Many psychologists have theorized about why people dream. "Sigmund Freud believed that dreams were windows to your unconscious; that your greatest unfulfilled wishes and fears would be expressed symbolically in your dreams." Freud's view has been highly influential, and psychotherapists still use dream interpretation during therapy. Chrick and Mitchilson's "mental housekeeping hypothesis says that you need to dream to clean y

Cartwright used 17 paid volunteer college students to test her predictions. All the volunteers claimed to be good sleepers, and spent a few nights in the laboratory in order to adapt to the surroundings. Each subject had to sort a deck of cards with an adjective such as selfish on each one. The cards were placed into seven categories ranging from "least to most like me". The subjects then sorted another deck for the person they would most like to be. This allowed the researchers to find a negative aspect the subject wanted to change, called a "target adjective". The subjects were wired to electrodes during sleep, so their periods of REM sleep could be monitored. Prior to falling asleep, the subjects were told to say over and over; "I wish I were not so (target adjective)" The subjects were awoke during REM sleep so they could report their dreams. Cartwright was extremely thorough in the evaluation of the subjects. She chose two other words along with the target adjective in order to eliminate other motivations for dreaming about a certain topic. "If only the target word is incorporated on a significant number of cases, it might be argued that this is one model for

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)