Dreams And Freudian Theory- Essay, Research Paper
Dreams and Freudian Theory-
Dreams have been objects of boundless fascination and mystery
for humankind since the beginning of time. These nocturnal vivid
images seem to arise from some source other than our ordinary
conscious mind. They contain a mixture of elements from our own
personal identity which we recognize as familiar along with a quality
of `otherness’ in the dream images that carries a sense of the strange
and eerie. The bizarre and nonsensical characters and plots in dreams
point to deeper meanings and contain rational and insightful comments
on our waking situations and emotional experiences. The ancients
thought that dreams were messages from the gods.
The cornerstone of Sigmund Freud’s infamous psychoanalysis is
the interpretation of dreams. Freud called dream-interpretation the
“via reggia,” or the “royal road” to the unconscious, and it is his
theory of dreams that has best stood the test of time over a period of
more than seventy years (Many of Freud’s other theories have been
disputed in recent years).
Freud reportedly admired Aristotle’s assertion that dreaming
is the activity of the mind during sleep (Fine, 1973). It was perhaps
the use of the term activity that Freud most appreciated in this brief
definition for, as his understanding of the dynamics of dreaming
increased, so did the impression of ceaseless mental activity
differing in quality from that of ordinary waking life (Fine, 1973).
In fact, the quality of mental activity during sleep differed so
radically from what we take to be the essence of mental functioning
that Freud coined the term “Kingdom of the Illogical” to describe that
realm of the human psyche. This technique of dream-interpretation
allowed him to penetrate (Fine, 1973).
We dream every single night whether it stays with us or not.
It is a time when “our minds bring together material which is kept
apart during out waking hours” (Anonymous, 1991). As Erik Craig said
while we dream we entertain a wider range of human possibilities then
when awake; the “open house” of dreaming is less guarded (Craig,
1992).
Superficially, we are all convinced that we know just what a
“dream” is. But the most cursory investigation into the dream’s
essence suggests that after describing it as a mental something which
we have while sleeping,” and perhaps, in accord with experiments
currently being carried out in connection with the physiological
accompaniments of dreaming, such as Rapid-Eye Movements (REM), the
various stages and depths of dream activity as reflected in changing
rates of our vital signs (pulse-rate, heart-beat, brain-waves), and
the time of the night when various kinds of dreams occur, we come up
against what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the “Ding-An-Sich”
(’thing-in-itself’), and find ourselves unable to penetrate further
into the hidden nature of this universal human experience (Fromm,
1980).
It has been objected on more than one occasion that we in fact
have no knowledge of the dreams that we set out to interpret, or,
speaking more correctly, that we have no guarantee that we know them
as they actually occurred. In the first place, what we remember of a
dream and what we exercise our interpretative arts upon has been
mutilated by the untrustworthiness of our memory, which seems
incapable of retaining a dream and may have lost precisely the most
important parts of its content. It quite frequently happens that when
we seek to turn our attention to one of our dreams, we find ourselves
regretting the fact that we can remember nothing but a single
fragment, which itself has much uncertainty. Secondly, there is every
reason to suspect that our memory of dreams is not only fragmentary
but inaccurate and falsified. On the one hand it may be doubted
whether what we dreamt was really as hazy as our recollection of it,
and on the other hand it may also be doubted whether in attempting to
reproduce it we do not fill in what was never there, or what was
forgotten (Freud, pg.512).
Dream accounts are public verbalization and as public
performances, dream accounts resemble the anecdotes people use to give
meaning to their experience, to entertain friends and to give or
get a form of satisfaction ( Erdelyi, 35 ).
In order to verbalize the memory of a dream that there are at
least three steps one must take. First putting a recollected dream
into words requires labeling categories, and labeling categories
involves interpretation. Next since the dream is multimodal, putting
them into words requires the collapsing of visual and auditory imagery
into words. Finally since dreams are dramatizations narrating a dream
is what linguist call a performance or demonstration and the rule, ”
What you see is what you get “, cannot apply, since only one party can
see. (Dentan, PH.D, 1988)
In the case of dream accounts, it is the context, which is
vital. After all, since meaning is context, they are by definition
meaningless. David Foulke, who wrote the book Dreaming: A Cognitive
Psychoanalysis Analysis, correctly states ” that dreams don’t mean
anything “. But people make meaning, ” as bees make honey compulsively
and continuously, until it satisfies their dreams and their lives “. (
Dentan PH.D, 1988 )In analyzing the dreams of Freud’s patients he
would sometimes use a certain test. If the first account of the
patient’s dream were too hard to follow he would ask them to repeat
it. In by doing so the patient rarely uses the same words. But the
parts of the dream, which he describes in different terms, are by
fact, the weak spots in the dream. By Freud asking to repeat the dream
the patient realizes that he will go to great lengths to interpret it.
Under the pressure of the resistance he hastily covers the weak spots
in the dream’s disguise by replacing any expression that threaten to
betray its meaning by other less revealing ones (Freud, pg.515 ).
It will no doubt surprise anyone to be told that dreams are
nothing other than fulfillment’s of wishes. According to Aristotle’s
accurate definition,” a dream is thinking that persists in the state
of sleep.” Since than our daytime thinking produces psychical acts,
such as, judgement, denials, expectations, intentions and so on. The
theory of dreams being wish fulfillment has been divided into two
groups. Some dreams appear openly as wish fulfillment, and others in
which the wish fulfillment was unrecognizable and often disguised.
Others disagree and feel that dreams are nothing more than random
memories that the mind sifts through (Globus, 1991).
