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Dream Analysis

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Submitted By holda
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DREAM ANALYSIS
This reflective essay illustrates Freud’s theory of dream analysis. It will begin with a brief overview of Freudian dream theory and will go on to describe the various components of personality structure and the unconscious from a psychodynamic perspective. This essay will analyse one of my personal dreams using Freud’s dream analysis theory and conclude with a critical reflection on the application of his theory as it relates to my dream.
When Freud famously referred to dreams as being the ‘royal road to the unconscious’, he meant that dreams were a way in which to access the unconscious mind. Dream analysis in psychoanalysis is the process used to explore the role dreams play in the unconscious (Corey, 2005). The purpose of Freud’s theory of dream analysis is to gain better access to the unconscious in order to bring it into the conscious (Day, 2008). Freud believed that the mind represses painful events that the conscious does not want to remember due to the pain and anxiety they cause (Scharf, 2008). These repressed desires and motivations are freed through dreams which are a direct connection to the unconscious. Freud saw the unconscious as sexual and instinctual in nature and the dream as a disguised unfulfilled wish (Welsh, 1994).
To better understand the dynamics between the conscious and the unconscious parts of the mind, Freud (1994) developed the structural model of the psyche which he called “the psychic apparatus”. Freud proposed that the part of the mind that structures behaviour and decisions is composed of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego; all developing at different stages in our lives (McLeod, 2008). According to Corey (2005), the id is the unconscious part of the mind, the raw instinct driven part of the mind that makes impulsive decisions and motivates emotional responses, operating on a pleasure principle and

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