Question

Post your most burning question on this discussion board and link your question to a current psychological perspective(s) that may serve in answering your question. Be sure to expand on why you chose the perspective(s) over others. For instance, have you ever wondered why you have the same mannerisms or reactions to situations that your mom or dad does, no matter how hard you tried to avoid it? You may consider reading more into the Behavior Genetics perspective to answer that burning question.

Answer 1

Question : Why do we dream?

The psychodynamic approach pioneered by Sigmund Freud elaborates the idea that dreams are results of unconscious desires, impulses and conflicts that do not get expressed through the consciousness. Dreams are reflections of the actual emotions within an individual. Sigmund Freud explained dreams as a means for unconscious wish fulfillment. According to him, every dream has a manifest and latent content. The manifest content refers to the explicit and direct content of the dream. The latent content refers to the hidden meaning which is symbolised by the manifest content. He argued that most of the dreams were reflective of a person's sexual and aggressive desires that do not get explicitly expressed as they are socially unacceptable and gets suppressed by the super ego. He wrote the book The Interpretation of Dreams, elaborating all these ideas. Dream analysis introduced by Freud still remains a popular practice in psychoanalytical therapy.