Beliefs About Dreams
For centuries, people have been interpreting their dreams, or at least trying to. The methods and meanings of interpretations vary significantly. Dream interpretation depends on the culture or country you are from and what psychological beliefs you follow. You can find examples of dream interpretation dating from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Books on the theories of dream meanings have fed peoples' obsessions with understanding their dreams.
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Freud
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Since the end of the 19th century, dream interpretation has been part of psychoanalysis. In 1899, Sigmund Freud published his first book on dream interpretation. Freud believed that dreams are based on what has happened over the day. He also believed that dreams are usually about wish-fulfillment. Oftentimes, according to Freud, someone's wishes have been repressed and a dream is a way for the wishes to be expressed. According to Freud, many objects or characters in a dream have a symbolic meaning.
Jung
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Carl Jung did not completely disregard Freud's theories on dream interpretation; however, he did assert that Freud's theory was a little simplistic. Jung believed in two approaches to dream interpretation: the subjective and the objective approaches. In the subjective approach, Jung believed that each person throughout the dream represents an aspect of the dreamer. The objective approach was that dream images represented real objects. Jung believed that there was great value in the unconscious life of each person.
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Hall
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In 1953, a theory of dreams was developed by Calvin Hall. He believed that dreams were thoughts that occurred while sleeping and that images during a dream are the visual interpretations of the dreamer. Hall believed that dreams can teach a person that there is more than one way for something to be done.
Faraday
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Ann Faraday was instrumental in bringing dream interpretation into the mainstream by writing and publishing books. Her focus applied dreams to a situation happening in someone's life. She published many interpretation books to help people learn how to interpret dreams themselves.
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References
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