Can our Decision-Making and Intuition Be Explained Through our Dreams?A Psychological Theory Review and Literature Analysis

Robert BouffardSponsor: Kathleen Webster

IntroductionWhen I began considering ideas for my honors project, I was looking for an introspective opportunity that would allow me to understand myself more as a person, as well as further understand some of the theories that psychologists I admired published over the relatively short lifespan of the field known as Psychology, most notably Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Therefore, I decided to look at how people make decisions based on the unconscious images we dream.

MethodsOver the past semester I’ve read dozens of articles, as well as published theories and autobiographies written by both Freud and Jung, the two most renown psychologists for their approaches regarding the unconscious. In addition, I kept an extensive dream journal throughout the semester, attempting to apply some of the concepts I have learned to my own life, as a form of introspection.

Literature CitedCamilleri, S., & Berger, J. (1967). Decision-Making and Social Influence: A Model and an Experimental Test. Sociometry, 30(4), 365-378. doi:10.2307/2786182Schöbel, Markus, et al. “Social Influences in Sequential Decision Making.” PloS One, Public Library of Science, 19 Jan. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4718651/.Jung, C. G., and Aniela Jaffé. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Stellar Classics, 2013.Freud, Sigmund, and A. A. Brill. The Interpretation of Dreams. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1997.

“Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.”

“What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.” – Sigmund Freud

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

“In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.”

“Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.”- C.G. Jung

DiscussionStudying my own dreams and the idea of our relationship with dreams as a whole was such a rewarding process for me. I was able to understand my own internal thoughts and emotions on a deeper level and without this Honors project, that would not have been possible. I’d like to thank Dr. Kate Webster for guiding me along this journey and keeping me grounded when life got difficult.Results

As I read, I began to understand dream theories as a cycle, where our unconscious affects our conscious through what we consider intuition, but is actually how we decoded the messages produced as we sleep. This affects who we spend time with and our personal goals. These experiences that we develop as a result, then impact our dreams by expressing our internal desires and our repressed emotions from an earlier part of life. This cycle is also influenced by societal pressures, as described by Uri Bronfenbrenner and Abraham Maslow. Since the concept of ”dreams” does not provide any definite or concrete answers, it was impossible to determine if the cycle I envision is 100% accurate, or if there are other factors that I did not account for, but the progress made this semester was substantial nonetheless from both a personal and psychological perspective.