Content (Freudian dream analysis)

Sigmund Freud, in his book The Interpretation of Dreams, suggested what he believed was “the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make.” Dreams allow a psychic safety net to be created that lets out feelings that may or may not be against the norm. Freud defines a dream’s manifest content as a censored, figurative interpretation of its latent content, which includes senseless desires that would be inappropriate if conveyed directly.

Definitions

Manifest content is the content of a dream as it is recalled by the dreamer in psychoanalysis.

Latent Content is the underlying meaning of a dream or thought that is exposed in psychoanalysis by interpretation of its symbols or by free association.

Examples of manifest content

Some memories are recalled such as childhood events, happy moments, sad moment and so on. They are not consciously held, sometimes something will happen and the memory comes flooding back as if it happened yesterday.

There was a study made from psychologist, client, and counselor^[who?] about early recollections. In this study, psychologist view that inferiority begins in childhood, when the child feels like he/she is smaller, weaker than others. This usually leads to poor self-esteem. An individual that has emotional problems, has less social interests, and has a greater interiority in contrast to healthier early recollections. The manifest content of these individuals reflect these differences. Their recollections would talk about death, illness, anxiety and so on. In other words they would focus on negative things and not the bright side of things.

A study has been done^{[by whom?]} on medical students, the unconscious developmental process of becoming a physician. The reality events appear in the manifest content of the dreams along with their symbolic alterations. The dreams seem to have a pattern, the dreams are usually about an unconscious developmental process in overlapping stages as trainees that learn to master skills and tolerate care-giving responsibility for human life. A unconscious hero-healer fantasy starts to form. In general these fantasies are used as a defence against the anxieties of emotional adaptation to medical education experiences.

Manifest content of dreams of convicted sex offenders: The subjects were 16 individuals that were convicted of sexual crimes, they agreed to go to therapy. All of the inmates were confined at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, Pennsylvania. When they would go to therapy they would talk about their dreams; if they had one, more than 98 percent of the time it was about uncamouflaged sex crime themes.

Manifest content in suicide notes: Individuals were asked to imagine that they were planning to commit suicide and tell us^[who?] what they are “thinking” so the study says that they want to escape their problems and suicide would be a form of liberation to them, having said this. They also said at the end of the study that suicide is a retreat to a less mature form of behavior. On the other hand, those that have committed suicide described feelings of feeling lost, rejected. Usually rejection or loss is the “root” of suicide. Especially, if that person identifies them self with the rejecting person. Their logic and thought process is unusual temperament.

Sexually abused girls: those that have been abused develop spiteful perceptions and expectations of the interpersonal world. They have specific representations of themselves and this determines how they experience the external world and the way they relate with others. Psychologist views how abused, and non-abused individuals view themselves. The conclusion was that the abused would describe others non-psychologically, they were also found to be slip off from consciousness negative aspects of others. A history of sexual abuse had an impact on the representations of people and relationships. The manifest content of stories can be evaluated in terms of feelings, outcomes and interpersonal relationships. this study shows that a victim of sexual abuse is easily differentiated through the example of manifest content of narrative material.

Examples of latent content

The importance of latent content is the most crucial part of dream interpretation mainly because latent content is the more evaluated form of the dream. It requires analysis and interpretation.

"A young woman dreamed that she walked up Fifth Avenue with a girl friend. They paused before a milliner's window, looked at the hats and, in her dream, she purchased one. Here the manifest content is evidently the walk up Fifth Avenue and the purchase of a hat. For the latent content we must wander afield. On the day before her dream the young woman had actually taken a walk on Fifth Avenue with the friend of her dream; she had, however, not bought a hat although she had looked in the milliner's window. The analyst therefore holds as the latent content (necessarily a wish) the desire for a hat that the dreamer could not afford. This desire, however, is not sufficiently strong nor morbid for a dream incentive, there must be a still more complex latent content. Questioning elicits the fact that the dreamer's husband was ill at the time of her dream. Although the wife was aware that the illness was not serious, she showed an unreasoning fear that harm might come of it; she refused to leave his bedside even for a moment and showed such morbid anxiety, that her husband himself at length coaxed her to go for a walk, in the hope that she would return in a happier mood. In this abnormal anxiety the analyst found his latent content. The conversation between the dreamer and her friend next awaits investigation. She admits that among other subjects the name of a man whom she had known before her marriage was mentioned. Formerly he had been rather attentive to her, but she had not regarded his attentions as serious, he being her superior in wealth. This condition presented the sex question, essential to the Freudian analysis, combined with the element of female vanity, an offshoot of the sex question, as represented in the desire for a hat. The dreamer admitted that she would have liked to have had one had she been able to afford it. In the dream, however, having bought the hat, she established the strength of the suppressed wish." (example is from chestofbooks.com)

Examples of latent and manifest content working together

Both manifest and latent content are significant to the analysis of a dream and although they work separately they often are intertwined and work as one. Freud discusses this idea in his book “A general introduction to psychoanalysis”.

“The dreamer "climbs a mountain from the top of which he has an extraordinarily distant view." This sounds quite sensible; perhaps there is nothing about it that needs interpretation, and it is simply necessary to find out which reminiscence this dream touches upon and why it was recalled. But you are mistaken; it is evident that this dream requires interpretation as well as any other which is confused. For no previous mountain climbing of his own occurs to the dreamer, but he remembers that an acquaintance of his is publishing a "Rund- schau," which deals with our relation to the furthermost parts of the earth. The latent dream thought is therefore in this case an identification of the dreamer with the " Bundschauer."

Here you find a new type of connection between the manifest content and the latent dream element. The former is not so much a distortion of the latter as a representation of it, a plastic concrete perversion that is based on the sound of the word. However, it is for this very reason again a distortion, for we have long ago forgotten from which concrete picture the word has arisen, and therefore do not recognize it by the image which is substituted for it. If you consider that the manifest dream consists most often of visual images, and less frequently of thoughts and words, you can imagine that a very particular significance in dream formation is attached to this sort of relation. You can also see that in this manner it becomes possible to create substitute formations for a great number of abstract thoughts in the manifest dream, substitutions that serve the purpose of further concealment all the same. This is the technique of our picture puzzle. What the origin is of the semblance of wit which accompanies such representations is a particular question which we need not touch upon at this time.”

References

• Myers, David G. Psychology. New York: Worth, 2008. Print.
• The international Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol 84(2),Apr, 2003. Print.
• Essays in honor of Norbert Freedman. Lasky, Richard (ED). New York, NY, US; Other Press,2002. Print.
• Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New York: Horace Liveright, 1920. Print.

External links

• chestofbooks.com