Editing Unconscious mind (section)

==Dreams==

===Freud===
The purpose of dreams, according to Freud, is to fulfill repressed wishes while simultaneously allowing the dreamer to remain asleep. The dream is a ''disguised'' fulfillment of the wish because the unconscious desire in its raw form would disturb the sleeper and can only avoid censorship by associating itself with elements that are not subject to repression. Thus Freud distinguished between the [[Manifest Content and Latent Content|manifest content and latent content]] of the dream. The manifest content consists of the plot and elements of a dream as they appear to consciousness, particularly upon waking, as the dream is recalled.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Nagera |editor-first=Humberto |chapter=Manifest content (pp. 52ff.) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gZixAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT44 |title=Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gZixAwAAQBAJ |year=2014 |orig-date=1969 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |location=[[Abingdon-on-Thames]] |isbn=978-1-31767047-6 }}</ref> The latent content refers to the hidden or disguised meaning of the events and elements of the dream. It represents the unconscious psychic realities of the dreamer's current issues and childhood conflicts, the nature of which the analyst is seeking to understand through interpretation of the manifest content.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Nagera |editor-first=Humberto |chapter=Latent dream-content (pp. 31ff.) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PbauAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA31 |title=Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PbauAwAAQBAJ |year=2014 |orig-year=1969 |publisher=Routledge |location=Abingdon-on-Thames |isbn=978-1-31767048-3 }}</ref><ref name=Weiten166>{{cite book | title=Psychology: Themes and Variations | url=https://archive.org/details/psychologythemes00weit_831 | url-access=limited | publisher=Cengage Learning | author=Wayne Weiten | year=2011 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/psychologythemes00weit_831/page/n210 166]–167 | isbn=978-0-495-81310-1}}</ref> In Freud's theory, dreams are instigated by the events and thoughts of everyday life. In what he called the "dream-work", these events and thoughts, governed by the rules of language and the [[reality principle]], become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought, which is governed by the [[Pleasure principle (psychology)|pleasure principle]], wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. The dream-work involves a process of disguising these unconscious desires in order to preserve sleep. This process occurs primarily by means of what Freud called [[Condensation (psychology)|condensation]] and [[Displacement (psychology)|displacement]]. Condensation is the focusing of the energy of several ideas into one, and displacement is the surrender of one idea's energy to another more trivial representative. The manifest content is thus thought to be a highly significant simplification of the latent content, capable of being deciphered in the analytic process, potentially allowing conscious insight into unconscious mental activity.<ref>Mannoni, Octave, ''Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious'', London: Verso 2015 [1971], pp. 55–58.</ref>

=== Neurobiological theory of dreams ===
[[Allan Hobson]] and colleagues developed what they called the [[activation-synthesis hypothesis]] which proposes that dreams are simply the side effects of the neural activity in the brain that produces [[beta brain wave]]s during [[REM sleep]] that are associated with wakefulness. According to this hypothesis, neurons fire periodically during sleep in the lower brain levels and thus send random signals to the [[Cortex (anatomy)|cortex]]. The cortex then synthesizes a dream in reaction to these signals in order to try to make sense of why the brain is sending them. However, the hypothesis does not state that dreams are meaningless, it just downplays the role that emotional factors play in determining dreams.<ref name=Weiten166/>