AN INSIGHT VIEW TO IT’S THEORY BY SIGMUND FREUD.
ABSTRACT : Dream : A Mirror Of Mind With Its Homoeopathic Perception, & An Insight View To Its Theory By Sigmund Freud.
Normal Sleep Cycle & It’s Stages :
Each night you take a Rollercoaster ride through the different phases of sleep, though you are unaware of what goes on while you are snoozing, your brain & body are in active state.
When you get your ZZZs, you cycle between REM & Non – REM sleep.
What Are The Stages of Sleep…?
REM stands for Rapid eye movement. During REM sleep, your eyes move around rapidly in a range of directions, but don’t send any visual information to your brain, That doesn’t happen during Non – REM sleep.
First comes Non – REM sleep, followed by a shorter period of REM sleep, & then the cycle starts again. Dreams typically happen during REM sleep.
Sleep has been traditionally divided into 4 categories: Awake, Light, Deep, & REM sleep.
Light & deep sleep can be grouped together as “NREM – sleep or referred to as “stages 1 to 4”
Each stage of sleep plays a different role in preparing your body for the next day.
What Happens During Non-REM Sleep?
There are three phases of Non-REM sleep.
Each stage can last from 5 to 15 minutes. You go through all three phases before reaching REM sleep.
Stage 1 : Your eyes are closed, but it’s easy to wake you up. This phase may last for 5 to 10 minutes.
Stage 2 : You are in light sleep. Your heart rate slows & your body temperature drops. Your body is getting ready for deep sleep. This can last for 10-25 minutes.
Stage 3 & 4 : This is the deep sleep stage. It’s harder to rouse you during this stage, & if someone woke you up, you would feel disoriented for a few minutes.
During the deep stages of NREM sleep, the body repairs & re-grows tissues, builds bone & muscle, & strengthens the immune system.
As you get older, you sleep more lightly & get less deep sleep. Aging is also linked to shorter time spans of sleep, although studies show you still need as much sleep as when you were younger.
What Is REM Sleep?
Usually, REM sleep happens 90 minutes after you fall asleep. The first period of REM typically lasts 10 minutes. Each of your later REM stages gets longer, & the final one may last up to an hour. Your heart rate & breathing quickens.
You can have intense dreams during REM sleep, since your brain is more active. REM is important because it stimulates the areas of the brain that help with learning & it is associated with increased production of proteins
The eyes move rapidly behind the lids & breathing becomes shallow & rapid. Blood pressure & heart rate also increase during REM sleep & the arms & legs are paralyzed so that sleepers can’t act out their dreams.
The purpose of this stage (& of dreams) is thought to stimulate the sections of the brain that are needed for memory & learning & a way for the brain to store & sort information. REM sleep occurs approximately 90 minutes into the sleep cycle.
The length of each cycle changes throughout the night, but the typical sleeper will cycle through the stages several times before waking.
For those with sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea, the deeper levels of sleep may not be reached as frequently as is normal because they are constantly being woken. This can lead to the body’s inability to repair damage, few dreams, & increased fatigue upon waking & throughout the day.
Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams :
Itsuggests that dreams represent unconscious desires, thoughts, wish fulfillment, & motivations.
According to Freud, people are driven by repressed & unconscious longings, such as aggressive & sexual instincts.
While many of Freud’s assertions have been debunked, research suggests there is a dream rebound effect, also known as dream rebound theory, in which suppression of a thought tends to result in dreaming about it.
What Causes Dreams to Happen?
In “The Interpretation of Dreams,” Freud wrote that dreams are “disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes.” He also described two different components of dreams: manifest content (actual images) & latent content (hidden meaning).
Freud’s theory contributed to the rise & popularity of dream interpretation. While research has failed to demonstrate that the manifest content disguises the psychological significance of a dream, some experts believe that dreams play an important role in processing emotions & stressful experiences.
Dreams Process Information :
According to the Activation-synthesis model of dreaming, which was first proposed by J. Allan Hobson & Robert McCarley, circuits in the brain become activated during REM sleep, which triggers the amygdala & hippocampus to create an array of electrical impulses. This results in a compilation of random thoughts, images, & memories that appear while dreaming.
When we wake, our active minds pull together the various images & memory fragments of the dream to create a cohesive narrative.
“We are what we are because we have been what we have been.”
“Everyone has wishes which he would not like to tell to others, which he does not want to admit even to himself.”
“The dream is the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish.”
“The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.”
“The dream acts as a safety-valve for the over-burdened brain.”
“Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.”
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”
“Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.”
“Dream is the dreamer’s own psychical act.”
“Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday.”
“Dreams are the guardians of sleep & not its disturbers.”
