OUTLINE AND EVALUATE ONE NEUROBIOLOGICAL AND ONE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF DREAMING

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OUTLINE AND EVALUATE ONE NEUROBIOLOGICAL AND ONE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF DREAMING

Dreaming is said to be a series of visual images usually occurring in stage 5 or REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which are characterised by rapid eye movement in which the individual appears to be watching the dream unfold.

There are two main approaches to dreaming: neurobiological and physiological. Neurobiological approaches describe dreaming as reverse learning so at to delete any useless and unwanted information gathered during the day. The other is the psychological approach and says that dreaming is learning or problem solving any emotional reactions in life.

One psychological theory of dreaming is Freud’s wish fulfilment theory (1990). This theory suggests that all dreams represent a wish fulfilment of repressed desires in life. The theory was derived from his patient’s descriptions of their dreams and these dreams were often suggested to be unacceptable to the dreamer. So they suggested that a dream was a disguised fulfilment of a repressed desire. It could be disguised because the repressed desires could be sexual or aggressive urges which would be unacceptable to the dreamer when awake. This suggests that dreaming has two functions one to protect and to allow some expression of these latent urges. The dreams are said to have manifest content so the dreamer’s dreams are usually symbolic.

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Evidence to his theory would be many of the dreams are always associated with present concerns for e.g. in a study carried out by Hajek and Belcher (1991) on smokers in a quit smoking programme where many of the participants dreamt about smoking during the programme and up to one year after these dreams had a feeling of guilt and panic in the participant. Those who had the dreams on smoking and who had the guilt were more likely to quit smoking as opposed to those who did not. This theory suggests dreaming is the expressment and fulfilment of ...

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