FREE ESSAY ON FREUD`S "THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS"

FREUD`S "THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS"

Sigmund Freud's work in psychotherapetures, and the effective results gained in connection
with his "psycho-analytic method", have attracted wide attention among psychiatrists and
the medical fraternity. In the coarse of his many psycho-analyses Freud has been much
impressed by the important fact that the forgotten experiences resuscitated by this means
bear a striking resemblance to the content of dream life, and this led him to adopt the
theory of Dreams presented in "The Interpretation of Dreams" (The Nation p.81). 
In his book the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud draws the conclusion that dreams are
personal psychological events. Freud also states that dreams are fulfillment of wishes.
To reinforce these beliefs he offers many examples of his own dreams as well as the
dreams of his family members.
Freud offers an example from a recurrent dream he often has. He explains that this dream
only happens when he eats anchovies or any other highly salted foods in the evening. He
then develops a thirst in the night which wakes him up. He states:
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. Then I
wake up and have a real drink (Freud pg. 311).
Here Freud's simple dream is occasioned by the thirst which he becomes aware of when he
wakes. His thirst is really his wish for a drink, and his dream shows his wish was
fulfilled.