“Dreams are clear window to the unconscious mind.”
Freud believed dreams represented a disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish. He believed that studying dreams provided the easiest road to understanding of the unconscious activities of the mind.
His theories state that dreams have two parts: a manifested content, which is the remembered dream after we wake, & a latent content, or the dream that we do not remember which is considered part of the unconscious. He proposed that the latent, or unremembered, dream content is composed of three elements: the sensory impressions during the night of the dream, the residues left from the day before, & the id’s drives that are already part of the dreamer.
Freud believed that the repression by the super-ego is weakened during sleep due to the absence of voluntary motor activity. This creates an increased possibility of subconscious impulses from the id reaching consciousness.
According to the idea that Freud proposed, the dream is considered the guardian of sleep. Dreams allow a gratification of certain drives through a visual fantasy, or the manifest content. This reduces the impact of these drives from the id, which might often cause the dreamer to wake in order to fulfill them. In layman’s terms, dreams allow certain needs to be fulfilled without the conscious mind needing to be aware of such fulfillment. However, the manifest content is not comprehensive, because it consists of a distorted version of the latent content.
At the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement, Freud & his followers considered dreams to be the main tool of self-analysis, as well as a prominent part of the treatment.
Dream understanding & interpretation during that time was influenced heavily by Freud’s drive-conflict theory. The therapy was designed to reveal the latent content of the patient’s repressed sexuality & unconscious mind. To understand the dream, the therapist had to explore the latent content of the dream via the process of free association.
Some Common dreams with its interpretation & Homoeopathic remedies :
1)Absurd : The dream which is not real, unreasonable, illogical, inappropriate.
Remedies : Glon, Sulph.
2)Accidents : To dream about something like a car crash or accident, it means you have low confidence. This type of dream should be paid more attention to as it symbolizes emotional stress or a bad mental state. If you dream about a car crash it can actually meant that you are worried about losing something like a job, relationship or even your house, so you need to find the source of that worry.
Remedies : Ars, Graph, Nux-vom.
3)Amorous (Lascivious) : Our bodies are wired to want food, shelter, love & sex. This is what’s kept us alive for such a long time, so our brains are hardwired to think about sex fairly often. Whenever we see an attractive person, we are reminded that we desire sex & it’s pleasurable. So to dream about sex usually just indicates that you are a healthy adult & everything working the way it should. Much like food, if you think about it before bed (consciously or subconsciously) you will normally dream about it too. This is a good one to dream about because you can turn it into a lucid sex dream, which is MUCH more fun.
Remedies : Alum., Am-m., ant-c., arg-n., aur., bar-m., calc., camph., cann-i., canth., carb-ac., cob., con., cycl., dig., dios., gels., graph., ign., iris., kali-br., kali-c., kalm., Lach., lil-t., lyc., Nat-c., nat-m., Nux-v., Op., petr., Ph-ac., phos., plat., psor., puls., sabad., sars., sep., sil., Staph., tarax., thuj., Viol-t.
4)Anger (Fight or Quarrels) : To dream that you are holding or expressing anger represents an awareness of frustration or agitation. Experiencing a disagreement with someone in your waking life or inner conflict with an aspect of your character. You may be experiencing frustrations & disappointments with others.
Remedies : Arn., bry., mag-c., Nux-v., phos., staph.
5)Animals : This is a tricky one to interpret, because to dream of a specific animal usually means something completely different than a dream about animals in general. MOST of us dream about animals at least once in our lives, usually WAY more often. A dream about animals is almost always about an aspect of yourself. Animals are so easy to link to a personality trait or emotion, for example you might link a snake to someone who is deceptive or dishonest. You might link a lion to someone who is strong, courageous & powerful. So to dream about a specific animal is usually fairly easy to analyze. Sometimes the actual animals we dream about can just mean we are thinking about our own behavior in the waking world.
Remedies : Am-m., Arn., merc., nux-v., phos., puls.
6)Anxious : Dreams about what person is anxious about like Darkness, ghost, animals, insects.
Remedies : Acon., Alum., Am-c., Am-m., ambr., anac., arg-m., arg-n., Arn., ars-i., Ars., aur., bapt., Bar-c., bar-m., bell., bor., bry., Calc., camph., canth., Carb-s., carb-v., caust., cham., chin., cimic., cist., Cocc., con., croc., dros., ferr-ar., ferr-p., ferr., gamb., Graph., hell., hep., hyos., hyper., ign., iod., kali-ar., Kali-c., kreos., lach., laur., led., Lyc., Mag-c., mag-m., mag-s., mang., mur-ac. ,nat-a., Nat-c., Nat-m., nat-s., Nit-ac., Nux-v., op., petr., ph-ac., Phos., plat., psor., Puls., ran-b., ran-s., rheum., Rhus-t., sang., sep., Sil., Spong., stram., sul-ac., Sulph., Thuj., verat., zinc.
