Practical

"Many practitioners find it indispensable in the treatment of neuroses, and consider that the dream is a function whose psychic importance is equal to that of the conscious mind itself" (Jung 87).

Is dream analysis practical? From a psychological standpoint, it's essentially a meeting with your psychiatrist. Dreams are strung together from the random, profound images and striking situations your subconscious picks up as you are conscious. This background process is said to influence our lives, the way we act. The subconscious rules our conscious thinking and instinct. Using, psychoanalysis, one can discover what these drives or motives are, through dreams, one of the most visual and profound manifestations of latent content and drive.



"Others, on the contrary, dispute the value of dream-analysis and regard dreams as a negligible by-product of the psyche" (Jung 87).

Yet, what is the ultimate point of learning how one works from dreams? If all we learn about ourselves from dreams is how we work, what we are afraid of, or what we may do or encounter because of our actions, why bother? Why should we spend significant time and effort to discover ourselves, when we can simply live out those motives and drives? What difference does knowing how we work make in how we live? If we know how we work from dreams, will that make us act differently? Could dreams really just be random images tied together as items in memory are sorted through while we sleep?

I came into the world of dreams, half unsure about them; whether they were really just random images, and any meaning applied to them were just fabricated by my conscious mind. Tonight, I continue on, after keeping track of my dreams since September, knowing that dreams do have some purpose. They are entertainment; they fulfill our wishes or our fears. And they are teachers of ourselves, about things we cannot admit to.

Futurum Incognitum

The unknown future. Jung mentions two ways of arriving "at a plausible meaning" for dreams (70). He continues: "One method―which, however, is not scientific―would be to predict future happenings from the dreams...and to very the interpretation by subsequent events, assuming of course that the meaning of dreams lies in their anticipation of the future" (70).

This is never the method that Freud or Jung ever use. Jung mentions the other method of relying on the past (which you know well by now, relying on memories and past events [even recent ones]). Now, at first glance, it's obvious to agree with Jung in that using the future to determine the meaning of dreams is not scientific. Why? Because, the future is scientifically unknown, well in specifics. In addition, telling the future is really more of a magical, mystic subject area. But of course, Jung tosses away the "future" idea.

Why can't using the future be used to determine the meaning and accuracy of a dream interpretation? I mean, other sciences use hypotheses, which are in a sense, future. You guess at a possible outcome, or you look for an outcome after an experiment or situation, and you evaluate your experiment off of that future outcome. Surely, that's scientific. Why can't using the future for dreams be scientific as well? In addition, Jung says that the future method is only there if you assume that dreams can anticipate the future. Well, why not? As Freud had said, dreams work through situations for you, it does mental work. It could guess at how you'll do on that next English test (ace, pass, fail, faint..etc.). In a sense, the subconscious is working through a possibility (though, it may be exaggerated), a future possibility. You can't say that a dream isn't trying to figure out a future thing, it is. It's almost like a hypothesis, "Maybe you'll faint when you find out your grade tomorrow." It's not certain to happen, but it may happen, or at least parts of it may happen (or none). That is the nature of the hypothesis. In addition, Freud also mentioned that the subconscious influences the conscious mind via the subconscious drives (dreams are a manifestation of these drives, hiding themselves). So, if these drives influence our actions, then surely, a dream we have one night, has latent content behind it that will influence our actions during the day. To clarify, latent (hidden) content lies behind dreams. So we dream whatever it is our minds can make from the latent content. That happens one night (or early morning, or afternoon, whenever). You wake up, you quickly remember it and you go on with your living. Latent content influences us. So, that latent content from the dream will influence our future actions, or the actions we'll do while we're awake. In that sense, it is "future". Dreams, in a sense, do anticipate the future, because the things driving them are what drives our future actions. I'm not saying we should rely on future-based interpretation, I'm just saying that it shouldn't be disregarded.

