Psychology 201 Dr.

Kate Ellis

Safey Eldeen Sallam ID Number: 00120 2! Theory of Dreams

Dreams, what are they? People who didnt study psychology tend to think that dreams happen because thats what they were last thinking about before sleeping. They tend to think that a dream is classified in two categories only, good dreams, and bad dreams, which are named nightmares. However those who did study psychology will understand there is more than one approach to classifying a dream. The first one is the psychoanalytic approach, which allows us to express our hidden emotions, or makes us dream that were afraid of doing in real life. The second approach is the problem-solving theory, which is the theory ill be basing my essay on. There are two more approaches, which are the activation-synthesis and finally the cognitive approach. The problem-solving approach mainly happens when one is going through a crisis and gets a certain dream that would help him overcome this problem. From my personal point of view, the problem-solving approach depends on psychoanalytic approach. I generally think that for one to get a problem-solving approach dream you should be thinking about that issue so that you can dream about it later on. A lot of scientists did research on different the different approaches to a dream, two of these scientists were, Alfred Adler and Deirdre Barrett. Adler took Freuds theory and said that, a dream is a very important tool to mastering your real-life. However, Adler disagreed with Freud as he thinks that the sexual impulses are not the driving forces behind controlling ones behavior, yet it is the behavior and motivation that drives a persons behavior. Finally Adler quoted Dreams offer some sort of satisfaction that is more socially acceptable, dreams is your real-life emotions that you cant express in front of a person. Example is, telling the girl you love that youve got something for her. On the other hand, Barrett, wanted to prove to herself and others around her, that

Psychology 201 Dr. Kate Ellis

Safey Eldeen Sallam ID Number: 00120 2!

the problem-solving dreams do occur to people. Therefore, she decided to do some research on her students; she gave them an easy problem to solve and told them to think about them every day before they went to sleep. After a week passed, she asked her students if any of those had a dream about solving that problem, and she realized that fifty percent of them had a dream but only twenty five percent got the right answer. Even though it might be a low percentage, but Barrett did prove that Freuds point of view about dreams, which said that exist to fulfill our wishes. The dream I will be using to explain the problem-solving approach, is a dream I had a couple of days after I got declined for the Fall 2012 semester at the American University in Cairo. When I first applied to the university I was pretty stressed out, as I didnt pass the required minimum grade for acceptance. After a while I found out that I was not granted admission, so I was in the dilemma of applying into another university and then transferring back to AUC or register another IGCSE AL subject so I can increase my overall grade. I kept thinking about both situations for more than a week, and one night I went to sleep and had the most helpful dream I have had in my entire life. I dreamt that I went to my high school secretary and asked her if I could register for an AL subject. The other day I did exactly like the dream; I thought that this was somehow a message from my subconscious telling me what I really wanted to do. That the problem-solving approach to my dream, and it did solve the dilemma/problem I was going through, plus, it made me get my final admission into the second semester at AUC. As we can conclude, dreams dont just express our thoughts or express our emotions that we cant tell others about, throughout our sleep. Dreams tend to be useful as well, just as I explained above; if you get a problem-solving dream it will surely solve your problem, or at least give you a near solution to it.