Somniī Dē Morte (Dreams About Death)

Mr. Freud enters an interesting chapter about "typical dreams". Among the various types he discusses are naked dreams (dreams in which you are obviously naked, trying to conceal yourself, etc.), exam dreams (dreams in which you are taking a test, usually failing said test), and death dreams. He elaborates quite a bit on death dreams. Now, by death dreams, Freud doesn't mean your own death (though those are possibilities which he has not discussed as of yet); he means dreams about someone else's death (not someone who has died prior to the dream, but someone who is living who happens to die or be dead in your dream). Beyond that, there is one division of death dreams: whether or not you, the dreamer, are moved by the subject's death. You could be sad, angry, happy about the death (moved), or you could not care (unmoved).

Freud has nothing to say about unmoved death dreams, implying that unmoved deaths have little significance, on their own (recall that everything in a dream has some significance). Unmoved deaths are probably contributors to something larger, a larger symbol, an all-encompassing wish that somehow results indirectly from the death, etc. In short, unmoved death dreams are insignificant on their own, and I suppose this is why Freud just skips right over them.

Moved death dreams are explained in great detail (but Freud happens to go off on a tangent near the end). Like Freud mentions all the time, everything is a wish. Thus, death dreams are wishes. These wishes, he says, are typically wishes from one's childhood. Now, why would children dream about someone else dying? Well, think about it. Children only know death as silence, "The child knows nothing of the horrors of decay, of shivering in the cold grave, of the terror of the infinite Nothing...The fear of death is alien to the child; and so he plays with the horrid word". Children are unaware of how bad death is, so when they find it convenient, they wish for someone else's death as if it wasn't considered taboo. Freud adds an odd little comment depicting how naive children are with death and the like: ""Even at the age of eight, a child returning from a visit to a natural history museum may say to her mother: 'Mamma, I do love you so; if you ever die, I am going to have you stuffed and set you up here in the room, so that I can always always see you!' "

Back to the wishes behind dreams. These wishes often include the death of a family member (think sibling rivalry). Or, think father-son or mother-daughter rivalry for the opposite spouse, (Oedipus complex!). This is Freud's tangent and he just goes off from dreams and explains situations in which a child "desires" or ends up being the spouse to their own parent, e.g.: Hamlet and Gertrude, or Oedipus and Jocasta. In death dreams, we seek something (usually a childhood desire) that can be obtained through someone's death. That is the wish, the obtain that thing, whatever it may be: peace and quiet from a noisy sibling, the undivided attention of a parent, etc.

Stimuli

Freud has defined stimuli earlier in the beginning of the book. A stimulus is anything that can influence the sleeper. These range from actual dream-material I have talked about (i.e.: things that happened that day), which end up being called psychic stimuli because they are found within our minds. Our dreams draw upon them through our mind, thus they are psychic. Somatic stimuli are stimuli that relate to the internal body (i.e.: if you're sick, your sickness becomes a source of somatic stimuli because your body acts in a different way; your nose may be runny, your heart may be beating faster, your stomach may not feel well, etc.). Lastly, objective (sensory) stimuli are those things that happen outside of the body, like a cat meowing outside, or a pile of books falling on your leg (ow >.<). They are picked up by your sensory organs (ears, eyes, etc.).

Once that's done, Freud shares two theses on stimuli and dreams and then says this: "We have already taken the first step in this direction in advancing the thesis that the dream-work is under a compulsion to elaborate into a unified whole all the dream-stimuli which are simultaneously present." Essentially, our dreams are a patchwork of every stimulus available at the time of sleep. This implies that objective stimuli have immediate effects on dream-content (actually this is stated earlier in the book, but now it makes more sense why; objective stimuli are still stimuli and must be incorporated in some way into the dream, since a dream draws upon all available stimuli). Freud does note that some people are more resistant than others to the inclusion of objective stimuli, just as people are more resistant to attempts made to wake them up; some people are just deeper/stronger sleepers/dreamers than others.

