More Wishes

Freud's section on wish fulfillment is rather long. Apparently, he's got a lot to say about them. This time instead of talking about a patient of his, Freud draws upon children's wishes, which are much simpler and easier to analyze (no offense to kids). Freud writes about a five year old boy who he brought on a hike with his daughter to an area near Aussee, his current residence at the time. He says that there was a wonderful mountain nearby called "Dachstein". And so, they hike in Dachstein's direction. The boy obviously wanted to get to Dachstein. Freud writes, "As often as a mountain came into view, he would ask: 'Is that the Dachstein?' whereupon I had to reply: 'No, only a foot-hill.'" And the boy was rather dissapointed when he realized they were only hiking to a waterfall along the trail to Dachstein. And so, they never made it to Dachstein. However, the next day, the boy told Freud: "Last night I dreamt that we went to the Simony hut." Simony hut was a hut on Dachstein. So, the boy was unable to fulfill his wish of reaching Dachstein in real life. So, his dreams drew upon his wish and fulfilled it there. This example is much, much simpler than the patient one. Freud includes a few other children's dreams which were unfortunately of the same manner (i.e.: they were about kids who didn't get to a specific landmark on an excursion, and consequently dreamt about reaching those landmarks). I was a bit disappointed with the lack of variety there, but it proves his point.

Of course, as a reader, you are probably skeptical. How can every dream be about a wish? Freud's own patients questioned him multiple times and even came to him with dreams in which wishes seemingly weren't fulfilled, or in extreme cases, fears were fulfilled instead. So, Freud includes several more scenarios where his patients did not have fulfilled wishes. And obviously, there aren't any wishes within the dream. But, Freud is rather tricky...and do you know how he explains that lack of a fulfilled wish, in these cases with his patients? He says that the patients did not have any expected wishes (like those of the children, or his own wish concerning his patient). However, because they did not want to believe Freud was right about dreams being about wish fulfillment, they wanted to prove Freud wrong by having a dream in which no wish was fulfilled inside of it. Freud says that those dreams did not fulfill a wish inside itself, but they did fulfill their wish in the grand scheme of things. They wanted to disprove his wish-fulfillment theory and therefore dreamt a dream in which no immediate wish was fulfilled. So, Freud basically concludes that wish-fulfillment doesn't have to be in the dream, but there always is a dream fulfilled, one way or another. Sometimes these wishes are hidden, or as Freud calls them, "repressed" or "suppressed".

Personally, I don't know how Freud can back that up with real evidence. I mean, it begs the question, how do we know that he's not making that up? I mean, who would really think that people dream dreams in which dreams aren't fulfilled simply so that they can prove him wrong? Can our subconscious mind go that deeply into a mental process as to concoct a dream with an external wish-fulfillment like those mentioned? I don't know. I mean it makes sense, but it's so farfetched...and outside the box... It's a little difficult to believe.

Sleep

I just realized I never posted the lyrics for the song playing above.

The song is called Sleep. It was composed by Eric Whitacre in two versions: choral and instrumental. Both have the same melody, but the choral one has the lyrics. The one I have playing up top is the choral one (obviously). The lyrics are a slightly modified version of a poem by Charles Anthony Silvestri. The unmodified lyrics are posted below:

Sleep

1	The evening hangs beneath the moon	A
2	A silver thread on darkened dune	A
3	With closing eyes and resting head	B
4	I know that sleep is coming soon	A
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5	Upon my pillow, safe in bed	B
6	A thousand pictures fill my head	B
7	I cannot sleep, my mind's a' flight	C
8	And yet my limbs seem made of lead	B
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9	If there are noises in the night	C
10	A fright'ning shadow, flick'ring light	C
11	Then I surrender unto sleep	D
12	Where clouds of dreams give second sight	C
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13	What dreams may come both dark and deep	D
14	Of flying wings and soaring leap	D
15	As I surrender unto sleep	D
16	As I surrender unto sleep	D

I felt that it was appropriate for several reasons: one, the subject is sleep, which is very close to the dreaming process; two, the music is rather soothing, just as sleep is; three, it's one of my favorite contemporary pieces (I heard a wonderful symphonic band play it at a regional competition three years ago, it was dream-like [also because the concert hall was dimmed]).

But enough of that, there might be some analysis I could do on these lyrics (and the song).

First I'd like to note the rhyme scheme, AABA, BBCB, CCDC, DDDD. I see the last stanza's lack of conformity (DDDD instead of the expected DDED) as deep sleep. Imagine that each line that didn't rhyme was consciousness (as in the part of you that's still awake). The rest of the lines are sleep-like stages, so the awake-mind is surrounded by sleep in three stanzas until the final one, where the awake-mind "surrenders" to sleep (i.e: the line that doesn't rhyme occurs no more, and therefore the entire stanza rhymes, which implies sleep has begun).

"If there are noises in the night...Then I surrender unto sleep / Where clouds of dreams give second sight" (Silvestri, Sleep 9-12). Silvestri, here, makes a claim that dreams are an escape from reality. They hide us from the world's terrors and distractions (the clouds). This is somewhat stated by Freud who sees dreams as a restorative process, a process that also gives insight to our world or inner being (the second sight).

"What dreams may come both dark and deep / Of flying wings and soaring leap" (13-14). Silvestri says that dreams may be dark, which may mean they can be scary, mysterious, obscure (even beyond reality, if you take "obscure" to a further level, as in alien or nothing you've seen before [i.e.: imaginary or beyond reality]). He also says they may be deep, which references the fact that they may in fact draw on our inner processes, and give insight to what we think, wish, or fear. Finally, Silvestri lists two things, "flying wings" and "soaring leap" which refer to flying, which are beyond reality as mentioned by "dark". This is also typical of dreams, since many odd things happen in dreams that don't happen in real life (we can't have flying wings of our own, nor can we leap to "soaring" heights). Silvestri may also be referring to how dreams take us one level further into our thoughts, like, the higher level, the bigger picture that rests on top on our thoughts.

Musically, Whitacre writes the climax (or as my band instructor would call it, "the hit") on line 15, "As I surrender unto sleep". This makes the process of falling asleep dramatic, stressed, and important. Whitacre may be saying that it is a glorious thing to fall asleep, and let the dreams begin. Whitacre ends the piece with the world "sleep", repeating itself...fading slowly...into...the...back...ground... As a way to indicate the passing of the awake-conscious/mind...being surrounded by sleep and dreaming.

Where Wishes Come True

Notice how the title isn't "where dreams come true".

I've not had a chance to take off the music (I was thinking of a mute button, instead). Many apologies.

What I've read so far since last week is basically Freud rambling on about his own dream interpretation; a sample analysis (which I have to say, was very unpleasant since there was a ton of medical mumbo-jumbo that I didn't get). Basically in real life, he has a patient, and he believes he's at fault for not being unable to diagnose her properly. In a dream, he dreams of meeting up with the same patient in some sort of social gathering. In the end, after noticing her physical condition and the claims of another doctor, he realizes he wasn't at fault and that it was another doctor who was at fault. Basically, as a doctor, Freud didn't want to feel bad for not being able to diagnose the patient. As a result, he dreamt that he was not. Freud follows up by saying that dreams often fulfill things. In this case, a wish was fulfilled. Freud also adds that dreams may also go the opposite way and fulfill fears. They may also reflect or just restate old memories. Obviously, there are more, but Freud seems to focus on these four to begin with.

I have several good examples of fulfillment of a wish and fear. But tonight, I would like to explore a wish, to back up Freud. This one is personal but I feel that I can use it without revealing too much. It's something you would think is typical of a person very interested in another person. This dream is dated in my dream journal: September 28, 2007. I have analyzed it previously, but very very briefly as one dream in a set of dreams that occurred in one week (I usually do analyses for a week of dreams, not individually, because I don't have enough time to record it and analyze before I have to get ready to leave home). So here we go:

Context: The person I'm interested in is really just an acquaintance, and we only have one thing in common, we both participate in the same extra-cirricular activity. I haven't talked to her much, maybe only three times, total, but I certainly wish I could talk to her more often. Oh yeah, we don't reside in the same area. So I don't see her on a daily basis. Oh yes, I'll refer to her as Paige (one of my favorite girl names).

Dream: I'm outside. I see a large brick building, maybe 15-20 feet away from me. There are two white, glass doors into the building. School doors, but really nice school doors. In the space ahead of me, I see a bunch of round white lunch tables. I somehow end up standing at the end of a rectangular table. I look beyond the other end and see a nice flower garden, green bushes, and mulch with a lively brown color. I look at my end of the table, and there are some people sitting down. To my left, behind the person closest to me is Paige. She's sitting down, with a yellow pencil in her hand, writing stuff down on a regular sheet of white, lined paper. I look at it. It's math. Homework, apparently. I ask her, "Ooh, math homework. Do you need help?" She says no thanks. I try to engage her in conversation but it ends in awkward silence. I notice that she has very nice fingernails...non-acrylic ones, natural. I see that her thumbnail on her right hand is the longest. Time passes. We are at a round table, and a bunch of people sit down. There's bacon on my lunch plate. I grab my fork, and as I'm about to dig in, Paige starts to talk. She says that the bacon I'm about to eat isn't bacon from pigs. I continue to eat but the people around us begin to talk about bacon.

