ABSTRACT: This is a research project based on the hypothesis “Dreams~perception of the unconscious mind”. In this research, viewpoints and studies conducted by different psychologists have been mentioned. An online survey was conducted among people from the age group of below 20 to above 60 to find out how dreams affect our waking life and if they have any meaning or not, either in a positive or a negative way. It is believed that dreams offer insight into the mental life of the unconscious. In most cases, dreams involve elements from real life, such as familiar locations and people. They can also be very fantasy. Although dreams can be very realistic, they can also be very fantasy. For some, they can also be very negative. In some  cases, they may come up with scenarios that are not possible in real life.  

Keywords: dreams, unconscious, psychoanalysis, mental life, therapy, mundane situations

INTRODUCTION:
Dreams are often filled with pictures and stories that are designed to entertain and inform. They can also be unsettling and frightening. They can also be used to describe feelings of self-doubt and dissatisfaction. While we sleep, our minds can create various types of images and stories. They can be entertaining, frightening, and sometimes even bizarre. Researchers now believe that dreaming can trigger mood regulation and memory consolidation, which is similar to the process of overnight therapy. These are just some of the types of stories and images that we create while we sleep. Although they have a purpose, they might not always send us messages about how to improve. Though it's not known why people tend to forget dreams, it has been studied extensively for over a century. The idea that dreaming is a physiological substrate of sleep was proposed during the 1950s. Instead of being purely statistical, it could provide new directions for studying dreams. Many of the subjective issues that are involved in psychoanalysis are not addressed in dreams. For instance, dreams can often be filled with mundane situations. Other issues that are considered subjective in psychoanalysis, such as the “subject's history” and personal meaning, are not addressed in dreams. Dreams remain one of behavioral science's great unanswered questions. The hypothesis that dreaming is linked to neuropsychological factors was challenged in the 1950s due to the lack of clear evidence on the link between dreaming and these measures. The psychoanalytical perspective could provide new directions in the study of dream research. Dreams are often filled with mundane situations and strange events, which are often ignored or avoided by cognitive neuroscience. Also, some of the elements of real-life events that happen in the world are often used in dreams to trigger scenes. According to psychological studies (“Hall and Van de Castle,1996; Schwartz 1999”) in most dreams, the user will experience scenes that are banal or frightening. For instance, they may see mundane situations or strange events. Some of the elements that the dreamer has experienced in real life may also contribute to the dream sequence. For instance, some of the people in the dream may be convinced that the story is real.

Freud’s understanding of dreams:
According to psychologist Sigmund Freud, dreams are disguised as manifest content, which is a type of wish fulfillment. He believed that these are the kinds of dreams that are disguised as sexual fantasies to avoid attracting erotic impulses. He believed that dreams should be disguised as they relate to unacceptable sexual impulses. Although most of them contain sexual material, Freud noted that fantasies that are mainly created by the unconscious mind are also disguised as images or stories. He believed that these are the kinds of dreams that are disguised as stories, images, or imaginations that are created by the unconscious mind.
Although the majority of adult dreams contain sexual material, Freud noted that they also give expression to erotic wishes. Some psychologists thought that dreams had two different classes, one that's affected by the past and the other related to the future. Aristotle believed that dreams didn't come from an agency and that they were not prophetic. He disagreed with this idea, stating that dreams didn't come from an agency and that they were not prophetic. Freud also argued that dreams are connected in our waking life.
Dreams have psychological significance, and psychoanalysis can help us understand them. For instance, Freud suggested that the content of dreams should hide a hidden message or a certain aspect of them. In a dream, a young girl had a recurring dream where her brothers and sisters suddenly disappeared. According to Freud, this dream represented a wish that the child could not accept consciously. The child was the youngest in the family. In her dream, her brothers and sisters suddenly disappeared while she was playing in a field. According to Freud, this scenario represented a wish to kill the child so that she could not accept it. In his book, he explained that dreams are produced through a series of unconscious mechanisms known as condensation, displacement, and representability.
According to Freud, dreaming is the only way to preserve sleep since the conscious mind can’t handle the endless desire to imitate the desires of the unconscious. His theory of psychoanalysis states that all people have unconscious thoughts and feelings. In order to preserve sleep, the goal of dreaming was to prevent the conscious mind from reacting to the fantasies of the unconscious. His theory of psychoanalysis states that everyone has the same unconscious thoughts and feelings. Psychoanalysis is a method used for treating mental disorders. Through studies conducted during the 1890s, he and Austrian doctor Josef Breuer identified the sources of patients’ ideas and feelings. Together, they were able to improve the patients’ conditions by exposing them to the sources of their unconscious thoughts and feelings.