Freud claims to be a strong dreamer, able to ward off sensory stimuli. For example, while sleeping one night, he dreamt that the Pope was dead. His wife, the next morning asked him, " 'Did you hear the dreadful tolling of the church bells this morning?' " Freud says that the Pope's death was content made to block out the bells, disturbing his sleep. Instead of the bells directly appearing in his dream, possibly waking him up, his mind apparently dreamt up something else to push the bells out of the picture. Or at least, that's how I interpreted what he said. He doesn't exactly make it clear. If you ask me, it would make sense if the bells did intrude his dream because they were church bells and the Pope is the head of the church.

My Own Observations

Vitor, feel free to comment on this if you wish (the one due Friday is below this one), but this is actually meant for next Friday.

Though Freud hasn't exactly touched upon dream and REM sleep, yet (which he might get to, or I might get to in another text after Freud), I've had observations about dreaming, in general (this blog is not just about dream interpretation, it's about dreaming and all of its facets...which I might not have stated before). Therefore, I'd like to share some with you.

First, I believe I've read that we don't dream in REM sleep (i.e.: the sleep that comes first which also happens to incorporate your eyes going berserk..). 'Course that'll be clarified when I come upon a more scientific dream text. I'm sure Freud may have touched upon it, but I've forgotten. It's not that important anyways. But, for the past two weeks or so, I've been getting an average of 4 hours of sleep per day. 4 hours is generally how long REM sleep lasts, so in those two weeks, I've technically not dreamt at all (which is true, 'cause more than half of my dream entries for that week have "Forgot" or "I don't remember" written in them). So, we probably do dream in non-REM sleep. But I said more than half of the dream entries were empty or incomplete.

You're probably asking, what about the others? Well, the others obviously have dreams in them. And you're asking, well why? Didn't you say you only had 4 hours of sleep, which is essentially all REM sleep, which means you shouldn't have dreamt anything there at all? True, but you just assumed that it was all REM sleep. I have my alarm clocks set to 5:30 or 6, and/or 6:15, 6:20, 6:30, 6:40, 6:45, 7:00. Therefore, that 4 hours is actually NOT 4 hours of REM sleep. Apparently, when my alarm clock goes off, at say 6:00 am, I wake up, hit the button, and wait for another alarm clock to really wake me up. But, anyways, when I turn off the initial alarm, I can't remember anything, as if there was no dream (REM sleep). However, the next time I wake up, I usually recall something that seems like a dream. So, what I'm saying here is, when REM sleep is disturbed (i.e.: by my alarm clocks), I go straight into dreaming sleep...but only for however many minutes of sleep I have left before I have to get to school. Therefore, they're much shorter, and maybe don't have enough time to conjure up a dream vivid enough to stay in my short term memory.

The basic points here are: 1) We probably don't dream in REM sleep, and 2) If REM sleep is disturbed, we don't go back to it (I've actually touched upon this in my personal blog).

Ah, but you see, I'm not done. Like I've said, I've had a long streak of empty sleep (a personal term for sleep without dream content or significant dream content). Well, this morning I had one. For context, I went to sleep at like 11:30pm Friday night and was disturbed by my 6:00 alarm clock, my 6:20, 6:40, and 7:00 alarms (the last three from my cellphone alarm). So, 11:30 to say, 3:30, REM sleep most likely occurred, therefore dreaming occurred from 3:30 to 6:00, and in those subsequent intervals (REM was not interrupted because it had already past). So, I dreamt longer and therefore I had a more vivid dream to recall. But anyways, as I was saying, this dream was extremely interesting. Here's something interesting...let me quote my dream journal for Friday (night).

"Hopefully my dreams will find something more vivid so I can get back to analyzing." Do you see something here? What is it? A wish, you say? Why yes, it is. It's a wish! And was it fulfilled as Freud said it would be? Why yes, I did have a vivid dream. By Jove, Freud is right!

