Assessment in Freud’s Theory: Free Association and Dream Analysis

Freud considered the unconscious to be major motivating force in life our child hood conflicts are repressed out of conscious awareness. The goal of Freud’s systems of psychoanalysis was to bring of psychoanalysis was to bring these repressed, fears and thoughts back to the level of consciousness. He developed two methods of assessment: free association and dream analysis. Free association: Freud’s development of the technique of free association owes much to Josef Breuer. He used the technique with some success and called the process catharsis. After a while, Freud abandoned hypnosis and seeking a technique other than hypnosis for helping a patient recall repressed material. He encouraged the patient to relax and to concentrate on events in the past. The memories were not to be omitted, rearranged or restructured. Freud believed that there was nothing random about information uncovered during free association and that it was not subject to a patient’s conscious choice. The material reveled by patients in free association was predetermined, forced on them by the nature of their conflict. He also found that sometimes the technique did not operate freely. Some experience or memories were evidently too painful to talk about, and the patient would be reluctant to disclose them. Freud called these moments resistance. He believed they were significant. Basically resistance is the sign that the treatment is proceeding in the right direction and that the analysis should continue to probe in that area. Part of the psychoanalyst’s task is to break down or overcome resistances so the patients can confront the repressed experience. Dream Analysis: Dream analysis is a technique involving the interpretation of dreams to uncover unconscious conflicts. Freud believed that dreams represent, in symbolic form, repressed desires, fears and conflicts. So strongly have feelings been repressed that they can surface only in disguised fashion during sleep. In this technique of dream analysis, Freud distinguished two aspects of dreams: the manifest content, which refers to the actual events in the dream, and the latent content, which is the hidden symbolic meaning of the dream’s events. Over the years, he found consistent symbols in his patient’s dreams, events that signified the same thing for nearly everyone. Dream symbols or events and their latent psychoanalytic meaning Symbol Interpretation Smooth-fronted house Male body House with ledges Female body King and queen Parent Small animals Children Playing with children Masturbation Baldness, tooth extraction Castration Elongated objects (e.g. tree trunks, umbrellas, neckties, snakes, candles Male genitals Enclosed spaces (e.g. boxes, ovens, closets, caves, pockets) Female genitals Climbing stairs or ladders: driving cars, riding horses, crossing bridges Sexual intercourse Bathing Birth Beginning a journey Dying Being naked in a crowd Desiring to be noticed Flying Desiring to be admired Falling Desiring to return to a state such as childhood where one is satisfied and protected Dreams reveal conflict in a condensed, intensified form. Dream event rarely result from a single cause; any event in a dream can have many sources. Dream may also have mundane origins. Physical stimuli, such as the temperature of the bedroom or contact with one’s partner, can induce a dream can also be triggered by internal stimuli, such as fever or an upset stomach.