Sigmund Freud's Hypnosis As The Cause Of Mental Illness

Improved Essays
I’m in the middle of a sentence, talking to a friend, when all of a sudden my mouth starts to feel full. Trying to feel around with my tongue, it feels as if I have marbles in my mouth. I begin spitting them out and come to realize they are teeth; my teeth. I search for a mirror and see nothing but gums. As I look down I have a handful of my teeth. I start to panic because I don’t know what is happening and I can’t even speak or smile without people realizing I don’t have teeth. As the anxiety builds I awaken and come to my senses. It was just a dream, a dream I’ve had before but never the less a dream. As I lie in bed remembering how awful it was to feel my own teeth crumble in my mouth I can’t help but wonder what it all meant. Especially …show more content…
Among his many ideas, Freud believed psychoanalysis, or the “talking cure”, was a predominant way to help alleviate the mentally ill. His theory of psychoanalysis explained that some people can be cured by making their unconscious thoughts known. Unconscious thoughts including dreaming. In order to ameliorate someone, Freud came up with hypnosis which would help determine whether there is a mental problem but it was not considered a treatment plan. Hypnosis is where an individual is in a state of consciousness and loses capability of themselves, yet they are extremely responsive and open to suggestion and/or direction. It is intended for a person to calm their mind to the point where they can remember suppressed memories or faded dreams. In this case, when Freud was analyzing dreams he broke them up into two categories: wish fulfillment and manifest versus latent …show more content…
Every morning after I wake up from that dream of losing my teeth, I would have usually just googled what it meant but, studying Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis theory, I was able to take the manifest content and try to decipher it into a plausible explanation that meant more than just me losing my teeth. The manifest content is what I distinctly remember; feeling my mouth full and then spitting my teeth out into my hand. The latent content symbolizing the loss of teeth can actually be interpreted in many ways. One way of censoring the latent ideas was through symbolization with how the teeth relate to my appearance. Losing them could have meant I was embarrassed or had anxiety about my appearance and how others perceived me. The other two censorships fall more underneath condensation. Freud would have probably agreed with it symbolizing “sexual impotence or consequence of getting old” (Dream Moods 2016). Then there is the other version of condensation that is much deeper whereas the loss of teeth resemble the loss of voice, feeling inferior about something and perhaps not having my voice heard. This is because teeth in general are used to bite and be aggressive which can be viewed as power and without teeth means without power. All these hidden symbolisms could

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Someone who is hypnotized is aware of their waking surroundings, yet they are seeing themselves within a dream or perhaps even a regressed memory. This will allow the individual conducting the hypnosis session to help their patient. Today, there are…

    • 1778 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The therapist needs to engage the client with their subconscious mind in the most effective way possible, in order that the client may gain an awareness of, and be able to access, their own potential. This highlights the essential view of the therapist as a skilled helper, enabling the client, rather than an all-knowing and all-powerful practitioner. As *Sandor Ferenczi so eloquently stated in 1916: …' the unconscious mental forces of the patient appear as the real active agent, whereas the hypnotist, previously pictured as all-powerful, has to content himself with the part of an object used by the unconscious of the apparently unresisting patient according to the latter's individual and temporary disposition'. Ferenczi not only developed an awareness of the complications associated with client conformity in his work (another important consideration), but also clarified the then termed 'Maternal' (permissive, warm, supportive) and 'Paternal' (authoritarian, direct, aggressive) styles of hypnotherapy (now termed 'Permissive' and 'Authoritarian') by recognising their associations with traditional parental approaches.…

    • 2138 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On the surface, psychoanalysis can be defined as “a system of psychological theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association” (GOOGLE). As a primary component of the psychoanalysis movement, Sigmund Freud encompasses theories regarding dream interpretation in order to reveal one’s internal thoughts. According to Freud 's theories about dream analysis, our unconscious mind enables us to manipulate our internal thoughts and emotions into a form of artistic expression. As humans, we typically have an innate tendency to suppress…

    • 860 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his analysis of dreams and the dream-work, Freud theorized that there were two distinct kinds of content in relation to dreams. The first kind of dream content is manifest content and refers to the material experienced in the surface of the dream. Manifest content includes all of the elements of images, thoughts, and content in the dream that is retained in an individual’s memory upon awakening. The second kind of dream content is latent dream-thoughts and refers to the relevant material of the dream discovered through analysis. Latent dream-thoughts consist of the hidden meaning of an individual’s unconscious thoughts, wishes, and desires.…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Freud believed in the expression of language to help reveal the nature of his patient's dreams. He used the term 'dream-work' to describe the ways in which dreams materialize from the unconscious and argued that dreams reflect desires which are supressed by the superego in order for the ego to develop as a social individual. There are instances however, when desires often escape from the unconscious and are revealed through slips of the tongue or within dreams themselves. The content of a dream is produced by 'dream-thoughts' and presented in the form of illustrated signs which are then deciphered back into dream-thought to obtain the correct meaning. The relationship between the way dream-thoughts are displaced and condensed can be applied…

