Meaning of Dreams

Introduction

Many people often wonder why we have aspirations and if they even signify anything. In Freud's The Interpretation of aspirations, he claims that dreams are indeed significant and the reason why they are is because aspirations comprise desire fulfillment. In The understanding of aspirations Freud goes into exact examples of why aspirations convey unfulfilled wishes of the person that is having the dream. Freud's examples are crucial in this work because before it was published most people assumed dreams were universal, not personal (Barrett, 1992).

To start his contention that dreams are desire fulfillment, Freud utilises himself as an example. He says, "If I consume anchovies or olives or any other highly salted food in the night, I evolve thirst throughout the evening which wakes me up. But my rousing is preceded by a dream; and this habitually has the identical content, namely, that I am drinking. Iillusion I am swallowing down water in great gulps, and it has the delicious flavour that not anything can identical but a coolinging drink when one is parched with thirst."(311). Here Freud displays how his illusion can be wish fulfillment. He was parched when he was imagining, and in his dream he was paid with a glass of water. Freud also states these kinds of dreams as "dreams of convenience" (Wolman, 2000).

In Freud's next examples, he benefits the comparison of adults and children. In paragraph nine Freud states, "We may anticipate to find the very simplest types of dreams in children". Most readers would acquiesce when Freud farther interprets this statement of his by saying, "…since there can be no doubt that their psychical productions are less perplexing than those of adults." Freud goes on to interpret that aspirations that children have are important to the child just as much as they are to adults. The book reader might furthermore acquiesce when Freud states that the aspirations of young kids "raise no difficulty for solution". Freud's points here make sense to the reader, because everyone knows that a child's mind is simpler than that of an adult, so why would dreams on the subconscious level be any different? Freud backs up these statements with demonstrations of his own children's dreams. After reading Freud's examples, the reader can easily understand Freud's statements mentioned above because now the reader has read examples of dreams from adults and children (Edgar, 1989).

Even though Freud's demonstrations ...