Editing Dream interpretation (section)

===Freud===
{{psychoanalysis}}
In ''The Interpretation of Dreams'',  [[Sigmund Freud]] argued that all dream content is disguised [[Wish fulfillment|wish-fulfillment]] (later in ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]'', Freud would discuss dreams which do not appear to be wish-fulfillment). According to Freud, the instigation of a dream is often to be found in the events of the day preceding the dream, which he called the "day residue." In very young children, this can be easily seen, as they dream quite straightforwardly of the fulfillment of wishes that were aroused in them the previous day (the "dream day"). In adults the situation is more complicated since, in Freud's analysis, the dreams of adults have been subjected to distortion, with the dream's so-called "[[Content (Freudian dream analysis)#Manifest content|manifest content]]"<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> being a heavily disguised derivative of the "[[Content (Freudian dream analysis)#Latent content|latent dream-thoughts]]"<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> present in the [[unconscious mind|unconscious]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=The interpretation of dreams|last=Freud |first=Sigmund |date=2010|publisher=Basic Books A Member of the Perseus Books Group|others=Strachey, James.|isbn=9780465019779|location=New York|oclc=434126117}}</ref> The dream's real significance is thus concealed: dreamers are no more capable of recognizing the actual meaning of their dreams than hysterics are able to understand the connection and significance of their neurotic symptoms.

In Freud's original formulation, the latent dream-thought was described as having been subject to an intra-psychic force referred to as "the censor"; in the terminology of his later years, however, discussion was in terms of the [[super-ego]] and the work of the [[Id, ego and super-ego|ego]]'s defence mechanisms. In waking life, he asserted, these "resistances" prevented the repressed wishes of the unconscious from entering consciousness, and though these wishes were to some extent able to emerge due to the lowered vigilance of the sleep state, the resistances were still strong enough to force them to take on a disguised or distorted form. Freud's view was that dreams are ''compromises'' which ensure that sleep is not interrupted: as "a ''disguised'' fulfilment of ''repressed'' wishes," they succeed in representing wishes as fulfilled which might otherwise disturb and waken the sleeper.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Matalon | first1 = Nadav | year = 2011 | title = The Riddle Of Dreams | journal = Philosophical Psychology | volume = 24 | issue = 4| pages = 517–536 | doi=10.1080/09515089.2011.556605| s2cid = 144246389 }}</ref>

One of Freud's early dream analyses is "[[Irma's injection]]", a dream he himself had. In the dream a former patient of his, Irma, complains of pains and Freud's colleague gives her an unsterile injection.  Freud provides pages of associations to the elements in his dream, using it to demonstrate his technique of decoding the latent dream thoughts from the manifest content of the dream.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=The Interpretation of Dreams |url=http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Freud/Dreams/dreams2.htm |website=Classics in the History of Psychology |access-date=19 August 2023}}</ref>

Freud suggests that the true meaning of a dream must be "weeded out" from the dream as recalled:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.womenio.com/214/remembering-and-understanding-your-dreams|title=Remembering and Understanding your Dreams|last=Wilson|first=Cynthia|date=3 April 2012|publisher=Womenio|access-date=28 May 2012}}</ref>
{{blockquote|You entirely disregard the apparent connections between the elements in the manifest dream and collect the ideas that occur to you in connection with each separate element of the dream by [[free association (psychology)|free association]] according to the psychoanalytic rule of procedure. From this material you arrive at the latent dream-thoughts, just as you arrived at the patient's hidden complexes from his associations to his symptoms and memories... The true meaning of the dream, which has now replaced the manifest content, is always clearly intelligible. [Freud, ''Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis'' (1909); Lecture Three]}}

Freud listed the distorting operations that he claimed were applied to repressed wishes in forming the dream as recollected: it is because of these distortions (the so-called "dream-work") that the manifest content of the dream differs so greatly from the latent dream thought reached through analysis—and it is by ''reversing'' these distortions that the latent content is approached.

The operations included:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Dreams.html|title=Lecture Notes: Freud's Conception of the Psyche (Unconscious) and His Theory of Dreams|last=Gray|first=R.|date=9 January 2012|publisher=University of Washington|access-date=28 May 2012}}</ref>
* [[Condensation (psychology)|Condensation]] – one dream object stands for several associations and ideas; thus "dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of the dream-thoughts."
* [[Displacement (psychology)|Displacement]] – a dream object's emotional significance is separated from its real object or content and attached to an entirely different one that does not raise the censor's suspicions.
* Visualization – a thought is translated to visual images.
* Symbolism – a symbol replaces an action, person, or idea.

To these might be added "secondary elaboration"—the outcome of the dreamer's natural tendency to make some sort of "sense" or "story" out of the various elements of the manifest content as recollected. Freud stressed that it was not merely futile but actually misleading to attempt to explain one part of the manifest content with reference to another part, as if the manifest dream somehow constituted some unified or coherent conception.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jones |first1=Ernest |title=Freud's theory of Dreams |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1413004 |journal=The American Journal of Psychology |date=1910 |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=283–308 |doi=10.2307/1413004 |jstor=1413004 |access-date=19 August 2023}}</ref>

Freud considered that the experience of anxiety dreams and [[nightmares]] was the result of failures in the dream-work: rather than contradicting the "wish-fulfillment" theory, such phenomena demonstrated how the [[Id, ego and super-ego|ego]] reacted to the awareness of repressed wishes that were too powerful and insufficiently disguised. Traumatic dreams (where the dream merely repeats the traumatic experience) were eventually admitted as exceptions to the theory.

Freud famously described psychoanalytic dream-interpretation as "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind". However, he expressed regret and dissatisfaction at the way his ideas on the subject were misrepresented or simply not understood:

{{quote|The assertion that all dreams require a sexual interpretation, against which critics rage so incessantly, occurs nowhere in my ''Interpretation of Dreams'' ... and is in obvious contradiction to other views expressed in it.<ref>Freud, S. (1900) op.cit., (1919 edition), p. 397</ref>}}