    • 151 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Freud went on to receive the government grant which gave him the opportunity to travel to Paris, France for 19 weeks to study under the influence of French neurologist Jean Charcot (Freud, Sigmund). Charcot was a director of a mental hospital which was “treating nervous disorders by the use of hypnotic suggestion”; Freud was inspired by Charcot’s treatment of using hypnosis in treating patients (Freud, Sigmund). Freud then started to think of numerous ways to help treat mental illnesses and ways to explain human…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the client’s unconscious; the part of the mind, one has little or no access to. The process of psychodynamic therapy is the thought pattern that occurs in the unconscious that one is not aware of. The therapist practicing this technique will consider all known information about the client to create a detailed plan of treatment. The goal of psychodynamic therapy is for the client to gain self-awareness. The therapist can offer insight to any transference a client may be experiencing in their life.…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My dreams that I recorded in my dream journal best follow the descriptions of Freud and Cartwright’s theories and the information processing theory in that my dreams contain manifest and latent content and they are also closely related to my waking life and the situations or problems in which I have been involved. Sigmund Freud’s dream theory claims that dreams contain images that can sometimes have a significant meaning relating to the person’s life. These different images may serve as a symbol which represents a deeper meaning than just an object that happens to appear in dreams. This is where Freud’s idea of manifest and latent content comes into his theory. Manifest content is described as the actual remembered story line of our dreams, while latent content is the underlying and more hidden meaning of the dream.…

    • 1097 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    1. Spector, D. (2015, September 22). Psychologist reveals the 9 most common dreams and what they mean. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-common-dreams-and-what-they-mean-2015-9?r=UK&IR=T%2F#9-finding-an-unused-room-1 2. This article is basically just a list of interpretations of the nine most common dreams, such as being chased or having your teeth fall out, that all people have and what to do to while you are conscious do to help you avoid these dreams.…

    • 160 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Freud found that by enabling people to recall and bring into conscious awareness previous events which often involved intolerable emotions that were not expressed at the time of the event, he was able to cure many hysterical symptoms which his patients suffered from that had no physiological basis, such as paralysis, blindness and loss of memory. Freud supported this view with one very famous case – the case of Anna O. Anna suffered from paralysis in the right arm for which there was no apparent cause. In therapy Anna revealed that one evening she had been nursing her very ill father and she had begun dozing in a chair by his bed with her arm flung across the back of the chair. In the half light she imagined that she saw a large black snake…

    • 331 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Therapy with Dream Analysis Reveals Critical Information Although children are taught to not take dreams too seriously; to remember dreams are not real, only imagination, this is not the case for all dreams. In reality, “...the dream serves as a substitute for a number of thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect logic” (Freud, 1987, p. 184). This proves our brains are still thinking well enough at night to make our dreams logical. Proving dreams are just as significant as any other thoughts. Humans’ brains never quit thinking, so dreaming is full of senseful thoughts which have purpose.…

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Freud believed that nothing you do occurs by chance; every action and thought is motivated by your unconscious mind at some level. a. In order to live in a civilized society, you have a tendency to hold back your urges and hide your impulses. b. Because they can’t be expressed in a social setting, our urges and impulses are expressed in our unconscious mind, through our dreams. 2. For this reason, Freuds theory about dreams focused primarily on sexual desires and symbolism.…

    • 1734 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Both the concept of repression and wish fulfillment are perpetuated by the ego in order to grant the dreamer long-term psychological and physical energy. In On Dreams, Freud describes the primary function of dreams as being entities that fulfill wishes. Freud calls the dreams we directly see the “manifest dream” (DUKKY) whilst calling the latent themes behind dreams, appropriately, “latent dream thoughts.” (DUKKY) Freud claimed that components featured in in manifest dreams where representations of latent dream thoughts that represented desires.…

    • 1610 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Psychology Of Dreams Essay

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages

    First, I am going to start out with the definition of Psychology. Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions. Speaking of the human mind and its functions, dreams, what are they? Dreams are a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams are very mysterious, they are the “royal road to… the unconscious,” a famed psychologist once said (Sigmund Freud).…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    METHOD FOR INTERPRETATION? Self-case study of Freud's own dream in 1895. ' Irma's injection'. Upon analysing the dream, it was revealed that Freud felt deeply guilty over not being able to improve Irma's psychological disorder. The dream was a wish-fulfilment of his desire to lay the blame…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays