"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.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
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.
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.
"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.
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