Analysis: I'm just going to say, the setting is a dream version of the lunch-area set of "Ned's Declassified", one of my favorite shows. That set is beautiful, and open. I sometimes wish that the school in the show was my own, so there's the first fulfillment. I wish to be in a more aesthetically appealing environment and my dream provided it by substituting a scene I considered to be very pretty in real life. Following Freud's decoding interpretation, it might be interesting to note that the tables were white, the doors were white, and doors had glass in them. White is often thought as pure, but even now, I'm not sure what "pure" would refer to. The flower garden, the bushes, the mulch still refer to the beauty of the environment. Finally, we get to Paige. Why she's on my left, I'm not sure. But I do know why she's not the immediate person in front of me. Since we're just acquaintances, I'm not exactly in her "posse", if you will, so she's behind another person which represents that I'm not exactly a friend to her, or not familiar with her. The homework was math. Math is a subject that usually comes easily to me, hence, I see the "math" homework as something we have in common, or some common topic we can talk about. So, there's another wish. I wished to have a few more things in common and math came into the picture. Next was a conversation. Although it was relatively pathetic, it did fulfill my wish to talk to her more (or try to talk to her more). Remember how this was dreamt in September? Now, in November, I still don't know why I noticed her nails, or why I noticed that one of them was longer than the rest. The change to a round table, I can't really explain. Maybe the rectangular one was "square" and "rigid" like my conversation. And the round table was more open, and casual (we talked about "bacon"? That's pretty random). I don't know why we talked about bacon. I really don't. But Freud asserts that every detail, as crazy or random as it may be, has some significance. I don't see it right now, but maybe I will later on. The analysis is over, basically, I've had wishes to be more of a friend, and less of an acquaintance to Paige, and my dream attempted to fulfill those (though it failed in many respects). To end this analysis, I just want to say that when I woke up from the dream, my mother had made bacon for breakfast (I'm not lying!).

I've got a few focus questions I'd like to add to the side panel. In fact, I should reorganize it. One question I'm sure my instructor would like to see is "How relevant is Freud in dream interpretation, today?". After all, he wrote this nearly a century ago. That's definitely a question I need to consider and I have a few answers, but I'll save them for another time.

Dream Interpretation

Freud finally gets to actual methods of dream interpretation. He mentions that there are two major ways of interpretation.

The first is what Freud calls, "symbolic" dream interpretation. Essentially, the interpreter considers the dream as a whole and attempts to replace it with someone more comprensible, but still having connections to the dream content. In short, the interpreter tries to find an extended analogy (i.e.: a set of analogies that combine to create this larger analogy) for the dream. Freud gives us an example of a fabricated dream from the Bible. The dream is essentially "The seven fat kine followed by seven lean kine that ate up the fat kine" (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams 129). Freud goes on and provides a symbolic interpretation: "a prophecy of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt which should consume all that was brough forth in the seven years of plenty" (129). See how the "seven fat kine" and " seven lean kind" ("kine" is an archaic form of "cow") are carried over as "seven years of plenty" and "seven years of famine", respectively?

The second is what Freud calls, "decoding" dream interpretation. Instead of treating the dream as a whole, this method breaks the dream into individual details or symbols which then require the assignment of a meaning (like, a dog would be assigned "loyalty" or something of the like). The meanings, according to Freud, should come from a dream book. This method is more true to dreams because dreams are random pieces of thoughts and images and are not connected on the surface as "symbolic" interpretation assumes. The advantage of this is that the interpretation varies by content (because all of the content is being considered individually) and by the person (since certain symbols register differently in different people).

The only problem I find with Freud's "decoding" interpretation is that he highly recommends a "dream book". But what would happen if you had no access to one? Also, to clarify something...Freud says that this method depends on the person, and you may ask, "If one is using a dream book, then the interpretation depends on the book, and not the person, because the person is not providing the meaning for each symbol." That may be true, but I guess it is the job of the person to "weave" an overall meaning after that step of substitution. That's real interpretation, because then each person can take the set of symbols and meanings and piece them together in different ways.

