Essay, Research Paper: The Interpretation Of Dreams

Many people often wonder why we have dreams and if they even mean anything. In Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, he claims that dreams are indeed meaningful and the reason why they are is because dreams represent wish fulfillment. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud goes into specific examples of why dreams convey unfulfilled wishes of the person that is having the dream. Freud's examples are crucial in this work because before it was published most people assumed dreams were universal, not personal.
To begin his argument that dreams are wish fulfillment, Freud uses himself as an example. He says, "If I eat anchovies or olives or any other highly salted food in the evening, I develop thirst during the night which wakes me up. But my waking is preceded by a dream; and this always has the same content, namely, that I am drinking. I dream I am swallowing down water in great gulps, and it has the delicious taste that nothing can equal but a cool drink when one is parched with thirst."(311). Here Freud shows how his dream can be wish fulfillment. He was thirsty when he was dreaming, and in his dream he was rewarded with a glass of water. Freud also states these kinds of dreams as "dreams of convenience". (311).
In Freud's next examples, he uses the comparison of adults and children. In paragraph nine Freud says, "We may expect to find the very simplest forms of dreams in children". Most readers would agree when Freud further explains this statement of his by saying, " since there can be no doubt that their psychical productions are less complicated than those of adults." Freud goes on to explain that dreams that children have are important to the child just as much as they are to adults. The reader might also agree when Freud says that the dreams of children "raise no problem for solution". Freud's points here make sense to the reader, because everyone knows that a child's mind is more simple than that of an adult, so why would dreams on the subconscious level be any different? Freud backs up these statements with examples of his own children's dreams. After reading Freud's examples, the reader can easily understand Freud's statements mentioned above because now the reader has read examples of dreams from adults and children.
Even though Freud's examples are solid and reliable, they are one sided. Freud only uses examples of people close to him, like his children or close friends. What Freud lacks is a survey or a comprehensive study of dreams from the perspective of people he is not close to. Since Freud's theory of dreams was not of the norm during his time, he needs more convincing resources to back his theory. The reader may get the impression that Freud didn't research enough on the subject of dreams, since he uses only close resources. Also, Freud proposes questions about dreams that the reader would want to know the answers to, yet he fails to answer them. Some of the questions that Freud asks, but fails to answer are, "What is the source of the material that has been modified into the dream? What is the source of the many peculiarities that are to be observed in the dream-thoughts - such, for instance, as the fact that may be mutually contradictory?"(310). Freud hesitates to answer the question, and insists to pursue proving that dreams are wish fulfillment. He makes a reliable argument that dreams are wish fullfilment in his first couple of examples. It is here that Freud should move on to the questions unanswered than to ramble on a point that he has already made.
Although his research is biased, Freud does a noteworthy job of explaining how dreams can be wish fulfillment. His examples are thourough and detailed, giving the reader knowledge of his theory. Also, Freud poses many interesting questions about the meaning of dreams that at his time had yet to be asked.