Wish-Fulfillment
In Freud's model, every dream seeks to fulfill one or more of a person's inner desires. Most of these are unconscious and in some sense universal; the wish for approval, sexual gratification, love, and success are common in his analyses. Often these wishes are complicated by social constraints or the moral sensibilities of the dreamer, and give rise to conflicting wishes.The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being touched by the hand of the musician, is struck by some outside force ; the dream is not senseless, not absurd, does not presuppose that a part of our store of ideas is dormant while another part begins to awaken. It is a psychic phenomenon of full value, and indeed the fulfilment of a wish ; it takes its place in the concatenation of the waking psychic actions which are intelligible to us, and it has been built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. -The Interpretation of Dreams, p.103
For example, a man might wish for the affection and approval of his wife, and feel jealous that she devotes more time and attention to caring for their son than for him. One wish, then, is to be rid of his son so that he can regain all the affections of his wife. This conflicts with the man's desire to be a good, loving father. These two wishes might both manifest themselves simultaneously in an anxiety dream, or nightmare.
Freud illustrates the concept of wish-fulfillment with many examples of familial tensions. I chose this particular case because it is the subject of The Simpsons Season 12 Episode 12, in which Homer is jealous of Bart.
In an anxiety dream, some kind of distortion typically occurs. This is the dreamwork's way of keeping a forbidden or distressing desire from fully surfacing. This unwanted wish is obscured by the shifting logic of the dream, which seeks to fulfill both it and whatever acceptable wish might conflict with it (like being a good father). The unwanted wish is repressed-- it doesn't appear in the dream in its literal, explicit form. Instead, it is encoded in symbols or depicted metaphorically, so that it can be fulfilled without fully surfacing. Freud believes that these repressed desires can be figured out using Dream Analysis, and that understanding and accepting one's unconscious feelings can help one live better.