Freud mentions, before going into a lengthy discussion about a dream about a patient of his, that he has his own method, and a few guidelines. One, he tells the reader to be more aware of their own "psychical perceptions" (I take this as, how you interpret things the way you do, or what your mind understands when given information). And finally, two, be open-minded and consider everything (i.e.: do not disregard things you may consider to be irrelevant or seemingly insignificant).

Dream Content

I apologize for the lack of customization. I’ll get to it when I find time. For the meantime, enjoy the visual and music I set up half an hour ago.

Some say that dreams are the paint brushes of the subconscious; they portray all of our hidden functions and thoughts through the most profound of images and settings. And yet, there are others who say that dreams are just random thoughts strung together by a weary brain, simply trying to get some rest (which I should be getting now). In this weblog, I would like to answer the question for myself and perhaps explore my less-private dreams right here, on this very page.

One of the major questions concerning dreams is: do dreams draw from reality? Apparently, Sigmund Freud thought so, otherwise he wouldn’t have written a 600+ page tome of dream interpretation (which I’m currently struggling through). But what do other people think?

F.W. Hildebrandt considers both options: “ ‘A dream is something completely severed from the reality experienced in waking life, something, as one might say, with an hermetically sealed existence of its own, and separated from real life by an impassable gulf.’ ” “ ‘We may even go so far as to say that whatever dreams may offer, they derive their material from reality and from the intellectual life that revolves around that reality...’ ” (Hildebrandt qtd. in Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams 43-4).

Which one is true is in truly in the air. From experience, I have dreamt of things I had done before, and I have dreamt of things that I’ve never experienced or thought about.

I’ll reveal one of the former to you right here. (From now on, I will provide context in the past tense and the dream in the present tense, since I’ve been told that it aids recall and helps immerse the reader in the actual situation [i.e.: the situation is replicated by the detail, time, etc.]).

Context: We placed first in our division at the first band competition of the year. The bus ride was a rowdy one; everyone was ecstatic, happy, and just so full of post-competition adrenaline. They were singing, and jumping around. Someone even did the “gauntlet”; they ran up the aisle of the bus as others tried to obstruct them. A friend of mine (referred from here on out as Mercedes, to conceal their identity) was nearly trampled in the process. It was dark on the way home...past 9 or 10 at night. Our bus was one of those yellow school buses... A few years ago, we had fancy motor coaches instead. Anyways, that was about two hours ago. When I got home, I wrote on my own weblog about the entire day, from start to finish. The entry was titled, “Dulcem Victoriam” (Latin for “Sweet Victory!”). I went to bed, putting my large blue Nautica pillow aside. “Nautica” was embroidered on it in skinny green letters, with a green fabric outline. It was the shape of a rounded triangular prism.

Dream: I’m sitting in a nice, comfy seat. It’s definitely not a yellow school bus. I look up and there’s a mini television mounted over my the seat in front of me, and several seats in front of that seat, and so on. It’s a motor coach. I look to my right, and I see my band friends. I see Mercedes looking at a suspiciously familiar pillow. It’s blue...and it’s partly green. But wait, it’s not my Nautica pillow. It has the words, “Dulcem Victoriam” on it. I keep my eyes fixed on it, as Mercedes passes it to other people. It’s gone. I look out the windows and it’s light outside...but empty. There’s nothing out there. It’s too quiet.

So, what happened that day ended up in the dream in some form. The blog entry title somehow ended up transcribed on my pillow. The pillow was one of the last items I saw before I entered slumber-land. In addition, Mercedes, the person nearly trampled over in the “gauntlet” showed up as one of the first people I saw in the dream.

Basically, this dream drew directly from the experiences I had that day, though it wasn’t perfect in doing so, as one can see from the pillow and blog title. Regardless, dreams clearly do draw a good amount of content from reality. It may not be from the reality you experienced a few hours before, but it still is from reality. In fact, Freud confirms this by mentioning that dreams often bring back past experiences (usually from one’s childhood, though I haven’t recently encountered a dream that did exactly that).

However, I’m under the impression that dreams aren’t completely linked to reality and our experiences. That particular dream probably took place in daylight and in near silence, which is contrary to what I had experienced: a night of noise. So, how did those details get in there? Why were they in there? Did they have any significance? Why was there nothing outside the windows? Why did I remember those specific details about the motor coaches? Why were “Dulcem Victoriam” on the pillow and not “Nautica”?

There are questions that have yet to be resolved and there are questions that have yet to be conceived. But for now, I can answer one of them and say that dreams most likely draw both from the random and the real.