Carl Bernstein

Dreams are defined by a series of ‘mental and emotional processes that occur during sleep, including thoughts, imagery, and problem-solving.’ (Osman, 2015) They often have a temporal progression with an accompanying narrative. Dream research focuses on the implications of dreams, both psychological and physiological, and how these implications relate to conscious and unconscious processes. Assuming a dualist approach to the mind-body debate, dream research attempts to connect material and mental…

The human psyche has long been a mystery to scholars and philosophers alike. Long working to analyze the cognitive process, scholars strive to make sense of human actions. Psychoanalytic theory, popularized by Sigmund Freud through his works, The Uncanny and Beyond the Pleasure Principle, focuses on gaining deeper understanding of human behavior on the psychological level. In terms of literary criticism, psychoanalysis provides a way to analyze where a character’s actions stem from and thus…

Sigmund Freud: The Structure of the Unconscious For many years, mankind has lived life with no perception of understanding the true meaning of living. The concept of our existence is to be, but what is to remain between the moments of life and death? In Sigmund Freud’s The Structure of the Unconscious, he outlines the mental capacity an individual has to be aware of, in order to mature and grow. The experiences we face make us who we are and coherently, leaves a lesson for a later time. In the…

Dreams have always been a curiosity. How they seem to reflect reality at times but bring us to other worlds at other times is confounding to us. Over the years there have been many theories about dreams and even more questions. What are dreams? How are they formed? How does dreaming affect us? Do our dreams have meaning? Does reality, stress, and trauma factor into our dreams? The answers to these are complicated and still mostly undiscovered, but this essay will cover some of what has been…

Predecessor to the 80’s cult classic, The Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal was legendary puppeteer Jim Henson’s first attempt at creating a fantasy motion picture filmed entirely with intricate animatronics and puppets. The film is complete with heroes, villains and the other main elements of fantastical narratives as described by Russian scholar and folklorist Vladimir Propp in his breakthrough work, Morphology of the Folktale, which states that there is a sequence of 31 functions — certain actions…

Sigmund Freud developed a model of the mind in which he described the aspects of the mind’s structure and function. Freud uses an example of an iceberg to correlate with the levels of the mind. On the surface is consciousness or the tip of the iceberg. This consists of thoughts and memories that are derived from meaningful thinking and conscious understanding. Below the surface and arguably the most significant region is the unconscious. This contains the processes that are thought to be the…

Introduction This assignment is written about Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory of development and Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory of development. They both believed that personality develops in a series of predetermined stages but their theories have different explanations. Outline of Freud's psychosexual theory of development According to Freud the sexual life begins with the birth and the sexual life comprises the function of obtaining pleasure from areas of the body. In his theory of…

Carl Jung, the pioneer of analytical psychology, explains complex, a core pattern of emotions, and perceptions in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme (Shultz and Shultz, 2009). Unlike what Carl Jung believed, collective unconscious might also create complexes, such as phobia, the irrational fear, through inheriting instinct. Anyhow, once the complex is fixed, a person starts to have a certain paradigm about the certain theme. Therefore, complexes could be interpreted as a…

it gained wider recognition owing to Sigmund Freud’s work. In his work Freud described narcissism as a sexual perversion, and defined it as “the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the way in which the body of the sexual object is ordinarily treated – who looks at it, strokes it, fondles it till he obtains complete satisfaction from these activities.” (Freud, 1914, p.73) Narcissism is defined by the American Psychiatric Association (2013) as a personality disorder, which includes “a…

By definition, lucid dreaming is being aware of dreaming while dreaming. Perhaps a double entendre but, perhaps, this closely explains the meaning without confusion. Coined long ago, the word "lucid" is used in the sense of mental clarity. Almost anyone, with knowledge obtained by doing, can live through lucid dreams. Not in any way dream control, lucid dreams have little or no control on dreaming. Nevertheless, lucidity in a dream will probably improve the ability to methodically affect the…