Sigmund Freud was one of the first among those who tried to interpret dreams as an aspect of the human psyche reflecting a person’s secret thoughts, fears, and desires. The psychologist has presented the idea that the sleeping mind hides the specific symbolic meaning in dreams: it disguises dreams because sometimes they reflect feelings, which are not easy to accept. According to Freud, each dream has two types of content: manifest, or literal dream plot, and latent, including the hidden meaning of symbols present in a dream.
The function of dreams is to reflect real desires and thoughts and motivate people to implement them. Claiming that dreams were “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious,” Freud emphasized that they were a way of subconsciousness to contact the mind (as cited in Sack, 2021, para. 7). According to the theory, people whose libido is transformed into anxiety have nightmares. However, Adler criticized this point of view, refusing to admit that unconscious wishes could cause dreams. I tend to support Freud because a person’s dreams often directly depend on their state of mind: they are colorful when human is happy, and they are scary when they are, for instance, depressed. Therefore, Freud’s theory about dreams plays a vital role in the science of dreams.
“Glamory Street” dream has a slightly confusing plot and several symbols present in its latent content. In the center of the manifest content, there is a man who cannot find the street he needs. The vision often changes, involving a dreamer’s acquaintance, a large Doberman-like dog, and even a police car. It seems it also reflects more profound wishes and fears of this man. Due to the meaning of symbols present in the dream, its latent content represents the hidden desires of this man, which he does not admit even to himself and possible difficulties in his life. This dream is not a nightmare in the literal sense of the word since it does not look like a dream, after which a person wakes up scared. On the other side, this dream causes anxiety and feeling uneasy. Based on Freud’s theory of nightmares, this dream can be considered a nightmare because it is connected with the transformation of libido into anxiety: it can symbolize the wish to be protected (Sack, 2021). Therefore, this dream has manifest content and hidden symbols to which the dreamer should pay attention.
The account of this vision does not refute the Freudian theory of the dream but rather confirms it. The dream’s events reflect the actual thoughts of the dreamer. According to Freud’s dream interpretations, a walk with a dog can symbolize a desire to be protected (Barbeito, 2021). The image of police means “a super-ego image, which represents taboos arising out of childhood”: perhaps the dreamer just needs to have a rest and feel more independent (What does it mean, n.d., para. 5). If a person gets lost in a dream, it may reflect that they have lost their goal or do not know what to do next. Office connected with gay advocacy can mean various things: for instance, this man could, in reality, be afraid to belong to this group of people. This dream supports the continuity hypothesis, claiming that the vision often reflects the person’s current concern: perhaps, the man is at a dead end and cannot decide how to act. The dreamer could hide something from himself, not wanting to pay attention to some details of the dream or just forget the part of a dream.
According to Freud, almost any dream includes latent content containing symbols and hints which are significant to a person’s real life. “Glamory Street” is not an exception: if it is interpreted with the help of psychologists, it will tell this man a lot of facts about his subconscious desires, fears, and concerns. Perhaps if people pay more attention to their dreams, they will better know the real themselves and make the right decisions more often.
References
Barbeito, C. (2021). Dreaming of dogs. Aunty Flo. Web.
Sack, H. (2021). The interpretation of dreams according to Sigmund Freud. SciHi Blog. Web.
What does it mean to dream about police? (n.d.). Aunty Flo. Web.