In his book “The Interpretation Of Dreams” Freud presented evidence from his own dreams that supported his claim that dreams are a fundamental part of the psychic economy.  He also mentioned that dreams represent the analysis of the human psyche.

A theory of dreams can be used to treat mental disorders by uncovering the hidden fears and conflicts in the mind of the patients. This process can be utilized to diagnose and treat mental disorders by analyzing the conflict between the unconscious and conscious parts of the mind. Through the study of unconscious elements in the mind, we can explore the interactions between the conscious and unconscious mind. This method can help treat various mental disorders

In Freud’s 1900 book, psychologist Dr. Karl Gottwald stated that dreams can be derived from various sources, such as the external world and subjective experiences. Another theory that has been used to support this claim is called self-organization, which occurs when a system is suddenly disordered. The result is a decentralized system that is managed by a group of people. In his book, Freud stated that dreams can be derived from various sources, such as the external world and subjective experiences. There has been strong evidence supporting this theory by using a method known as self-organization. This process involves generating an order within a disordered system, which is triggered by random fluctuations. The resulting decentralized system can distribute the organization's resources among various members.

In sleep, memory consolidation is a process that involves the consolidation of multiple short-term memories into one long-term memory. This method generates new information fragments whenever a person is sleeping. The purpose of this process is to extract useful information from the fragments whenever the individual is awake. For instance, the concept of two-stage memory theory states that when a person is sleeping, the fragments of two-stage memory are generated to extract relevant information. This process generates new information fragments whenever the individual is awake (Wamsley and Born 2012). Also, it activates certain long-term memories that are preferentially stored in the dream. These fragments are then preferentially activated and recalled after about 6 to 7 days. The concept of new long-term memories is also supported by the evidence.

Although both REM and NREM sleep are linked to new memories, the former is associated with declarative memory and the latter with emotional memory. The concept of the “dream-lag effect'' refers to the process of storing memories that can affect a patient's current life. Although both sleep phases are linked to new memories, NREM sleep is associated with the creation of new sets of days. This concept, which is referred to as the dream-lag effect, can affect a person's daytime activities.

Long-term memory is associated with events that happened during childhood, and these may be reflected in dream content, such as flying or being chased. Also, it has been shown that emotional memories can also be reflected in dream themes. Remote memory is linked to long-term memory, which suggests that dream content might contain content that recalls experiences that were earlier. This phenomenon, known as evolution, can involve collecting information over time. It can also be observed that emotional memories are related to the types of dream themes that we commonly associate with childhood. In addition, psychoanalysts have noted that the quality of dream content remains stable even after the formation of the structure of the dream.

The concept of the affective organization of memory states that the memory network is composed of affect and that a patient's similar memories can be identified through their emotional content in dream content. According to the concept of the affective organization of memory, a therapist can identify a patient's similar memories by analyzing their emotional content in dream content. The concept of the organization of memory states that the brain's affect system is organized by the presence of affect. This concept can be utilized by a therapist to identify the same kinds of memories that a patient might have experienced.

According to Freud, dreams are not random but are bound by one's unconscious desires that it’s “a dream is the fulfillment of the wish”. He found that the more agreeable dreams are more likely to disguise their true purpose ( i.e. indirectly fulfilling purpose). He also found that “disagreeable” dreams seem more widespread than “pleasant”. He also stated that the goal of a latent dream is to be revealed.

Relationship between the ‘Dream Interpretation and the Unconscious’
According to Freud, dreams of working adults should be given special attention as they are often subjected to distortion. This is because the thoughts that are present in our unconscious can hide the significance of our dreams. Due to the nature of the unconscious thoughts that are present in our dreams, the content of our dreams can be heavily hidden. This becomes of more relevance to professionals as the media's influence on our thoughts has increased.

According to psychologist Dr. Karl Gottwald, dreams are compromises that are made for the sake of satisfying dreams. He also stated that people tend to ignore the connections between dreams and the elements that appear in them. For psychologist and psychiatrist Dr. Frank Freud, dreams are compromises that are made to satisfy dreams. He also stated that people tend to ignore the connections between dreams and the various elements that appear in them.

