To Dream A Dream
Sigmund Freud revolutionized the practice of psychoanalysis and the study of dreams. The interpretation of dreams had and still is a widely controversial subject especially since it involves attempting to understand the irrationality of the human mind. In Freud’s early years, psychoanalysis and scientific dream interpretations did not exist as fields of study; at least ones not taken seriously by the scientific community. Sigmund Freud was a revolutionary who played a major role in the development of psychoanalysis and the study of dreams that has changed the way modern medicine approaches mental illness through science.
Even from childhood, Freud was destined to be a scholar and accomplish a great many things. Freud was brilliant as a child; his precocious nature drove him to learn several languages including Greek, Latin, French, Hebrew, and English. He never intended to practice medicine. In Pamela Thurschwell’s Sigmund Freud, she documented a brief summary of Freud’s early years to use as a tool to better understand how he thought. “His initial interest was in zoological rather than human science” (6) specifically concerning research. Though his interest was the research of zoological nervous systems, he ended up changing to a medicinal practice because as a young man soon to be married, he needed to make sure he had a job that ensured his financial security. As a result “Freud eventually moved from studying the spinal cords of fishes to studying the human central nervous system” (Thurschwell, 7). He treated several higher class women for various nervous illnesses, and his initial intrigue into the art of psychoanalysis rose from the hysterical nature of the women he treated. He sought to discover the reasons behind why people behaved in such a manner and proceeded to develop several in depth theories surrounding potential causes of hysteria. Thurschwell said, “Freud never gave up on his deterministic belief in the principle of cause and effect. His theories indicated that every hysterical symptom he examined, every dream, every slip of the tongue, everything we say or think has a cause. It may not always be possible to uncover this cause, but it is there” (6). His opinions may have been incredibly biased at the beginning, but his strong beliefs led to incredible leaps in the development of psychoanalysis as a field of study. Without Freud’s persistence, the practice of psychoanalysis would not exist as it is known today.
Psychoanalysis was a field of study new to the world of medicine. The term psychoanalysis was derived from a Greek term, psyche “originating from Greek myth, the word originally referred to the soul. But psychoanalytic terminology does not use “soul” in a religious sense. Rather the psyche is the mental apparatus as it is defined in contrast to the body or the “soma” (a somatic illness is one that is caused by bodily rather than mental factors)” (4) as defined by Thurschwell. Psychoanalysis was a world that had never been considered much of a useful tool in treating mental illness. Sigmund Freud was one of the first to consider it a profession. Breuer and Charcot were other scientists studying in the field at the same time as Freud. Many of their works transferred back and forth inspiring new ideas as to how to treat patients. After Freud’s Studies on Hysteria, which included a series of case histories in which Freud co-wrote and participated in with Joseph Breuer, he developed several radical ideas that he went on to either prove or disprove. His many lectures on psychoanalysis often referenced these works. If a young patient bears all of the signs of a typical healthy youth, “but who has been subjected to violent emotional shocks”, the “doctors are not inclined to take the case to seriously”. Typically the case would be dismissed as “hysteria”—“which has the power of producing picture of a whole number of serious diseases” (Lectures, 5). The doctors consider a return to complete health probable. Differential diagnosis in such cases is difficult. There is a difference between hysteria and an organic brain disease. Hysteria involves symptoms caused by entirely mental factors that could potentially be cured to repeated therapy. An organic brain disease often carried many similar symptoms as a patient suffering from hysteria, but the breakdown in mental function would be due to the degenerative effects of a pathogen such as a fungus or bacteria physically destroying the brain tissue. Organic brain diseases were often deadly if left untreated. The trick was diagnosing the patient properly. A few sessions of therapy could often establish a basis for an initial diagnosis. Freud asserts in one of his lecture that “the fixation of mental life to pathogenic traumas is one of the most significant and practically important characteristics of neurosis” (Lectures, 13). If psychoanalysis of the patient began clearing up symptoms of hysterical behavior, it was unlikely that the patient would be suffering from an organic brain disease. Because psychoanalysis was a new approach to mental disability, most of the medical profession often did not consider mental illness to be high priority. Hysteria was only the surface. Freud dove into steadily more and more complex cases involving a slew of different diagnosis.
