Therapy Flashcards
What are the 4 main components of dream therapy?
Dreams as wish fulfilment
The symbolic nature of dreams
Dreamwork
Role of therapist
What did Freud believe dreams were? (Dreams as wish fuffilment)
Freud believed that dreams are the unconscious fulfilment of wishes that can not be satisfied in the conscious mind
What is the latent content of a dream? (Symbolic nature of dreams)
The real, underlying meaning of a dream
What is the manifest content of a dream? (The symbolic nature of dreams)
The content you actually experience
Explain the symbolic nature of dreams (2nd part of dream analysis)
Freud believes that a dreams content is expressed symbolically, the latent content of a dream is transformed into manifest content , which can be interpreted by a psychoanalyst
Ex - fish = friend who’s a fisherman
Snake = penis
Explain the process of dreamwork (3rd component of dream analysis)
The latent content of a dream is transformed into manifest content through the process of dream analysis, which supresses the wishes of the ID into dreams
List the stages of dream work (3rd step)
Condensation
Displacement
Representation
Symbolism
Secondary elaboration
What is the role of the therapist in dream analysis? (Final step)
The therapist is there to reverse the dreamwork process to decode the manifest content back to latent content , but suggests various interpretations based on patients’ feedback and knowledge of life experiences
What are 3 Ethical issues of dream analysis?
Unhealthy therapist-client relationship
False memory syndrome (FMS)
Risk of Emotional harm
Explain why dream analysis may lead to an unhealthy patient-client relationship (ethics)
The therapist takes such a central part in helping the patient that it causes a large power imbalance , the client (as they are likely to be mentally unstable) may over-rely on the therapist an unhealthy amount
What is False memory syndrome? (Ethics)
FMS is when a person’s identity and relationships are severely affected by false memories of traumatic experiences, as dream analysis is used to ‘uncover’ repressed memories they may ‘remember’ something that never happened because the therapist suggested it
What is the risk for emotional harm for dream analysis? (Ethics)
The memory which is uncovered may cause patients much more emotional harm than what it was unconsciously causing them when it was repressed
What the three points of evaluation for the effectiveness of dream analysis
Research support
Methodological issues
Subjective interpretation
Why does Dream Analysis have methodological issues? (Ev of effectivness)
Much of the research is conducted in sleep labs, so isn’t reflective of real-life sleep, meaning it lacks ecological validity
Why is the subjective interpretation of dreams a point of evaulation?
Dream analysis is incredibly subjective, so relies on the therapist’s subjective predictions, meaning that it isn’t reliable
What is the research evidence for dream analysis? (evaulation)
Solms (2000) - used PET scans to highlight the regions of the brain which were active during REM sleep and found that centers regarding motivation and memory (the ID) were very active, whilst the rational thinking part of the brain was suspended
Research -