Irrational

Again, it seems that my history book is doing me wonders. The Freud section was really a part of a section on irrationality and pessimism that was pervading the intellectual world in the late 19th century. Before I continue, it certainly seems that I am drawing away from dreams, but the psychoanalytic methods of Freud are the basis for dream interpretation. Spielvogel says that Freud, "put forth a theories of theories that undermined optimism about the rational nature of the human mind" (675). Spielvogel, the author of the book, goes on about Freud's ego, superego, and id, and of course the Oedipus complex and all of those infantile sexual drives. What Spielvogel is trying to get across is that Freud figured that there were irrational forces driving the human mind. Under this statement, if Freud says that irrational forces drive us, our minds, and our desires, then how can we be sure that our own thoughts are rational? If we are driven by the irrational forces, shouldn't our actions and thoughts, too, be irrational? If so, how can we be sure that any of what Freud wrote about dreams and/or psychoanalysis is rational thinking? So, we are driven by the irrational. Dreams, are driven by the same forces (repression, our subconscious/unconscious, etc.). How do we know that our dreams are rational as well? They could be irrational. Then interpreting dreams is merely a matter of us putting irrational pieces to make a "rational" picture, when really, there was nothing rational about it. In order for me to continue believing that dreams do have psychic purpose, I would have to drop Freud's theories of human irrationality, which would include essentially everything, like the sexual drives. But those things are what support the theory and methods of dream analysis. Then, I am left with nothing, since everything was pretty much based on Freud's initial theories.

Reliability

I was reading in my European history book and there was a significantly large section on Freud. The most interesting line was this, at the very end of the section on Freud: "Although many of Freud's ideas have been shown to be wrong in many details, he is still regarded as an important figure because of the impact his theories have had" (Spielvogel, 676). So, Freud is not completely right about everything. Is it now we can label him as useless or irrelevant to today? I did not know when I first read that statement. My teacher assigned a primary source document, one of Freud's lectures on psychoanalysis. A small portion of it reads:

"I found confirmation of the fact that the forgotten memories were not lost. They were in the patient's possession and were rady to emerge in association to what still known by him; but there was some force that prevented them from being conscious and compelled them to remain unconscious. The existence of this force could be assumed with certainty, since one became aware of an effort corresponding to it if, in opposition to it, one tried to introduce the unconscious memories into the patient's consciousness" (Freud qtd. in Spielvogel, 675).

This is quite a bit to take in. Freud is simply trying to say that when he could not get the information he was "seeking" (that is, the forgotten memories or latent content of dreams), he assumed they existed, but were being repressed. Frankly, I find faults in Freud. Here is my logic: How could he have known about "forgotten" memories if they were unknown until his psychoanalysis? If he was unable to reach those memories/content, how could he have known they existed? In short, how can you look for something that you don't even know exists? Second, he says that one can assume that repressive forces exist. Unfortunately, there needs to be cold, hard evidence for this. I don't know, I seem to have a problem with Freud's thinking, others might not. Still, I wonder, because mostly everything I have read in Freud's text had made sense (or partial sense) up till now. Now, I'm beginning to wonder. Is Freud a reliable source? He is a bit outdated, like about 100 years outdated.

Narrow-Minded

It's a little funny how Jung started off using Freud as a frequent example (this was to lay down the foundation of dream knowledge of his time). I've mentioned that Jung has mentioned the wish-fulfillment as part of Freud's ideas (and many other things like symbols and concealment, etc.). However, as Jung finishes up his section on the aspects of dream psychology, I find that he is deviating from Freud. Obviously, there would be no point in writing the text if he were just reiterating Freud. In fact, Jung tosses in many other dream functions with wish-fulfillment into the dream function pool. Basically, Jung is saying that dreams do much more than fulfill wishes. Just in the entry below, Jung introduced the compensatory and prospective functions. Along the way he introduces reductive functions and various others. But the main point here is that Freud was narrow-minded for claiming that all dreams are simply unconscious ideas symbolized mixed with wish-fulfillment.