The next question is where the wishes that come true in dreams
originate? It is the contrast between the consciously perceived life
of daytime and a psychical activity, which has remained unconscious
and only becomes aware at night. There is a distinguishing origin for
such a wish. 1) It may have been aroused during the day and for
external reasons may not have been satisfied. Therefore it is left
over for the night. 2) It may have arisen during the day but been
repudiated, in that case what is left over is a wish that has not been
dealt with but has been suppressed. 3) It may have no connection with
daytime life and be one of those wishes, which only emerges from the
suppressed part of the mind and be
a current wishful impulse that only arise during the night such as
sexual needs or those stimulated by thirst. The place of origin of a
dream-wish probably has no influence on its capacity for instigating
dreams (Freud, pg. 550-551).
Freud states that a child’s dreams prove beyond a doubt that a
wish that has not been dealt with during the day can act as a
dream-instigator. But it must not be forgotten that it is a child’s
wish. ( Stanely R. Palombo, M.D., 1986 )
Freud thinks it is highly doubtful that in the case of an
adult a wish that has not been fulfilled during the day would be
strong enough to produce a dream. There may be people who retain an
infantile type of mental process longer than others may. But in
general Freud feels a wish left over unfulfilled from the previous day
is insufficient to produce a dream in the case of an adult. He admits
that a wishful impulse originating in the conscious will contribute to
the instigating of a dream, but it will probably not do more than
that.
My supposition is that a conscious wish can only become a
dream-instigator if it succeeds in awakening an unconscious wish with
the same tenor and in obtaining reinforcement from it. (Freud,
552-553)
Freud explains his theory in an analogy: A daytime thought may
very well play the part of the entrepreneur for a dream, but the
entrepreneur, who, as people say, has the idea and the initiative to
carry it out, can do nothing without capital. He needs a capitalist
who can afford the outlay for the dream, and the capitalist who
provides the psychical outlay for the dream is invariably and
indisputably, whatever may be the thoughts of he previous day, a wish
from the unconscious. (Freud pg. 230.)
Sometimes the capitalist is himself the entrepreneur, and
indeed in the case of the dreams, an unconscious wish is stirred up by
daytime activity and proceeds to construct a dream. ( Palombo, M.D,
1986 ) The view that dreams carry on the occupations and interests of
waking life has been confirmed by the discovery of the concealed
dream-thoughts. These are only concerned with what seems important to
us and interests us greatly. Dreams are never occupied with minor
details. But the contrary view has also been accepted, that dreams
pick up things left over from the previous day. Thus it was concluded
that two fundamentally different kinds of psychical processes are
concerned in the formation of dreams. One of these produces perfectly
rational thoughts, of no less than normal thinking, while the other
treats these thoughts in a manner, which is bewildering and
irrational. Referring to Freud’s quote stated in the beginning, by
analyzing dreams one can take a step forward in our understanding of
the composition of that most mysterious of all instruments. Only a
small step forward will enable us to proceed further with its
analysis. (Freud, pg. 589 & 608 )
The unconscious is the true psychical reality, in its
innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the
external world, and it is as incompletely presented, as is the
communications of our sense organ. There is of course no question that
dreams give us knowledge for the future. But it would be truer to say
instead that they give us knowledge of the past. For dreams are
derived from the past in every sense. Nevertheless the ancient belief
that dreams foretell the future is not false. (Freud, pg. 662) By
picturing our wishes as fulfilled, dreams are after all leading us
into the future. But the future, which the dreamer pictures as the
present, has been molded by his indestructible wish into a perfect
likeness of the past. ( Palombo, M.D, 1986 )Although there has been
some descriptive study of the incidence and character of feeling in
REM dreaming, there has been no investigation of the appropriateness
of dream feelings to accompany dream imagery. It has been suggested
that, the generation of affect in dreaming may not be as reliable as
the generation of other forms of dream imagery. Dream affect generally
seems to be consistent with the larger narrative context of the
dreams. (David Foulkes & Brenda Sullivan, 1988) Research by Cohen and
Wolfe has shown that a simple distraction in the morning had a strong
negative effect on dream recall. The study concerned a variable
relatively neglected in dream research, the level of interest the
subjects have about their dreams. One finding was that interest in
dreams appeared to vary with sex: woman reported that they more
frequently speculated their dreams and discussed them with other
people than did men. These differences could reflect a greater
tendency for woman to pay more attention to their emotional life and
inner self. (Paul R. Robbins & Roland H. Tanck, 1988)) One assumes
naturally that the past events incorporated in his patient’s dream
imagery may be defensive substitutions for other more objectionable
events of the past. Through its relation to the dream, the screen
memory, like the day residue, provides access to the associative
structures of memory in, which are embedded the wishes and events,
whose repression lies at the core of the neurotic process. ( Palombo
M.D, 1986 )
But dreams do not consist solely of illusions, If for
instance, one is afraid of robbers in a dream, the robbers, it is
true, are imaginary- but fear is real. ( Freud, pg. 74 )
Affects in dreams cannot be judged in the same way as the
remainder of their content, and we are faced by the problem of what
part of the psychical processes occurring in dreams is to be regarded
as real. That is to say, as a claim to be classed among the psychical
processes of waking life. (Freud, pg. 74 ) The theory of the hidden
meaning of dreams might have come to a conclusion merely by following
linguistic usage. It is true that common language sometimes speaks of
dreams with contempt. But, on the whole, ordinary usage treats dreams
above all as the ” blessed fulfillers of wishes “. If ever we find our
expectations surpassed by the event, we exclaim, ” I should never have
imagined such a thing even in my wildest dreams “! ( Freud pg.
132-133 )
—
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