Extreme cases of hysterical behavior led to further investigation of repression and the splitting of consciousness. In one of Freud’s lectures he defines repression as “the same forces which in the form of resistance, were now offering opposition to the forgotten material’s being made conscious, most formerly have brought about the forgetting and must have pushed the pathogenic experiences in question out of consciousness” (Lectures, 21). The act of repression described appears to fit a phenomenon Freud experienced during various cases, but he stresses that the definition he gave to repression was still considered hypothetical and could be altered in the future should new research demand. Repression was an early theory on the origin of dreams. Later it became a proven phenomenon and a possible cause for a dream. Not only did Freud suggest repression in dreams, but also as a potential cause for the splitting of consciousness. No one knows what causes the splitting of consciousness, a term that is often associated with dissociative identity disorder in modern times. The problem of the mind is that it is fickle. Freud encountered a serious issue when attempting to treat patients suffering from repression. Hypnosis hindered treatment or halted it completely. Hypnosis would create mental blocks as it was used to bring forward areas of the mind that were previously inaccessible, making other areas of the mind inaccessible. “It is only if you exclude hypnosis that you can observe resistances and repressions and form and adequate idea of the truly pathogenic course of events. Hypnosis conceals the resistance and renders a certain area of the mind accessible; but as against this, it build up resistance at the frontiers of this area into a wall that makes everything beyond inaccessible” (Lectures, 24). Freud quickly abandoned hypnosis as a regular treatment technique and used it sparingly in hopes of avoiding such a derailing issue. Further studies suggested that hysterical dissociation is a form of repression that turns conscious memories into unconscious memories and ends up creating dissociative identity in extreme cases. “I soon arrived at another view of the origin of hysterical dissociation (the splitting of the consciousness)” (Lectures, 19). The phenomenon of the splitting of consciousness is a condition that is still not fully understood. Dissociative Identity Disorder more commonly known as Multiple Personality Syndrome is a diagnosis that came about decades after Freud’s initial examinations and research on the splitting of consciousness. His studies continued to search for the source of why a consciousness would split, but he focused on dream interpretation as a more reliable and less detrimental way to access the recesses of the mind.
The controversial nature of dream interpretation exists because of the unreliability of dream interpretation and their regular association with possessing prophetic properties. Since ancient times, dreams have taken on a mystical effect. Freud addressed this in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, a collection of several of Freud’s writings. “The ancients distinguished between the true and valuable dreams which were sent to the dreamer as warnings, or to foretell future events, and the vain, fraudulent and empty dreams, whose object was to misguide him or lead him to destruction” (Basics, 184). In many cultures they are called visions instead of dreams. Dreams were often considered prophetic in nature and those who dreamt became beacons of hope and a reliance of the society. Dreams in such cases were believed to be prophetic in nature. Freud, in all of his studies, claims to have never been able to prove the prophetic nature of dreams. In the many lectures Freud gave, he questioned the origin of dreams as to where they were produced in the brain. “The dreams which we produce at night have, on the one hand, the greatest external similarity and internal kinship with the creations of insanity, and are, on the other hand, compatible with complete health in waking life” (Basics, 34). The unusual nature of a dream’s relationship to insanity brings into question the process in which the mind undergoes in order to keep sanity in a waking state. Perhaps the interpretation of the dreams themselves could enlighten issues presented in insanity cases. Freud continued to publish books on the art of dream interpretation that proved to be more consistent than traditional methods. Granted, dream interpretation still leaves much to be desired. “Aristotle expressed himself in this connection by saying that the best interpreter of dreams is he who can best grasp similarities. For dream-pictures, like the pictures in water, are disfigured by the motion (of the water), so that he hits the target best who is able to recognize the true picture in the distorted one” (Basics, 189). Freud was determined to establish a scientific method for dream interpretation outside of the vague symbolism that was often spun from them. Even after taking steps to accomplish this, it made the interpretation of dreams no less difficult, simply different, and perhaps more reliable.