One of my commenters (ille est: vitor p3), mentioned this fact as well. If I recall correctly, he mentioned that perhaps the dream-analyst sees the wish-fulfillment only because s/he believes it is there; i.e.: their mind is not open to other possibilities. This is an interesting argument. Jung drags on and on about the complexity of the mind and how Freud only uses one and only one model for dreams (wish-fulfillment). I find a connection between Freud's (maybe Jung's as well) take on dream functions and their views on dreams in general (remember finality?).

Freud was the one who bought into causality, the cause of the dream. For Freud, wish-fulfillment was the only function for dreams. Therefore, the cause of the dream is the wish because it needs to be fulfilled. That wish is the cause and that aligns perfectly with Freud's approach on dreams (causality and the wish-fulfillment function of dreams). Freud's initial work on dreams (wish-fulfillment) seems to have led him to limit his ideas about dreams (the focus on causality instead of Jung's finality [or whatever other approaches there are]). In short, Freud only represents one narrow view.

Functions

Jung describes two functions of dreams: compensatory and prospective. The former is where the subconscious reveals to the conscious (in a dream) information that could not make it to the conscious during the day (or whenever you are awake). Freud talks about this particular function (compensatory, that is). The latter "is an anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements...like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance" (41).

That is a rather interesting thing to know that the brain is actually doing work while you sleep. I don't mean just stringing bits of memory and images together and fulfilling a wish, but also working through outcomes and plans as well. Actually I think I have something, consider the following: the subconscious picks up information as you live your life: problems, information, feelings, and so on. Then, as a part of the prospective function in dreams, the subconscious works out stuff like how to fix a problem in your life, or what might happen if you did so and so tomorrow at school. If the subconscious works out something or plans something, then it might remain during the next day. Considering that the subconscious can influence the conscious, then the solution or plan the subconscious made influences how you act the next day. In short, the subconscious works out your immediate life for you during dreams.

So, the saying, "sleep on it," when you have a hard time answering a question, could be quite literal. In the event that you encounter a huge problem that you can't figure out, perhaps, you could let it be...not give it any conscious thought and simply sleep. And when you get to the next day, your subconscious may have worked out a decision and well you know the rest: you make your decision (probably under the influence of the subconscious's nocturnal work).

Analysis

As I was reading Jung, I realized one thing that I never realized while reading Freud. Dreams occur because the subconscious has something to say, usually about our subconscious desires (wishes). That's fairly simple. In addition, dreams have a "censor", that is, they hide information, especially drastic ones such as the need to kill someone, with symbols to make them seem less morally shocking to the dreamer. Okay, that's all right.

Jung says that dream analysis can be very shallow or very deep. The shallow kind goes along these lines: "someone dreams that he is walking down a street-suddenly a child crosses in front of him and is run by a car" and "he recognizes the street as one down which he had walked on the previous day. The child he recognizes as his brother's child...The car accident reminds him of an accident...which he had only read in a newspaper" (26). Obviously, some people are satisfied with that, some aren't. The deep kind is the kind that Jung and Freud always use, those lengthy analyses and they have a much more purposeful turnout.

So, the problem I've discovered concerns the lack of dream analysis; what happens if someone only analyzes shallowly (or in the worst case, does not analyze at all)? If dreams are supposed to send some sort of subconscious message to us that it expects us to take and use, why would our subconscious hide it under symbols? I'm quite aware of censorship, however, if we consider the layman, he would never know how to interpret his own dream and its content. Therefore, the dream just failed to inform us of whatever it had to inform us of. In short, dreams are technically psychic processes that fail their purpose when not given consideration, which happens quite often (after all, how many people have read Freud and Jung? Not many.).

In addition, dreams have probably been around since the beginning of man (or to be safe, circa 100 BCE [the Romans had a word for dream, "somnium", so I know they dreamt way back in 100 BCE]). However, psychology and certainly Freud did not exist back then. The ancients probably did not have the analytical knowledge and discoveries of Freud to understand their own dreams, so why would dreams occur in humans, when they natively do not have the ability to make sense of them? We are only able to do so now through modern, cognitive science. I suppose one could say nature was flawed in giving us dreams which we intrinsically cannot interpret.

