Introduction
The analysis of dreams might at first glance be vested the triviality of astrology, and of other such superstitious activities so reminiscent of past generations. However, upon deeper inspection, and in the words of Freud himself, dream interpretation might as well be the royal road to the study of the unconscious, and to an unprecedented understanding of what makes us, us.
I have, however, come to think differently. I have been forced to perceive that here, once more, we have one of those not infrequent cases where an ancient and stubbornly retained popular belief seems to have come nearer to the truth of the matter than the opinion of modern science. I must insist that the dream actually does possess a meaning, and that a scientific method of dream-interpretation is possible. (-Freud)
I naturally (?) didn’t give a damn about dreams. This habit, I suppose, is grounded upon the absolute positivism that has, whether we like it or not, prevailed in modern society. Last week I decided to start maintaining a dream journal with the intention of soon making it publicly available on this very site. The sharing of dreams, as can be observed by the multitude of case studies contained in Freud’s book, offers wonderful insight into everything human. What is to be wise if not to exercise your pattern-recognition, and what better way of doing so if not through dreams, the content of which is readily available at our volition?
Quick Glossary
I want to keep this article short, the book is lengthy enough. For now, it suffices to say that Freud was convinced that most dreams can be recognised as a wish-fulfillment. The unconscious might, at times, distort the content of a dream and apply “censorship”. The wishes themselves belong to the “latent dream content”, whereas their experienced distorted form is what we call the “manifest dream content”. When the wish relates to the wish to sleep itself, the brain will get creative, and that’s why you dream of water when thirsty. Also, do note that the manifest dream in particular is usually extracted from events of the preceding day, or from childhood memories.
Somatic Dream-Stimuli Theory
Freud is quick to write off the so-called cipher method of dream interpretation, that is, the tradition of “hashing” the dream content by means of a predefined, fixed mapping from symbols to meanings. Dreams are of course affected by the memories and the understanding of the subject itself, so a statement such as “the sight of a cat in your sleep means death” is rather nonsensical. What is not immediately nonsensical however is the idea, ever more common, that dreams are, simply put, evolutionary accidents.
Strumpell makes use of an excellent simile: It is as though the ten fingers of a person ignorant of music were to stray over the keyboard of an instrument. The implication is that the dream is not a psychic phenomenon, originating from psychic motives, but the result of a physiological stimulus, which expresses itself in psychic symptomatology because the apparatus affected by the stimulus is not capable of any other mode of expression. (-Freud)
I love this analogy, and that’s exactly what makes it dangerous! Freud however, and I think rightfully so, refuses to accept that dreams are mere stochastic processes, meaningless byproducts of roaming brain activity. A dream journal, accompanied with the fact that it is not at all often that our mind produces dreams, is enough to prove his point.
A contemporary “opponent” of Freud, Henri Bergson, the ideas of which were coincidentally already presented to me by a friend, made an interesting proposition. He believed that dreams were formed by arbitrary memories that are picked by the unconscious for the sole purpose of fitting present stimuli, whether that be the hearing of a bird at night or the fluctuations of brightness from the shut eyelids! I hope I’m not misquoting him.
Bergson’s approach to dreams reminds me of diffusion models, they too start from noise, don’t they?
Dream Analysis in Action
After first reading the book, I dreamed about having a dream that, to my satisfaction and relief, could in no way be considered a wish-fulfillment. Freud, surprisingly, had predicted this.
Indeed, I have reason to expect that many of my readers will have such dreams, merely to fulfill the wish that I may prove to be wrong. (-Freud)
I will narrate yesterday’s dream, the first of mine to be recorded. I will attempt a formal analysis:
I’m in my living room, having a conversation with my sister. I’m talking about geometrically equidistant points, teasing my sister for apparently not providing an accurate mathematical definition, in a joking self-sarcastic nerdy voice that I frequently employ humorously. The dream ends with me exiting the living room and entering the balcony, and suddenly being horrified at the sight of gigantic insects, queen ants and mantises, with vibrant red tails. Trapped, I resort to escaping my home by descending the balconies of my flat, starting from the forth floor. I wake up.
Ever since my sister failed her university entrance exams (a barbarous, devilish, class-revealing process that I’ve already expounded on in a previous article), she became isolated and got a job. She ceased talking to anyone at home except my father, and she started experiencing hysteria, deliberately making our lives harder in a creative variety of ways that I do not wish to enumerate here. In spite of that, acknowledging the real trauma that she experienced in school, I tried being friendly but I failed to get her to talk to me. All my begging attempts have up to this date been partially effective, but have ultimately ended with her banging doors and screaming either way, hysterically emulating a panic attack. The wish-fulfillment of the latent dream content is obvious.
As for the manifest dream content, it suffices to examine the experiences of the previous day. I was reading Freud and vermin were mentioned in the context of a patient’s narration, thus leading to me dreaming of bugs. I’m still puzzled on why their tails were red. Mantises are the sole insects that I fear, owing much to their unpredictability. As for the appearance of geometry, although through great effort, I finally had my answer: The “royal road” quotation at the beginning of this article got me searching yesterday a quote of Euclid, the “father” of geometry, that I was once taught in school, namely
Ουκ έστι βασιλική ατραπός επί γεωμετρίαν
The choice of equidistant points is rather revealing. I can only suppose that my unconscious is here proposing a solution, or rather a communicative compromise between me and my sister. The choice is unimaginatively intelligent, it is not at all a product of chance. Additionally, I’ve long associated this quote with class-struggle, and it offers a consolation (albeit perhaps incorrect) in knowing that, despite my family not being able to afford private education for my sister (as is common among failing bourgeois), she won’t be left behind her rich peers.
The sight of me going down my flat by descending the balconies as if they formed a ladder has been a recurring scene in my dreams since the time I can remember myself. According to Freud, it must necessarily originate from my childhood. My parents, who I absolutely love, used to punish naughty me by holding me tight outside the bounds of our fourth floor’s balcony.