 In addition, he explained that nightmares were the result of the failure of dreams, which, he believed, had the same effect as repressed wishes. This concept was also confirmed by the fact that the participant's level of consciousness reacted to the awareness of repressed wishes. The real meaning of dreams is now clear, as are the hidden complexes of the patient's memories. He also explained that nightmares were not caused by the failure of dream work but by the participant's level of consciousness reacting to the awareness of repressed wishes. Although the theory was eventually admitted to include traumatic dreams, psychoanalytic interpretations of them were still considered unorthodox. He famously described “psychoanalytic dream interpretation” as the, "royal road to the knowledge of unconscious activities of the mind."

Different psychologists have varied view points in dreams, Calvin S. Hall and Carl Jung’s dream interpretation was widely different from that of Sigmund Freud.

Hall's Dream Interpretation
Calvin S. Hall developed a theory in 1953 that states that dreams are a form of cognitive processing. According to Hall, dreams are mere thoughts that people think while they're sleeping. Analyzing them should involve keeping in mind the various cultural backgrounds and thoughts.

They should also keep in mind the personal conceptions of their dreams. During the 1970s, Ann Frarday wrote a variety of books about dreaming interpretation. One of her most important discoveries from his modern research was that most of our dreams are a reflection of things that have been happening in our minds, actually preoccupying them.

In 2009, a study conducted by psychologists Michee Norton and Carey Morewedge, in the “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology” Revealed that most people believe that their dreams reveal meaningful hidden truths. The study, which used cross-cultural samples, found that 60% of Americans, 65% South Koreans, and 74% Indians believed that their dreams reveal meaningful information

According to Hall, dreams reveal hidden details about ourselves. They also reveal regions of the unconscious that are not visible to the conscious mind. Hall dismissed the idea that dreams are trying to cover up something. In his 1974 book, he noted that the images of dreams reveal the structure of how people envision their lives. This is a valuable display for anyone who recalls and studies their own dreams. In his classic work “The Meaning of Dreams” (1966),  Hall explained that dreams are concrete representations of the thoughts a person has. They provide visual expression to the ideas that are invisible to the conscious mind.

He believed that dreams are the best way to explain your thoughts and behavior. They reveal things about yourself that others can't see. For him, the only way to be truly self-real is to put on a show for everyone. He said that dreams help us to see our faults, and they can help us ignore them. In our dreams, we can also see things about ourselves that are not so flattering, as well as those that we do not want to see because of our insecurities. The concept of repressed dreams was also confirmed by the participant's state of consciousness, which indicated that their dreams contain repressed ideas and fears. Hall explained that we all have completely “distorted self-images”, and we simply cannot see for ourselves who we are in the waking world. He mentioned that sometimes in our dreams, we see things that can never happen or things that do not make sense at all.

Jung’s understanding of dreams:
Jung saw dreams as having a respect for them, as he saw them as having a special knowledge that could be obtained from a non-natural source. Moreover he wanted to understand what the dream symbolosed for the dreamer. He saw them as having a negative connotation. He believed that if a person has a dream, then they could not only understand what it means to have a dream, but also how to live a dream. For him, dreams come from the unconscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious part of the mind operated to disguise the wishes of the ego, while Jung tried to inform the future personality. He referred to this part of the brain as the self, which is what guides us in our development, in a process that he called “individuation”.

Jung also believed that the parts of the mind that we do not want to acknowledge are held consciously by our ego. Jung believed that the unconscious was not just a dusty bin full of repressed ideas, but it also contained new ones. He believed that the unconscious was full of new ideas and that these were important to the personality. He believed that dreams can show us the unvarnished truth about ourselves, which can then give us the confidence to live a life full of happiness. Everyone should study their dreams in order to understand what they mean.  

Jung writes that dreams are presented as symbols of unacknowledged ness and denied parts of ourselves, which are compensations for our current, narrow and conscious states. As he put it: “Dreams do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise, but naïvely announce what they are and what they mean”. These are often misleading and irritating because we do not understand them. We can also see what makes them so strange and difficult to understand.

Carl Jung believed Freud’s interpretation was rather narrow in scope and it was limited. Whereas he suggested that the concept of dreams could be interpreted in a wider scope and represent the whole unconscious, which is what he called the collective unconscious. Jung conceptualized the concept of the collective unconscious as it pertains to the mind of the same species. According to him, dream material can be analyzed in two ways-
subjective and objective: ‘Objective Approach’: For instance, every person in a dream refers to the person who they are. ‘Subjective Approach’: They say that objects can also represent the various aspects of a dreamworker. In support of this theory, Gestalt therapists say that objects can also depict the dreams of their clients.