As Freud struggled to establish a scientific method for dream interpretation, he had to disconnect all association from the demonic and the divine. Before psychoanalysis, those leading in the field of dream interpretation often referenced Aristotle’s works on dreams. The entirety of dream interpretation belonged solely in the philosophical world. “In the two works of Aristotle in which there is mention of dreams, they are already regarded as constituting a problem of psychology. We are told that the dream is no god-sent, that it is not of divine but of daimonic origin…the dream is not a supernatural revelation, but is subject to the laws of the human spirit, which has, of course, a kinship with the divine. The dream is defined as the psychic activity of the sleeper, inasmuch as he is asleep” (Basics, 184). After all, dream interpretation was based off of religious symbolism and various iconic references. This may have proved a seemingly successful form of dream interpretation because, as Freud has asserted, “not all dreams are alien to the dreamer, incomplete and confused” (Lectures, 35). Dreams are constructed out of what the dreamer knows and can imagine. Because of this many places may seem familiar in the dream world though the dreamer may never have been to the place of which they dream. Freud firmly believed that the experiences and thoughts of a person had something to do with the creation of dreams. This differed from the other accepted forms of dream interpretation commonly used around the world.
Before Freud’s invention of a scientific method to dissect dreams, there were two popular forms of dream interpretation that existed throughout the world. The first of these methods is the symbolic method. It relies heavily on the interpreter relating various instances in the dream to various meanings associated with the culture. This was often the method used in cultures that viewed dreams as prophetic. Freud was aware of that the “success [of the symbolic method] remains a matter of ingenious conjecture, of direct intuition, and for this reason, dream interpretation has naturally been elevated into an art which seems to depend on extraordinary gifts” (Basics, 189). Dream interpreters were socially elevated because they were thought to be blessed with supernatural powers and able to communicate with the cosmos. This social elevation caused interpretations to rarely be brought into question. Because of the unreliability of the symbolic method, interpretations could vary wildly of the same dream between different interpreters. This process was also not capable of exposition, since it relied entirely on the internal instincts and opinions of the one who was interpreting. “The second of the two popular methods of dream interpretation entirely abandons such claims. It might be described as the “cipher method”, since it treats the dream as a kind of secret code in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, according to an established key” (Basics, 189). The Cipher method is perhaps a little more reliable as far as consistency is concerned. The nail in the coffin would be to bring the reliability of the “key” that the cipher method is using into question. This does not prove the reliability of Freud’s scientific method being greater, but it focuses clearly on the subject and approaches every case in the same basic manner, then steadily growing more specific. Using such a method would be more useful in interpreting the origin of dreams if not discover their meaning.
A scientific method of dream interpretation does not rely solely on the dream as a whole in order to deduce meaning; rather it looks intimately at the dreamer to figure a dream’s origin. Regarding Freud’s method of scientific method of dream interpretation, “it is an interpretation in detail, not en masse; like this, it conceives the dream from the outset, as something built up, as a conglomerate of psychic formations” (Basics, 194). Freud’s dream analysis relies on the honesty of the patient. Lying, ultimately, would hinder the process or allow it to fail completely. This scientific method dissects the dream on a much more intricate level than the cipher or symbolic methods would. It steps away from looking at the dream as a whole and focuses on minute aspects which may not have immediately stood out to the dreamer when trying to describe the dream in its entirety. “One cannot make the dream as a whole the object of one’s attention, but only the individual components of its content. I must first dissect the dream for him; then in connection with each fragment, he gives me a number of ideas which may be described as the ‘thoughts behind’ this part of the dream” (Basics, 194). Freud would help the dreamer who was the participant in his studies specific questions about their life that could appear to relate little to the actual dream if at all. He tested the reliability of his method on himself to help determine if it was effective. Taken from The Modern Classical Interpretation of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, a chapter by Erik Erikson describes the methodology of Freud’s scientific method and what it specifically focused on in order to retrieve the answers that Freud sought concerning the potential origin of a dream. Freud’s interviews often involved questions in the realm of acute sleep-disturbing stimulus, delayed stimulus (day residue), acute life conflicts, dominant transference conflicts, repetitive life conflicts, associated basic childhood conflicts, common denominators such as “wishes”, drives, needs, and methods of defense including denial, and distortion (Erikson, 35). With an accurate history of the patient, he could determine from which memories the dream may have been influenced and he would be one step closer to understanding the cause and effect of dream creation. Nothing in a dream is beyond the scope of one’s imagination. Most places in the dream are often recognizable to the dreamer while asleep, but foreign in their waking state. Sometimes places and objects in the dream are built from the brain’s interpretation of a description they may have heard or read in a book. All of these environmental factors that do not have much to do with wish fulfillment also play a role in when, where, and how the wish may be fulfilled in the dream.
