Activation-Fulfilment: The Psychoanalytic Theory Of Dreams Essay

Wish fulfilment is Freud’s dream theory, called psychoanalytic theory of dreams. His theory states that dreams “fulfill unmet needs from waking hours through wishful thinking in dreams.” Basically what we want in to happen in real life is acted out in our dreams.

Rosalind Cartwright’s dream theory, problem-solving view, states that dreams let people creatively think about their problems while they are asleep.

Information-processing view states that dreams sort, sift and fix a day’s experience into memorise.

Activation-synthesis hypothesis states that dreams are merely the cortex making sense of neural firings.

Wish fulfilment and the problem-solving view say that there is a reason that we dream. Whether it is doing what we want or helping solve a problem there is an emotional and personal purpose to dreaming….

Rather they serve a specific function, much like our hands are used to type. Information-processing and activation-synthesis are extremely different viewpoints but they both take out the human, or emotional, aspect of dreaming.
I think that the explanation of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams is the best. We have all had dreams that are completely fantastical. There really is no purpose to them other than the fact that we, as the dreamer, think it would be fun to do. This theory makes dreaming an escape into a world where anything can…