On Dreams (1901) By Sigmund Freud.

On Dreams (1901) By Sigmund Freud.

Abstract:

“Dreams” We hardly find any person who never dreamt. But have we ever tried to think why we dream or how a dream is built and why it is built or suppose we dream then why we forget it or do dreams have any connection with ours daily life. We have so many questions related to the notion of dream. Here the present paper is tried to answer these questions with the help of Freud’s Dream Theory.Primarily this term is coined by the medical and philosophicalwriters; they consider it as the mental activities of subject during sleep. But the problem is they do not have scientific justification for that.This paper will also focus on what is the content of dreams and how to access the unconscious through psycho-analysis in order to know about the repressed desires of the subject. Also try to know what the language of drams is and how to interpret with dreams. To answer these questions we take Freud’s work On Dreams and The Interpretation of Dreams.

On Dreams:

“Dreams are the product of a dissociated and uncritical mental activity.” - Freud

            The present essayOn Dreams published in 1901 the beginning of twentieth century. On Dreamsand the Interpretation of Dreamshas createdanodal position in psychology and bring revolutionary change in our knowledge of the structure and function of the mind and psychology. The method Freud uses in the investigation of dream is termed by him as Psycho-analysis.This essay consists of some different elements of the dream whichare discussed below.

1)     The scientific and popular views on dreams constructed:

Before Freud there are certain pre-existing views on dream. The pre-scientific people consider dream as a product of dreamers own mind. Schubert declares, “Dreams are liberation of the spirit from the power of external nature, and a feeling of the soul from the bonds of the senses” (Freud 448). Further Scherner and Volket define dream in The Dream Imagination, “Dreams arise essentially from mental impulses and represent manifestations of mental forces which have been prevented from expanding freely during the daytime.” Both the definition put stress on the element of memory.

Now the essay begins with the arguments that ‘dreams have stood in need of explanation’ (448). SoFreud described the dream mechanism in The interpretation of Dreams. Here Freud’s greatest discovery is the Unconscious, the Conscious, and the Preconscious in his psychological system. Later on Freud modifies the slightly and called the new subsystems as the Id (unconscious), the Ego (conscious) and the Superego. The function of Unconscious is like storeroom which consists of the repressed wish and desires. It contains unpleasant feeling or trauma. Our desires are controlled by the Conscious which is build according to the socio-cultural rules of society. Ego creates the sense of ‘self’, what is to be a normal man.The more you repress your desires the more normal you are. The first thing represent in unconscious is called ‘libido’ or sexual desire but not always. According to Freud while the subject is sleeping Conscious also called censorship slightly loosen the control over the unconscious, then these repressed desires come into dreams in order to maintain the psychological balance. It’s called temporary wish fulfilments. This is primary idea about how dream triggers in mind.

Generally he classified dreams into the three categories. The first that are sensible and intelligible in which the mental processes fully resemble those of waking life; such especially are the dreams of children. The second which are connected and have an evident meaning but it’s not resembles to the waking life because it has a curious or surprising element in it. For example, a person dreams his son dead by an accident. The third is where the mental process disconnected, confused, and senseless. It has the quality of strangeness and unreality which Freud calls ‘illusion’. 

2)     Manifest and Latent Content of Dreams:

The content of Dream helps in psychological investigation, the solution of phobias, obsession, obsessions, and delusions etc. (448). The procedure of psychotherapy helps for the explanation of dreams. For that reason we need to understand what manifest and latent content of dream is. The Latent content loosely called the dream thoughts which characterised manifest content. The latent content or dream thought is a logical part of the subject’s mental life and contains none of the absurdities which generate manifest content of most dreams.

The manifest content of most dreams depicts a situation or rather an action, so that we can call it the theatrical representation. They provide the material or dream-content for dream. Every element of the manifest content represents several dream thoughts and latent content is brought by a true condensation. Freud mentioned two problems in relation to manifest and latent content of dreams; first what is the psychical process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into the manifest one. Second what are the motive/motives which have necessitated this transformation? (451). He describes the process which transforms the latent into the manifest content is called ‘dream-work’ which has a meaning and deserve all our attention.

3)     The dreams as Realization of Unfulfilled Desire:

Mostlythis happens in child’s dream sometimes also in adults. Children are not able to make distinction between the reality and dreams which is attained by the adults. That is why adults simply use a phrase “Oh! It was just a dream.” The wish which is not fulfilled in reality is fulfilled in dreams. Freud comes up with this argument after analysis some children dreams that “All of them fulfilled wises which were active during the day and had remained unfulfilled. The dreams were simple and undisguised wish-fulfilments.”(452) For Example, An eight year old boy had a dream that he was driving in a chariot with Achilles and that Diomede was the charioteer. It was shown because he had a great identification of the Greek heroes. It means dream has the connection with the day time life. He terms for that ‘infantile type of dream’.

