Many people often wonder why we have dreams and if they even mean anything. In Freud'sThe Interpretation of Dreams, he claims that dreams are indeed meaningful and the reason why they are is because dreams represent wish fulfillment. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud goes into specific examples of why dreams convey unfulfilled wishes of the person that is having the dream. Freud's examples are crucial in this work because before it was published most people assumed dreams were universal, not personal.
To begin his argument that dreams are wish fulfillment, Freud uses himself as an example. He says, "If I eat anchovies or olives or any other highly salted food in the evening, I develop thirst during the night which wakes me up. But my waking is preceded by a dream; and this always has the same content, namely, that I am drinking. I dream I am swallowing down water in great gulps, and it has the delicious taste that nothing can equal but a cool drink when one is parched with thirst."(311).
Statue of Sigmund Freud in London, with the Tavist...
Sigmund Freud Quote
Sigmund FreudHere Freud shows how his dream can be wish fulfillment. He was thirsty when he was dreaming, and in his dream he was rewarded with a glass of water. Freud also states these kinds of dreams as "dreams of convenience". (311).
In Freud's next examples, he uses the comparison of adults and children. In paragraph nine Freud says, "We may expect to find the very simplest forms of dreams in children". Most readers would agree when Freud further explains this statement of his by saying, "â¦since there can be no doubt that their psychical productions are less complicated than those of adults." Freud goes on to explain that dreams that children have are important to the child just as much as they are to...