Topic B - Dreaming (Key Words) Flashcards
Manifest content
What the dream is said to be about by the dreamer - the story the dreamer tells.
Latent content
The meaning underlying the dream. If the symbols from the manifest content are translated by an analyst, they can reveal unconscious thoughts.
Condensation
When many thoughts and elements from the unconscious are represented in the dream in one symbol.
Displacement
When something that seems to be unimportant in the dream is made central, to shift attention from what is really important.
Secondary elaboration
How the dreamer builds a story when telling what the dream is about, adding to and changing things, which makes the analysis hard.
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s therapy, designed to help release unconscious thoughts.
Free association
A method used by Freud in psychoanalysis where the patient is encouraged to express a flow of consciousness. The process helps to uncover links which can then be interpreted.
Slip of the tongue
When someone uses the wrong word for something. Freud analysed these slips to help uncover unconscious thoughts.
Dream analysis
A method used by Freud to help uncover unconscious thoughts, by analyzing dreams and uncovering symbols.
Qualitative data
Data involving stories or attitudes
Valid
Refers to findings of studies and means that they are about real-life situations, real-life behavior or feelings that are real.
Generalisable
Refers to findings of studies and whether they can be said to be true of people other than those that were studied.
Subjective
Where the researcher is somehow affecting the information that is gathered, perhaps by their interpretation.
Objective
Where the researcher’s views do not affect the information that is gathered.
Neuron
A cell in the body, including in the brain, that sends information using both electrical and chemical processes.
Axon
The ‘cable’ that leads from a cell body of a neuron down to the terminal buttons that hold the neurotransmitter.
Impulse
The electrical signal that travels from the cell body of a neuron to the terminal buttons, where it releases a neurotransmitter.
Neurotransmitter
A chemical at the terminal button of a neuron, which is released by the impulse and then goes into the synaptic gap.
Synaptic gap
The gap between the dendrites of one neuron and the next.
Synaptic transmission
What happens when a neurotransmitter released by an impulse of one neuron goes across the synaptic gap and is taken up at the dendrites of another neuron.
Activation-synthesis model
A model of dreaming proposed by Hobson and McCarley where the brain is active but no sensory information is coming into it. The brain puts the information it has together to make sense of it and this is the dream.
Random activation
During REM sleep, when neurons are active randomly not deliberately.
Sensory blockade
During REM sleep, when no information enters through the senses.
Movement inhibition
The state, during REM sleep, when the body is paralyzed and there is no movement.