Before I end...I'm a bit confused on the number of posts we're supposed to have. I've heard 17, and I have removed all posts that weren't really posts (i.e.: update posts), and I know I've skipped one week (this will make up for it) and according to the archive on the right, I will have only 16 after this one. I am positive I have posted every week (minus one for which this post makes up). Odd, isn't it?

Is F better than C?

No, I'm not talking about letter grades. I'm talking about the two different standpoints on dreams: finality or causality; Jung or Freud.

Jung continues his text by introducing the idea of dream interpretation and analysis. Along the way, he makes several distinctions between Freud and himself, including their standpoints on dreams. Freud, he says, "starts from a desire or craving, that is, from the represeed dream-wish" (31). Essentially, Freud sees dreams simply as the fulfillment of a wish. Jung introduces his idea of finality, where the focus of dream analysis is the goal, or the purpose of the dream.

Jung claims that causality is rigid and very scientific. However, he says that finality digs deeper into the psychic processes.

He does provide a few examples, but as a normal reader, I do not exactly see how causality differs from finality. Allow me to explain, if dream interpretation's point is to discover the purpose of a dream, then the purpose of the dream is the goal of any method of interpretation. Therefore, causality has that goal in mind. Then, how does causality differ from finality, which focuses on purpose? Jung makes it quite clear that causality focuses on the dream in cause and effect, and finality on the "final" thing or purpose. However, it still continues to baffle me since dream analysis is about purpose.

With that aside, Jung does say that finality does what causality cannot. However, he says that both should be used to get a complete picture. As a writer who is probably trying to get his own theories and ideas out, Jung perhaps, just perhaps, added that in so he did not necessarily reject Freud's ideas (and therefore cause the body of psychologists to think he was uneducated or mad for rejecting the well-praised Freud).

Disciple

I have finished Freud in the interim and have now moved onto another classic psychoanalyst, one of Freud's own correspondents, Carl Gustav Jung (C.G. Jung or just plain ol' Jung). The book is simply, Dreams by C.G. Jung. It is a much shorter text than Freud but should not be considered inferior to Freud's. Jung has done an amazing amount of work to compile this book, "For many years I have carefully analysed [sic] about 2,000 dreams per annum, thus I have acquired a certain experience in this matter" (Jung, Dreams v).

I have not read very much of Jung yet, but at my point in the book, all Jung has done was introduce Freud and most of his ideas. Among them are dream-material and the censorship of that material in dreams through symbolism and the like. He also goes onto the idea of wish fulfillment. The overview Jung provides is very concise and isn't bloated with the various examples that Freud had in his book. Sure, Jung did not want to copy Freud entirely, but it's interesting to note that Jung, so far, has been able to make major points in such a short span of text.

Jung has also touched upon numbers, which I found quite ridiculous in Freud's text (everything he did to manipulate the numbers seemed random and spontaneous). Jung, on the other hand, is a little clearer on the topic of numbers. He openly admits that analyzing numbers can go too far, "It is difficult to say where the borderline of play [with number analysis] begins" i.e: he acknowledges that he, himself is not sure that his analyses are not out of scope or wildly illogical (Jung 17).

So far, I'm taking a liking to Jung (well...more than Freud...Jung is still rather difficult to read) since he has been concise so far and hasn't been extravagant with his examples.

Dream Dictionary

My browser fortunately has my homepage set to MSN.com: MSN Astrology: Free astrology Glossary. This is probably what Freud would have considered to be a "symbol dictionary" mentioned way back in one of my posts. The thing here is, the "symbols" aren't restricted to objects like "air" or "marriage", these symbols also include situations like being "alone" and so forth. After browsing through the text of this "dictionary" it seems to have some good and bad qualities in it, with regards to dream interpretation.

