Kara Pompeo
Professor Guadalupe
Psychology 101
February 6 2014
Dreams
Dreams are an important part of human life. Everyone has dreamt about
something in their lifetime. Some reasons why we dream are to satisfy our own
wishes, file away memories, develop and preserve neural pathways, and make sense
of neural static. Without dreams these jobs may not get done. Some people do not
understand the meaning behind their dreams. Scientists have come up with dream
theories to help us better understand the meaning behind our dreams.
I remember one dream I had it was about my Betta fish Jeremy. I dreamed
that there was a hole in his tank and all the water was spilling out. One of my friends
was in the dream and patched the hole up so he wouldn’t die. This is all I can
remember of that dream. Most of the time I cannot remember my dreams.
This dream could be an example of information processing. Information
processing is dreams that help us sort out the day’s events and consolidate our
memories. The dream could be an example of this because I was cleaning the fish
tank earlier that day and my brain could have just been going through the events
that happened in my day. I was also with my friend who was in the dream the day
before. The brain may have been processing this information thus causing me to
dream about it.
Freud’s wish fulfillment could also be used to explain this dream. Freud’s
wish fulfillment is dreams that provide a “psychic safety value” expressing
otherwise unacceptable feelings, contain manifest (remembered) content and a
deeper layer of latent content, a hidden meaning. This could be used to interpret my
dream also because the next morning I checked my fish’s tank and noticed a small
hole, not big enough to let a ton of water out but it was leaking. This was very
strange considering I dreamt about the tank having a hole and then it did. This
contains the “psychic safety value” Freud is talking about. Finding a hole in real life
revealed a hidden meaning to the dream.
One dream theory that would not explain my dream is cognitive
development. This theory is when dreams content reflects dreamers’ cognitive
development their knowledge and understanding. This dream doesn’t reveal
knowledge or understanding about anything. It is not reflecting my cognitive
development in anyway. It is just a simple dream about my fish.
In the end I learned that dreams can have more meaning than you think.
Dreaming about something and then having it happen could have just been a
coincidence, but something we should think about. Our brains have more power
than we think. Next time I dream about something I will think about what it could
possibly mean or if it is just my brain sorting though the previous day’s events. I
now have more knowledge about how the brain works and what my dreams could
possible be resulting from.