Many of the archetypes in the dreams were symbols or figures, which suggests that an unconscious attitude is hidden. Jung explained that dreams can help us understand our personal situations and our dreams are a representation of our unconscious selves. Jung specially ‘warned professionals to first understand the client's personal situation, then attempt dream interpretation’. He believed that these representations could help us understand our own situations. We can say that dreams have the ability to make us understand clearly the symbolic relationship between our situations and our dreams.

Following are two case studies:

CASE 1:

Vinay is a retired banker and lives in a joint family. For three years he has been having these recurring dreams in which he was walking in crowded lanes where sometimes there were other people as well, sometimes he would be alone. He was always trying to find a restroom. The reason being he already had a urine problem and because of that every night in his dream he would be looking for a restroom.

At first these disturbing dreams came every single night but after sometime they began to come every two days. In the dream he would be standing in a place which would be damp or not very clean,it would rather be an unhygienic area. Even if he somehow managed to find some restroom,he would not be very satisfied. It was either not clean or it appeared to be broken or unusable. This would always result in him waking up suddenly and going to the bathroom.

Sometimes in his dream,he would be wandering around at some random place where he thought he would find a restroom but he couldn't. He was running over and over but couldn't find anything there. Strangely the next day or morning he would feel very tired and restless. He would also sometimes complain of headaches and irritation. This has been happening to him since the past three years and it still hasn't stopped.

It is always this same dream, nothing changes. Even when he is sleeping during the day, he gets the exact same dream and whenever this particular dream occurs,the next morning he always feels drained out. He felt that he actually has been walking or running around for a few hours and he faced muscle pain sometimes though not always.

CASE 2:

Roy is a young boy from Bombay who had taken a year to prepare for the entrance exam and has lived in Delhi for about two years now. He lives in a shared house with his sister and his maternal uncle. He started complaining about recurring dreams where he was constantly ridiculed and laughed at by strangers. Sometimes they would poke fun at him, or they would suggest alterations to his routine. He also said that two people are following him and they are usually brothers and sisters.

He also noted that his brother-sister duo acted like they were impressed by him. He said that he started avoiding sleeping after his twin sister and brother-sister started mocking him. This caused him to start using sleeping pills and medicines to avoid sleeping which resulted in him adopting a ‘self-induced insomnia’.

These voices in his head started to become so dominant that at times he started answering back to them so he needed to go to the hospital for treatment. He stopped going to classes and started to become weaker. He was brought to the hospital and after a detailed check-up it was found out that he was  suffering from severe anxiety and depression. After being prescribed medication and being treated with psychoanalytic therapy he was then given a journal to keep track of his thoughts, feelings, dreams, actions and whatever voices he could hear.

On later analysis of the case, it was discovered that he did not share a healthy relationship with his family or his sister and there was too much competition within his family. Due to this competitive envirionment his sister was also the preferred child of his family. Therefore there was a factor of jealousy involved.

Through the intervention of Jung and a psychologist, we were able to identify his dysfunctional family and friends, as well as his own thoughts on life and his preferred child. Through this process, we were able to identify his delusions and beliefs. They believed that the people who mocked him in his dream were his friends and family, who are mocking him while he is awake. Further, they were trying to represent his sister, who he says is the preferred child. Once we were able to complete our interpretation of his dreams and thought patterns we could then begin to treat him with medication for the well being of the patient.

 A questionnaire was conducted on 37 people to view their different perspectives on dreams between the age groups below 20 to above 60. I used google forms to create the questions related to “Dreams-perception of the unconscious mind.” All questions were objective-type. The form was filled out on the basis of people's behaviors, experiences and thoughts.

PROCEDURE OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE:

1. I conducted an online survey on  people starting from the

age of below 20 to above 60 to find out how dreams affect their everyday life and if they have any meaning.

2. I used Google Forms to create a questionnaire consisting of

14 questions related to the topic “Dreams- perception of the unconscious mind”. All the questions were objective-type questions.

3. I then asked people to fill it out according to their thoughts,experiences and behaviours.4. Amongst the respondents, 35 belonged to the age group Below 20 years, 2 to the age group of 21-35  years and 2 in the age group above 40 years. I studied the responses carefully in order to reach a conclusion.  

