Dreams Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Dreams - Essay Example Scientific theories have ranged from speculation that we dream as a means of learning more about ourselves through the revelation of repressed desires to the concept that dreams are a means of the subconscious providing the conscious mind with seemingly prophetic warnings developed through thousands of unconscious signals received during the waking hours. Other theories have suggested that we dream as a means of further developing our mental abilities and spiritual concepts, slowly assimilating what we’ve learned into our established worldview while still others have indicated that we dream as a means of dealing with our daily experiences by either getting rid of the memories or storing them away in our mental memory banks. What the various scientists have revealed in their dream studies is that there are a wide variety of ways in which dreams might have meaning to an individual, whether they realize it or not. However, it seems plausible that dreams will have more meaning to an individual who has a particular belief regarding what they might mean than an individual who reports they don’t dream at all or who believes that dreams have no meaning and doesn’t bother to remember them. Sigmund Freud is perhaps the most recognized individual in the field of dream theory. In developing his model of the mind, Freud determined that the dream functions as a sleeper’s defense against the disturbing thoughts and emotions of the subconscious mind (the id) by acting as a censor (Wilson, 2005). Unlike Freud, who felt that dreams were less frightening manifestations of subconscious horrors, Jung felt that they were revelations that uncovered not only our own emotional issues and fears of the perso nal subconscious, but also link us to the collective unconscious, â€Å"the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can