Understanding of Dreams. Understanding of Dreams.

According to Freud, dreams were disguised, hallucinatory fulfilment of repressed wishes.

He also asserted that dreams not only represented current wishes,

but were also invariably expressions of wish- fulfilments dating from early childhood.

Dreams, he believed, gave indirect expressions to infantile sexual wishes which had been repressed and which,…

if expressed in undisguised form, would so disturb the dreamer that he would wake up.

Because these wishes are unacceptable and potentially disturbing, they are censored and disguised.

Freud described the mental processes, or “dream-work”, by which the dream was modified and rendered less disturbing.

These processes included;

Condensation, the fusing together of different ideas and images into a single image;

Displacement, in which a potentially disturbing image or idea is replaced by something connected but less disturbing;

Representation, the process by which thoughts are converted into visual images;

Symbolization, in which some neutral object stands for some aspect of sexual life or those persons connected with it which the dreamer would prefer not to recognize.

Freud introduced the term “manifest content” to describe what the dreamer recalled.

In contrast, the “latent content” was the hidden, true meaning of the dream.

This latent content could be ascertained only when the dreamer’s associations to the images in the dream had been subjected to psychoanalytical scrutiny and interpretation.

There were many other forms of dreams e.g. traumatic dreams, anxiety dreams etc.

They did not seem to fit into Freud’s theory of dreams which was primarily concerned with infantile sexuality.

There are many reasons for thinking that what is unconscious is not exclusively the consequence of repression, including the fact that some dreams are clearly creative or provide answers to problems.

Although everything which was repressed was unconscious, not everything unconscious was repressed.

Jung does not distinguish between manifest and latent dream content in the same manner that Freud does.

According to Jung, dream is spontaneous self portrayal in symbolic form of the actual situation in the unconscious.

According to the Talmud, the dream is its own interpretation. Any dream which is not interpreted, is like a book which is not opened.

It shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is; not as the interpretation of the analyst and not as the patient would like it to be, but as it is.

The dream does not censor or distort, although there are dreams which on the surface do look like disguised wish-fulfillment, a more profound understanding will invariably be gained if these dreams are approached with the hypothesis that dreams do not hide but reveal.

They invariably point to something as yet unknown which they express in the vocabulary of the known, rather than merely disguising or censoring what one already presumes to know.

Dreams are not symptomatic, but symbolic. The deeper layers speak in images.

These images are to be viewed as if they presented us with description of ourselves, or our unconscious situations.

We must translate the dream statements by putting the dreamer’s association and explanation into the context of the images.

Associations are the contents which happen to come to mind when the dream image is considered, whether they be rational or irrational.

If I have dreamed of a particular object, I might recall that I always become angry when a certain person uses this object: this is an association.

An explanation is a more rational description of what the dream image means to me.

The first step in understanding a dream is to establish its context. This means unravelling its network of relationships with the dreamer and his or her life, and discovering the significance of various images it presents;

So Jung does not have a fixed method of dream interpretation, for each dream is taken as a direct expression of the dreamer’s unconscious, and only to be understood in this light.

Every dream interpretation may pertain either to what we call the object level or the subject level.

Dreams on an objective level are related to what is going on in the environment; the people appearing in it are taken as real, and their relationship to, and possible influence on the dreamer are analysed.

In dreams on a subjective level the dream-figures are taken as representing aspects of the dreamer’s personality.

A fairly common belief is that dreams reproduce the events of the day before, especially if these were significant or striking.

Dreams sometimes express hidden wishes. The wish fulfilment dream is usually easy to spot;

when, for instance, the hungry man dreams he is eating a wonderful meal, or the thirsty that they see sparkling water.