4)     Dream Mechanism – Condensation, Dramatization and Displacement:

The dreammechanism consist two main elements which are Condensation and Displacement. It can also be called as the distorting mechanisms. Let us first understand these two terms. Dream combines different images and produces one image is called ‘Condensation’. For example in dream all my CUG friends are at my native place although they don’t have any connection to that place. There are many sorts of ways in which condensation takes place like figures can be put together like single figure by giving it the features of two people, we can call it ‘collective person’. If this fusion has taken place in the latent content then the process is called Identification where dreamer put himself instead of the subject. Freud writes, “Condensation, together with the transformation of thoughts into situations (dramatization), is the most important and peculiar characteristic of the dream-work” (455).

Trivial or sometimes unimportant things come back into dream is called ‘Displacement’. For example a casual visit at our friend’s house in dreams. Because of Displacement mechanism the most dreams contain so many indifferent and minor impressions of the previous day. To understand a dream and make connection between the dram-content and dream-thoughts Freud calls it “Dream-displacement.” He also calls it a trans-valuation of all psychical values. A connection is to be found the content of the dream with any impression of the previous day that impression is so trivial that only we can recall it and it becomes the dream-instigator. These images create a visual picture by using different symbols or pictorial in mind is called Dramatization. When dream thought became the form of visual picture Freud terms it Regression which is the raw material for dream. In the formation of dream Condensation and Displacement combine to produce the result.

5)     Three Classes of Dreams:

As I wrote before that dreams are undisguised wish-fulfilments, which is left during daytime life. In that case the dream-situation represents as fulfilled a wish which is known to consciousness. They are repressed wishes of the subject. Here the famous belief about dream is that it is foretell of the future which is now confirmed. Really speaking the situation which is occurred in dream is not future but we like to be occurred it. It means what it wishes, it believes. We can classify dreams into three categories according to their wish-fulfilment. First consist of an unrepressed wish undisguised like infantile dream. Second consist of repressed wish disguisedly, it requires analysis before it can be understood. Third represent a repressed wish, it sometime generates because of anxiety, andanxiety takes place of dream-distortion.

6)     Why The Dream disguises the desire – The Censorship:

As we discussed above the function of conscious and unconscious what is rejected by the censorship is in a state of repression. Censorship helps to control the offensive elements because it never completely deny but merely reduced. It is just like the compromise between the two frontiers agency and the demands. This censorship recovers it power when sleep is over and it wipe out what is achieved in the dreams. Because of this we are unable to explain everything about our dreams what we have seen. That’s why we forget dreams.

7)     Normal and abnormal psychology and Dream symbolism:

Here we need to understand thatmost of the adults’ drams are of erotic wishes. Freud described it as ‘sexual dreams’. It doesn’t mean that dreams with an undisguised sexual content. In this type of drams dreamer make a person as sexual objectsof his choice. Freud calls it as ‘perversions’ (465). Generally it is considered as sexual wish-fulfilments, which are the representation of repressed erotic wishes. Freud observed that every civilized man retains the infantile forms of sexual life in some respect or other.

Dreamer use different ‘symbols’ to represent the private parts. Sometime dreamer himself doesn’t know the meaning of the symbols which are being used by him. For exampleknife, hills, sword, as male genital or cave, cupboard, box as uterus. Symbols like staircaserepresent sexual intercourse. For that reason the knowledge of dream symbolism is very important in the technique of dream interpretation. It is considered to be an ancient technique to interpret dream.Here we need to remember that symbol is an individual construction according to his or her ideation material and some symbols are universally spread. So the knowledge of symbolism is can be called as the language of dreams. It is the creation of dream-work. Symbolism gets its material for dream from unconscious for condensation, displacement, and dramatization.

Conclusion:

            At last we can say that dreams are a logical continuance of our waking mental life. We dream at night only about those matters which have taken place or we mostly concerned by day. In that case we can also say that dreams are differ from psycho-neurotic symptoms because both have the opposing wish, wish to sleep. In a sense we can call dreams as the guardian of sleep. Freud’s theory of psycho-analysis has the tremendous impact on the culture of twentieth century. It also becomes famous in literature. Yet it challenged by Lacan because he proved in his work The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious that “Unconscious is structured like language.”(Lacan 60)

References:

1)      Freud, Sigmund. “On Dreams (1901)” FREUD Complete Works. 448-467. Print.

2)      Jones, Ernest. “Freud’s Theory of Dreams.” The American Journal of Psychology 21.2 (1910): 283-308. Print.

3)      Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Daedalus, Twentieth-Century Classics Revisited 103.1 (1974): 91-96. Print.

4)      Trosman, Harry. “Freud’s Dream Theory”.

5)      Lacan, Jacques. “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious.” Modern Criticism and Theory. Ed. David Lodge, Nigel Wood. London: Longman Publications, 1999. 61-88. Print.