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.