Freud Interpretation of Dreams Summary

The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud was a ground-breaking book and has had far-reaching influence. However, there are many people who are curious about Freud dream interpretations but don’t want to read Freud’s rather dense prose. If that describes you, then here you will find a Freud Interpretation of Dreams summary.

Freud Interpretations of Dreams: Dreams are the Guardians of Our Sleep

Everyone has dreams when they sleep. Some people don’t remember their dreams, and some of us remember many of them vividly, but we all have them. Throughout history, we’ve asked the question, “Why do we dream?” and even more so, what do our dreams mean?

Sigmund Freud, considered to be the father of psychoanalysis, maintained that we dream as a way to keep us sleeping – according to him, dreams are the guardians of our sleep. When we head off to bed for a night’s rest, we close out as much external stimuli as possible.

Freud Interpretations of Dreams: Why We Dream

We turn the lights off and close the shades. We try to suppress outside noises. We do all of this so that our bodies can go about the business of getting rest without interruption. It’s a way to disconnect from our daily reality.

During sleep, the mind manufactures dreams as a way to protect us from being disturbed by other stimuli, such as noise, but also things like temperature fluctuations, pain, and the worries, fears, desires and mental and emotional distractions of the day.

Freud’s work was mostly with internal stimuli – worries, negative emotions, thoughts and desires that are forbidden and other thoughts that must be censored in some way. If the brain is busy with these at night, they may cause us to wake and not get the rest we need.

So dreams are the mind’s safe way of keeping the person asleep, while allowing the mind to digest and work on all of the internal stimuli that we have rattling around in our heads every day – negative, positive or forbidden.

Freud Dream Interpretations

Sigmund Freud believed that the dream was made up of two distinct parts – the manifest and the latent content. The manifest content is what the dreamer remembers when they wake, and according to Freud has no meaning because it’s a disguised representation of what’s underlying the dream – the latent content.

Latent content is the true meaning of the dream. It’s the forbidden or negative thoughts and the unconscious desires. These are disguised in the manifest content. Dreams, according to Freud, often have a sexual tone to them and use the symbols in manifest content to signify the underlying sexual meaning of our dreams.

In order to discover the underlying meaning of a dream, Sigmund Freud used the free association method. The dream would be described in the most accurate terms possible. Then the dreamer would focus on a specific piece or symbol in the dream and form as many associations to it as possible.

This allowed the dreamer’s mind to wander and discover the possible underlying meaning, the latent content, of the dream. Freud said that dreams are way of fulfilling suppressed wishes.

Freudian Slip or Pajamas?

Instead of being wakened every night by our unfulfilled wishes and desires, which are usually forbidden, the mind weaves dreams about them to allow us to fulfill them in sleep, allowing us a restful night.