It's not that I doubted Freud's theory of wish-fulfillment, but it's just that those wishes I've come up with were obtained through lengthy analyzing, where this one is just plain obvious. But, remember that I said I had more sleep. So was it the sleep that gave me the dream? Or was it my wish? I'm not too sure. For now, I'll trust Freud.

So you're probably thinking that I'll analyze it here. Well, I'm terribly sorry, but no, I won't analyze it here. It's not as personal as those I've analyzed here before, and it's not vulgar, sexual, or anything like that. I just have personal, emotionally moral, just, reasons to not reveal it. But even if I don't, I still have a few things to say about it.

So, when I woke up, I admit, I totally forgot I had the dream to begin with. Like, I was aware that I had dreamt, but as soon as I got out of bed, it was gone, or so it seemed. So, I was checking some Latin (not Latin as in Latin America, Latin like Roman Latin) websites online, and when I did, I instantly remembered a part of my dream. Why? Well, in that part of my dream, I was reading an RPG-game manual (while inside that RPG game as a character) which resembled my Latin I book (I am in Latin IV, but have a Latin I book to review). In addition, before the Latin connection, I was thinking about "playing" ("playing" as in attempting to play an advanced level song when my skills are those of a beginner at best) a piano song called People of the Far North from the FFX Piano Collection CD. And, then I remembered a larger portion of my dream, because that piano song was being played in my dream.

So what's the point? Well, apparently, if you think you've forgotten your dream, and it's still relatively early in the morning, try exposing yourself to a variety of materials to see if any of them will connect to a part of your dream and bring it back to your memory.



To sum up my points today: 1) We probably don't dream in REM sleep, 2) If REM sleep is disturbed, we don't go back to it, and 3) If you have trouble remembering a very very recent dream, run through a lot of subject material hoping that one might bring part of your dream back.

Seminal

That's what the publisher of my version of the book calls Freud's work, in the sense that it influences or bears new ideas and views of dream interpretation. However, I'm not using it in that sense. I'm using it here in the sexual sense because the publisher obviously meant to call Freud's work "seminal" as a double entendre because it also contains many, many, many sexual references.

I'm not saying Freud can't keep his head straight, but in many of his analyses, especially in this particular section on sources of dreams, he always finds a sexual connection the tiniest little detail. For example, "She puts a candle into a candlestick; but the candle is broken, so that it does not stand up. The girls at school say she is clumsy; but she replies that it is not her fault." Given the context, the candle is an obviously phallic symbol (i.e.: represents the male sex organ). And because the candle is broken, it does not stand up and therefore represents presumably her man's impotence. Had I (or Freud) not given it sexual context, I wonder how you, the reader, or myself would've interpreted the candle as. If I incorporated wish fulfillment, I could've said she didn't like a candle in real life and so in her dream, the candle was broken so she would have an excuse not to use it. My basic question is whether or not dreams derive themselves from mostly sexual references and connections. Freud thinks so; he's even devoted a large section on looking out for common sexual symbols (much later in the book). Of course he's an expert on how humans think, so maybe he knows that humans are prone to dreaming up sexual content.

Among the other sexual connections are the German word "uberzieher" for overcoat; in one dream, Freud mistakenly puts one on thinking it was his own coat. He connects the overcoat to male contraceptive, but doesn't say how. All he says is, "[the overcoats], which obviously refer to an appliance appertaining to the technique of sex." Freud is sticking with his idea to not toss out any seemingly insignificant details, but it seems that many of those he takes the time to interpret end up being sexual references. Could he be saying that because these seemingly insignificant details are connected to sexuality in some way or another, that we, as humans, are surrounded constantly by sexuality (as we are in dreams)? Like, the fact that dreams seem to consistently have sexual references could possibly confirm that humans, on the simplest level, are sexual beings. I guess that's what Freud's implying, or even proving with this book as he goes along in dream interpretation. I mean, why else would he mention it so often? It must be that.