The questionnaire is attached through figures separately

Based on the responses of different people on dreams some pie charts that show the percentage of people’s view point regarding the survey questions attached separately 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From the results obtained,we can see that the majority of people dream regularly and their dreams have some meaning and sometimes it affects their day. We can see that 51% of people dream everyday whereas 46.2% dream once a week. It is also observed that less percentage of people are actually aware that they are dreaming, 53.8% of people are not fully aware that they dream but they are partially aware. Generally most of us don't recall our dreams and we tend to forget but here 64.1% of people have recalled their dreams several times a week which is a good as well as an important thing as some dreams can have a connection with our waking life. If we  talk about the intensity of our dreams, we can see that 17.9% of people's dreams are quite intense whereas the same percentage of people say that they are not at all intense but 64% of people still find their dreams ‘somewhat intense’. We can have different types of dreams. They can be happy, scary or disturbing dreams also. Usually we all want to have ‘sweet dreams’ or happy dreams but some of us might have experienced nightmares or truly disturbing dreams that can affect our day, our mood or if too disturby then our mental or social life as well. It can be seen here that 33% of us have experienced disturbing dreams whereas 17% have also experienced scary dreams though 48% of people have still had happy dreams which is a positive trend. Lucid dreaming is something many people must have not experienced before. We cannot say 100% that lucid dreams and nightmares are exactly the same but they are both very disturbing and distressing. Here some of us have experienced it but 43.6% of people have never had it before. Nightmares are something that I think we all must have had and they can be somewhat distressing for about 70% of us. Previously I have mentioned many times that dreams can be or are related to our waking life. If we face recurring dreams it can mean something that is bothering us in our conscious mind. It is seen that 61% of people’s mood is affected due to their dreams or nightmares. Dreams have a very personal meaning for different people and this could be based on their expereinces. As a result dreams happen to have a subjective element to them.

After giving different perspectives of three psychologists about dreams, we learned that the participants had different ideas about the nature of dreams. They tend to occur involuntarily during sleep. It was concluded that dreams are a series of images, ideas, and emotions. Each psychologist had a different perspective on dreams. After detailed analysis, although the concept of dreams has been considered in philosophical, psychological, and scientific terms, their function has not been fully understood. According to studies, dreams are triggered by the brain's activation during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and stimulation of the limbic system.

I think dreams have a purpose, and they help us store important information. They can also help us get rid of non-important memories. They can also help us sort through our thoughts and feelings. Dreams are very real, and they can tell us a lot about ourselves. They can also help us get closer to what we really want. Dreams can also have real consequences if they are ignored. They can reveal our true thoughts and feelings, and they can also point towards the things that we need to improve. For me, dreams are like a virtual world where bits and pieces of thoughts and emotions are knot together by our brain in the form of visuals. When I dream about something unusual, I try to introspect it and wonder how it works which is quite interesting.

When writing a research paper on dreams, one of the most common questions that comes up is why we included the works of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. Not only were they both highly skilled, they also worked together for many years. The reason why these two men were included in the paper is that they both gave exceptional works on dreams. Being able to know that Jung was a follower of Freud's work makes this argument compelling. They both gave remarkable work. Through the work of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis provided us with a variety of ideas on how to treat people. Some of these include the importance of the unconscious, sexual development, and transference. Through his work, we were able to develop our notions of childhood, memory, and sexual development. Another important contribution that Freud made was his development of the theory and the practice of psychoanalysis.

While Jung developed the ideas of the extraverted personality, the introverted personality, and the collective unconscious. Jung's work has been influential in the study of religion and psychiatry. Jungian therapy has helped people identify their true self-worth and balance their psyche. It can help them realize that their current state is not balanced. Without Freud and Jung psychology would not have been possible and maybe we would have never understood what dreams really are and what their significance was.

CONCLUSION
Everybody has different dreams that are based on their own personal experiences and we can consider each of those different subjective experiences as valid forms of knowledge.  All experiences are different for different people. Everyone has a unique experience while dreaming and this makes different people have different perspectives on dreams. No one view about what dreams are can be considered to be objectively true for all people. They are actually a very important part of our lives and they don't receive the adequate attention that they deserve. It’s easy to overlook their relevance in our lives but a careful exploration of what they mean for every individual can help us understand what dreams really are. In this paper I Have discussed different views of dreams given by different psychologists and each in their own way helps us get more clarity on the topic dreams.  

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