Sleep in terms of psychology

In psychology, there is a special relationship to dreams. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was the first to address dreams. He believed that dreams – it is "a direct road to our unconscious", it is repressed sexual desires. At that time, this was a fair opinion, since the sexual topic was taboo.

Further on, the question of sleep was considered by Carl Jung. He believed that in dreams people reflect their daily life, their relationships with other people, compensate for their emotional and behavioral manifestations. He also believed that collective, archetypal symbols are displayed in dreams, and gave a number of interpretations of these symbols.

Gestalt therapy in the person of F. Perls considers dreams as an illustration of unfinished situations from our life. Dreams show us the repressed, ignored, denied sides of our personality, whether it be resentments, disappointments, conflicts, desires, joy, etc. Interestingly, F. Perls believed that any part of a dream is the dreamer himself. In this regard, the main work with dreams is the identification of the dreamer with each character or even inanimate object from the dream.

The main work with dreams takes place in several stages:

• Step 1: Tell the dream in the first person, while noting the most energetically charged fragments of the dream and the experiences that you have in connection with it.
• Stage 2: Identify with each "object" from a dream, alternately saying a monologue on his behalf.
• Stage 3: create a dialogue between two "objects" sleep.

To illustrate the effectiveness of such work, here is an excerpt from John Enright's book Gestalt Leading to Enlightenment:

"An elderly, grey-haired man, with an expression of resignation, said that he saw in a dream some friends who were leaving by train. As he waved goodbye to them and identified with them, nothing seemed to happen. When he identified with the train leaving the station, there was more energy, but still the new method did not impress me. The man hesitated when Fritz suggested that he become the station itself, and at first it seemed as unproductive as anything else. Then he said, “I'm old-fashioned and somewhat outdated. They don't take care of me too much, they don't dust and take away the trash. And people come and go, use me as they need, but they don’t really notice me as such, – he cried

Of course, you can work with dreams yourself. But for the greatest effect, it is better to use the services of a therapist. After all, working with dreams – it is an exciting, creative and sensual experience that frees from conflict energy and gives scope for personal development more than any intellectualization and interpretation of dreams.

Source estet-portal.com