7)Business, of : If a person has a dream where business was the main component, then a dreamer should be prepared for difficulties on the way to success. Dreaming about a situation where a dreamer was able to become a serious entrepreneur, it is a sign of a start-up, in the near future he/she will have unexpected success.
Remedies : Bry., chel., cur., lach., lyc., Nux-v., puls., Rhus-t., sil.
8)Clairvoyant : Dreams in which person predicts very correctly, whatever is going to happen.
Remedies : Sulph.
9)Dead, of the : There are some dreams that are just so common that everyone got a different theory for what they mean. Death dreams are fairly personal like most dreams, & so you can’t really put a label on what a death dream means. What you can say is that they are RARELY good. It’s almost always considered bad or negative to die, unless you get into higher levels of thinking where you realize that death is merely the next stage of life, the next step. On a simpler level though, a dream about death can actually just mean you are accepting that you are changing into someone else. When we change, it’s said that we die a ‘small death’, meaning a part of who we WERE dies & makes way for the person we are becoming. In a way we are all dying every day in small ways, as well as being born in small ways. This just means you are changing & your brain & body are trying to make sense of it, & sometimes that just appears in the form of dreaming about dying!
Remedies : Anac., arg-n., arn., Ars., calc-sil., calc., crot-h., graph., kali-c., Mag-c., med., phos., sulph., Thuja.
10)Disappointments : Dreaming about disappointment in you by someone else represents your struggle to accomplish great things & the obstacles that keep you from achieving them. Dreaming about you being disappointed in yourself represents guilt about a recent action that you have made.
Remedies : Cann-s., ign., rumx., ust.
11)Disease : To have a disease in your dream is associated with having problems in waking life. To dream of a deadly disease is often connected to symbols of fear, anxiety & a crisis in confidence, Dreams in which you catch the disease slowly but inevitably results in death is a sign of worry.
Remedies : Calc., kreos., lyc., Nux-v.
12)Dogs : Dogs are a mixed one. Some people LOVE dogs & have very fond memories & thoughts linked with them, whereas others are terrified of dogs & always dream about being chased by them or even bitten. For most people, dreaming about a puppy can mean you are happy with your current puppy, or that you are ready for a baby or a puppy. To dream about a dog chasing you can just mean that you are running away from life responsibilities, or that you are not ready for a commitment that’s going on in your life right now. It might for example, mean you are in financial difficulty & the dog is literally your bills chasing you. It could mean that you are unhappy in your relationship.
Remedies : Arn., sil., sulph.
13)Falling off : Dreams about falling from great heights are very common. While there is a popular myth that if you hit the ground in your dream you will die in real life, it simply is not true. According to many popular dream interpretations & at least one study, falling dreams are a sign that something in your life isn’t going well. It might suggest that you need to rethink a choice or consider a new direction in some area of your life. It is a symbol of fear in real life – perhaps of failing at work or in your love life.
Remedies : Am-m., Bell., cact., dig., guai., kreos., merc., puls., sars., sulph., Thuj.
14)Fire : Fire is usually bad, & uncontrollable. To dream about fire can mean anger, passion or even destruction. Sometimes if you are angry or unhappy with a situation, you will dream about fire the same night & even destroying things & being in a fight. If you have got strong memories of camping like I have, & sitting round the campfire, feeling safe, warm & happy. This isn’t for everyone though as some people have never been camping!
Remedies : Anac., ars., bell., calc-p., carb-ac., croc., cur., Hep., kreos., Laur., Mag-c., Mag-m., mag-s., meph., nat-m., phos., rhus-t., sulph.
15)Flying : Flying is a SUPER common dream & the meaning is just that you are either feeling or WANTING to feel powerful & free. In lucid dreams, you can learn to control the flying dream even more, & stabilize the dream to make it feel even better.
Remedies : Apis.
16)Being naked in public : We all fear being embarrassed in front of the larger tribe (society) & so being naked in public is sadly a common dream. From a young age we are told that we should always cover up so as to not expose ourselves to people. This means that to dream about being naked means you are worried about how people will think of you. You are worried in some way about the appearance you have in society or even how you appear to a friend or partner. Pay attention to how often you have this dream!
Remedies : Puls.
17)Misfortune of : Nightmare or bad dreams lead to misfortune & bad luck, These misfortunes related dreams lead to bad luck in the life. So, if a person sees such things, it means, hard luck & destiny loss will brings sorrows in dreamer’s life. In the near future, time & fate will change & will not remain in favor of the dreamer.
