Today there is still so much controversy over the ideas of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. His reasoning always dealt with sexuality in some way, which made his analysis unbelievable. Many scientist claim that Psychoanalysis is not a science and others believe the way it is told is what makes it unbelievable. The way Freud links his ideas to sex and how his analysis is told as a story also leaves him wide open for criticism. Freud's theory about sexuality being the center of psychopathology as well as the major drive of all individual developments has made him one of the most controversial yet most influential scientists of this century.
In Freud's book Interpretation of Dreams, he depicts dreams as symbolic stories in which sleepers' unconscious sexual and aggressive desires play out in disguised forms. Freud also acknowledged that dreams don't always show wishes or desires. He noted that some dreams represent attempts to master a past traumatic experience. Yet he always held that dreams contain both surface events and hidden personal thoughts. .
Freud's theory of how dreams work has had a huge cultural impact over.
the past century, as it also attracted intense criticism. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, says, "Unconscious wishes play little or no part in dream instigation, dream emotion is uncensored and undisguised, sleep is not protected by dreaming, and dream interpretation has no scientific status," (Bower). Freud's analysis of dreams does not make sense scientifically. Hobson is basically saying the act of dreaming allows a lot of strange but heartfelt images into the mind that carry no hidden meanings.
Hobson also states, "Neuroscientific evidence indicates that the sleeping brain churns out dreams as an afterthought to its other duties" (Bower). This again shows how Freud's model of the mind and notion of dreaming are in total conflict with modern science.
