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.