steve kwan user experience designer

Psychology homework

(September 19th, 2005 - 10:12AM)

"8. Provide a brief description of a dream or dream fragment. You can use one of your own dreams or a dream experienced by a friend or family member. How would a psychoanalytic theorist explain this dream? How would the same dream be explained in terms of the activation-synthesis theory of dreams?" (10 marks)

You're going to think I'm being a smartass here, but I really did have this dream.

I dreamed I was a professional wrestler. For some reason, I would beat up another professional wrestler until he was unconscious, then carry him to downtown Waterfront in Vancouver. I'd take off his clothes, leave him unconscious and naked on the sidewalk, and run away giggling.

I don't think this dream is easy to interpret, but it's a lot more interesting than the typical ones. Again, let me emphasize that I'm not making this up.

A psychoanalyst would probably have a field day with this one. Psychoanalysts say dreams are veiled interpretations of conscious desires which are too disturbing to be though of directly; the brain will disguise these desires so the dreamer will not be disturbed. I assume that a psychoanalyst would explain this dream as repressed homosexual or violent urges.

An explanation using the activation-synthesis theory might be more likely: the dream is complete nonsense caused by neurons firing in the brain during REM sleep. Perhaps during sleep, neurons were firing in the part of my brain responsible for watching professional wrestling on television - I have no idea which part of my brain this is, so I apologize for not being able to name it - and the activity in this part of the brain created the content in the dream.