Sigmund Freud was a pyschoanalysist who like many before him ws interested with the meaning of dreams. His book, The Interpretation
of Dreams, revolutionised the study of dreams and helped to further understand aspects of
personality as it relates to pathology. Freud
believed every person has hidden urges and desires but because society has to conform to rules, an individual represses these urges which may then play out in his dreams. Freud believed that no actions have ever occurred by chance, every action or feeling is motivated by the unconscious level.
Perhaps because of the era( sexually repressed Victoria) Freud ws preoccupied with sexual imagery and believed that evry long and/or slender object denotes a penis whilst every cavity denotes a vagina. These beliefs may have some truth in them but were probably just a product of the times, the culture of that era being that most people had sexual conflicts that went unresolved.
Freud belived that the motivations behind the dreams is related to wish fulfillment. He believed thatdreams were a way of fulfilling fixations or needs that are not gratified during the day. An example is that dreams about being out of control may be because the anal stage of personality development is not being handled properly.
All symbols or imagery relate back to the five stages of personality development and it is from these that the meanings of dreams can be derived. These five stages are Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital.
Freud believed that once a dream's thought process could be established and identified then the hidden meaning of the dream could be discovered.
An example of this is dreams that revolve around themes of incompleteness or unmet needs or even dreams that recurr constantly are because the oral stage and it's needs are not being satisfied appropriately. This might be indicated by fixations in daily life such as smoking or over eating or alcoholism.