Personally, I don't believe in astrology so anything from this part of MSN, I usually don't take as truth. So, I don't completely believe this "dream dictionary" because it connects more with astrology rather than Freud's psychology; psychology is a science of observation (the human mind from which our dreams are born), astrology is not. Some entries contain "parallels" like "Animal" has "Astrological parallel: Virgo" and so on. So, initially, this dictionary is already losing its credibility by relying on astrology, not psychology.

If one recalls, Freud mentioned that symbols should not be used to determine the meaning of a dream entirely. Unfortunately, with the only guiding text on the site being "Your guide to interpreting your dreams," the astrology division of MSN.com in a sense tells you that the only way to interpret your dreams is by using this "dictionary".

Despite all of its seemingly bad qualities, some of the entries do seem reasonable. Watch:

Abadoned
1. A sense of emptiness, of having no one around whom you can depend on. Bewilderment.
2. Betrayal of someone who loves you, like that suffered by the children in the story of Hansel and Gretel.
3. The need for self-sufficiency.

(MSN Astrology). The first two are essentially like the majority of the "dictionary". But look at the third entry, "the need for self-sufficiency". What is this? "Need" It seems to be a wish...and Freud says that dreams are just wishes (wish fulfillments) so this site has some truth to it, or at least truthful practice based on Freud's idea of wish fulfillment.

This site is an interesting look at what modern interpretation of dreams may be like. Compared to Freud's 1900's take on dreams (as a observational science), today's people seem to view dream interpretation as something like astrology, I suppose mystical and full of "symbols". This is an interesting shift from old-content to new-content. The newer content is less "sciency".

Was it a Dream?

Have you ever woken up and gone through your day, wondering if you really dreamt something up that night? Freud finally touches upon the topic of the loss of dreams. To start off, he tells us how unreliable our memories are: "...everything goes to prove that our memory reproduces the dream not only incompletely but also untruthfully, in a falsifying manner. As, on the one hand, we may doubt whether what we dreamed was really as disconnected as it is in our recollections, so on the other hand we may doubt whether a dream was really as coherent as our account of it." Basically, Freud is trying to say that our memories are really unreliable. In that particular quotation, Freud says that our memories tend to remember our dreams incorrectly. We might recall dreams that are broken up into little pieces that don't fit together, just because our memory forgot certain parts of the dream. Conversely, we might find that our dreams fit together too well because our memory has pulled other thoughts in, tying the separate pieces together when they really weren't supposed to be connected. Freud concludes, "thus we are in danger of being deprived of the very object whose value we have undertaken to determine." To sum up: we could possibly never find the true meaning of our dreams through dream interpretation, because our memories just aren't perfect.

But Freud tells us not to worry: he says that our memories may alter our dreams in this way to hide details (censorship). Freud prescribes a test to figure out the details being hidden: "If the first report of a dream seems not very comprehensible, I request the dreamer to repeat it. This he rarely does in the same words. But the passages in which the expression is modified are thereby made known to me as the weak points of the dream's disguise...These are the points from which the analysis may start." So, if you're interpreting any dream (yours or someone else's) and it doesn't sound too coherent, repeat it (or have them repeat it). Whatever changed in the second recall are "the weak points of the dream's disguise" (censoring of details).

As a final note, Freud tells us that forgetting parts of dreams, as we naturally do, is not important. After all, what we're really after is the meaning behind it, not the dream itself. He says that this "is possible to discover from a single remaining fragment."

Numbers

Freud starts off the last bit of his "common dreams" section with dreams containing numbers. Dream content, he says, "may be shown in an instructive manner by the numbers...which occur in dreams." Essentially, numbers are significant pieces of data that represent content (as do symbols). He gives us an interesting (but farfetched) example. There is a lady who has enrolled her daughter at school in Vienna. The lady stays in Vienna only because her daughter studies there. Meanwhile, she is under Freud's treatment and she has a dream where she is paying for something. In this dream, her daughter takes out "3 florins 65 kreuzer from her purse" to pay, and she replies "What are you doing? It costs only 21 kreuzer." Freud jumps right to the connection with the numbers and says that the 3 florins and 65 kreuzer represents 365 days, i.e.: 365 days in a year, (which refers to an academic year). 21 kreuzer relates to the duration of Freud's treatment, in days. So, he says that the lady wants her daughter to stay in school 365 more days so she can stay longer and do another session of treatment. Quite odd.

