ‘dream work’ and Freud said that this manifest content may be meaningless to anyone but a psychoanalyst. Freud scorned the use of ‘dream dictionaries’ as he believed that the symbols seen in an individual’s dreams are highly personal. Freud’s theory of dreaming has been heavily criticised by other researchers, both negatively and positively. Some have argued that that Freud’s theory was the first systematic account of dreams. The 19th century society is well known for its repressive nature and it is quite likely that some dreams would be wish fulfilment. There has been research evidence that has positively criticised Freud’s theory of dreaming. For example, Hajek and Becher (1991) studied the dreams of smokers trying to quit and found that most had dreams about smoking for up to a

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