Remedies : Nux-v., phos., Puls., sul-ac., sulph., Thuj.
18)Being cheated : If there is infidelity in your past, either in this relationship or a past relationship, this will keep cropping up because it is a bone of contention within yourself, If there are trust issues.
Remedies : Hyos, Stram.
19)Being poisoned : If you were taking poison in your dream, then you may be letting something into your life that is harmful to your wellbeing-perhaps you are allowing yourself to be jealous, bitter or letting negative feelings monopolize your thoughts. It might be wise to break this cycle before they take over completely.
Remedies : Kreos.
20)Pregnant : Pregnancy in a dream usually denotes being ready to give birth to something new in your life. If you are worried about being pregnant, or it could just be considering starting something new like a new relationship, job, travel plans or even trying to change yourself. It can also denote being scared of taking on new responsibilities, as children often are linked with a high level of responsibility. To dream about it in a negative way (the feeling of the dream is rushed, panicked, stressed) can mean you are not ready to take on new challenges.
Remedies : Pic-ac.
21)Rape threats of : Dreams of rape represent strong enemies, warnings about health, sexual manipulation, or harassment at work. It can happen in dreams that involve rape. The pressure you feel can be reflected in this kind of dream. However, not all are bad signs.
Remedies : Sep.
22)Repeating : One dream which is continuously repeating as a results of deep fear about it.
Remedies : Arn., ign., nat-m.
23)Skeletons : Skeleton is a symbol of obsessive fear, fear for your health, or possible failures & troubles. In dreams the image of the skeleton may indicate a variety of things & may be seen with variety of objects, which sometimes seem unreal & scary, Dreaming of a skeleton can also indicate your fears about health.
Remedies : Op.
24)Snakes : Snakes are a very common animal to dream about because they are so easily linked with lies & deception. Historically, snakes have been linked to lies in the bible & throughout history. To dream about a snake can mean that you are anxious about something or you think someone around you is lying about something.
Remedies : Arg-n., lac-c., ran-s.
25)Teeth, breaking off : The teeth falling out dream is a VERY common dream that people have. Almost everyone had a dream about their teeth falling out at one point in their lives, & probably wondered what it means. When we are young & we lose our teeth for the first time (our milk teeth to make way for the real ones), we are scared. It’s usually the first REALLY traumatic or scary thing we experience as young people. So it is no surprise that the brain LINKS this first experience of fear & trauma with other things in life that make you feel scared or uneasy. So that’s why if you dream about your teeth falling out as an ADULT, it just means you are scared or worried about the changes going on in your life now.
Remedies : Kali-n., ther., thuj.
26)Unsuccessful efforts to do various things : In spite of doing all positive efforts towards anything that person is trying to achieve, Although person is getting failure all the time, so in this dream person sees the all unsuccessful efforts for doing the same.
Remedies : Am-m., calc-f., calc., carl., croc., dig., ign., mag-c., mag-s., mosch., op., ph-ac., plat., tab.
27)Water : Water related dreams can mean you feel overwhelmed or unsupported by your loved ones. A dream about water can mean various things but mainly it symbolizes being either trapped or free. The meaning depends on what you link with water in your day to day life. If it’s a large amount of water it can mean that you have deep emotions or a strong emotional reaction to something happening in your life right now.
Remedies : All-c., all-s., Am-m., ars., bell., dig., ferr., graph., kali-c., lyc., meph., merc., sil., verat-v.
CONCLUSION :
As Dreams are the mirror of mind also it reflects the most innermost personality of a person. Every day we are getting some dreams & as Homoeopathy is based on Law of Individualization, The feeling of the same individual will be differs according to their constitution.
So it is very important to know following :-
-Why the person is getting such dreams?
-What is the role of the person in it?
-What is the experience of the person from that dream?
After knowing this, We can understand the core personality of the person. .
It helps to selection of constitutional remedies & solving the Dream problems & other sleeping issues. .
REFERENCES:
1) Kent’s repertory of homoeopathic Materia medica (6th Indian edition, 1961).
Publisher: B. Jain Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
2) Sigmund Freud : The interpretation of Dreams, Translated from the German & edited by James Strachey
3) https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-101
4) https://ouraring.com/blog/sleep-stages/
ABOUT AN AUTHOR :
Dr. Jayati Buch (Homoeopath),
Rajkot Homoeopathic Medical College,
Parul University.
Dr. Raxit Ramavat (Homoeopath),
Ahmedabad Homoeopathic Medical College,
Parul University.