Freud also shows us that dreams cannot do math, period. A man dreams that he is sitting in a house of a family he once knew. He asks the girl next to him, Amy, "How old are you?" She replies, "I was born in 1882." And he "calculates", "Ah, then you are 28 years old." The dream was dreamt in 1898...so, that was not possible...she would've been only 16. The thing Freud overlooks here, is what if the dreamer was dreaming in a different time period than his own? Like, he dreamt that dream as if it was in the year 1910, when the girl would really be 28. Since Freud does not mention this, I consider it bad writing...because even though it is general instinct to assume that the dream was "dreamt" in the same year as the real year, we are not really sure. I feel Freud should have mentioned that, just to clarify. Regardless, the point is that dreams are unable to do calculations (this is probably not true all the time...) and this is because the subconscious treats numbers the same way it does with other dream material; It just takes pieces of the material and strings them together, like it did with the man's numbers. It just picked out 1882 (the year he was married), and 28 (an estimate at the age of one of Freud's clients whom he was interested in). The subconscious picked those numbers for their significance, but it just put them together, saying that the current year, 1898, minus 1882 somehow equaled 28. (I hope that makes sense).

VI

The Roman numeral VI (6), is pronounced "sex" in Latin. This is a really bad unintentional pun since the chapter in which most of Freud's sexual symbol content is none other than Chapter VI, the chapter on symbolism.

On general symbolism, Freud states the obvious when he says that "dreams employ...symbolism to give a disguised representation to their latent [i.e.: unconscious] thoughts". He goes on saying that "it is impossible to arrive at the interpretation of a dream if one excludes dream-symbolism." This is true; if the unconscious thoughts are hidden, then symbolism must be employed to get the entire picture (anything else, and you're missing out on key details and processes). However, Freud gives us a warning, "At the same time, I must expressly warn...against overestimating the importance of symbols in the interpretation of dreams, restricting the work of dream-translation to the translation of symbols, and neglecting the technique of utilizing the associations of the dreamer." Basically, don't use symbolism, exclusively, 'cause then you're also missing out on the dreamer. Symbols are symbols, everyone has them, but they gain true, unique meaning when you consider the details and associations specific to the dreamer.

On sexual symbols, Freud has quite an imaginative list. For the phallus, there are trees, sticks, and buildings (obvious), and then there are umbrellas (which "open" up, or expand). For females, there are ovens, and cupboards (things with open spaces), and then there are round tables (Freud is implying that women generally have no "corners", i.e.: they have "curves"). Further symbolism includes machinery for the testes (they work all the time, and "never" tire)...and then there are hair cuts which represent castration. Many of these are gigantic stretches. Here's an example that Freud uses: A 35 year old man remembers a dream in his childhood where regularly gets two pears. The man (or boy) eats one and leaves the other on a window sill. Then he woke up, thinking it was real and asks his mother for the other pear (there isn't one to begin with). Now, out of the dream, the man's mother breast-fed him a little longer than usual. So, what Freud comes up with is that the pears are the breasts and the window sill is the bosom. Eating one pear represents breast-feeding (the action has been done, so the pear is gone). Seeking another pear is seeking breast-feeding again. I say, this is a stretch...but with Freud, a lot of things seem far-fetched.

Note that I am skipping a lot of inappropriate content and so I'll finish up with Freud's specific warning with regard to sexual symbols: "In dream-interpretation this importance of the sexual complexes must never be forgotten, though one must not, of course, exaggerate it to the exclusion of all other factors." I think he's forgotten this himself, because he often uses sexual symbolism alone, or that's how it seems. Regardless, this warning, in conjunction with what I mentioned at the very beginning (Freud's warning on symbols), are useful guidelines to avoid exaggeration with dream-interpretation.