Wish fulfillment is a concept often associated with dreams that was first derived from early psychoanalytic studies focusing on dreams. A major assertion of Freud was that he postulated dreams were a method of wish fulfillment. Philosopher K. A. Scherner says, “The phantasy immediately fulfills the dreamers’ wish simply because this existed vividly in the mind” (Basics, 216). The dreamer does not have to necessarily be conscious of their desire. He implies that the wish fulfilled in a dream is dependent on the depth of the desire in the dreamer’s mind. The dream may not always fulfill a conscious wish of the dreamer but blend the conscious and unconscious desires of the dreamer. As one drifts to sleep they lose the ability to separate the ideas spontaneously experienced as one possess in their waking state. In one of his lectures he said that this phenomenon was proven by a version of a Hungarian proverb he heard from one of his students. “What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb for which I am indebted to one of my pupils professes to tell us, for it asks the question: ‘What does the goose dream of?’ and answers: ‘of maize.’ The whole theory that the dream is a wish fulfillment is contained within these two sentences.” The Hungarian proverb states: ‘the pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize.’ The Jewish proverb asks: ‘Of what does the hen dream?’— and answers: ‘Of millet” (Basics, 215). There are other similar proverbs that can be found throughout the world. Freud claims that Scherner was the one who discovered the symbolism in dreams which led to Freud’s conclusion that a dream is wish fulfillment. He said this and joked about whether discoveries were still possible. In this unfathomable universe, the irrationality of a dream will never stop yielding discovery. Dreams, as Freud has stated multiple times, is the fulfillment of a wish. This is a concept that can be found in many of the classical plays. Freud references them when he wrote a short essay on his theory “The Oedipus Complex”. “In the Oedipus the child’s wishful fantasy that underlies it is brought into the open and realized as it would be in a dream. In Hamlet, it remains repressed; and—just as in the case of a neurosis—we only learn of its existence from its inhibiting consequences” (World of Ideas, 921). Freud implies that dreams may bear some responsibility for the appearance of other psychological illness, invoking a relationship to his early research in psychoanalysis. A wish can affect the constitution of the mind. The question of dreams is not recent, even in Freud’s time it had long since been establish as a wondrous philosophical debate. Could dreams affect reality? Dreams always have the potential to become reality, even when they are far-fetched. Even as slang in modern times, the expression “in your dreams” is often used to say no to a question when one is asking for something they want or implying they are unlikely to achieve whatever they are attempting to do. Dreams do indeed seem to represent wish fulfillment, but not all wishes are deemed pleasant by the dreamer. Dreams, and in turn wishes, can be classified as “desired” and “undesired”.
Just as wish fulfillment was established as a logical reason for dreaming, there are wishes that the dreamer may not desire to surface or be unconscious of. Most would explain their feelings after such dreams as uncomfortable or disagreeable. Freud points out that “the disagreeable sensation which such dreams arouse is, of course, precisely identical with the antipathy which would, and usually does restrain us from treating or discussing such subjects…But this disagreeable feeling which recurs in our dreams does not preclude the existence of a wish; everyone has which he would not like to confess to others, which he does not care to admit even to himself” (Basics, 235). In a waking state, “desired” and “undesired” ideas are strictly controlled. That is not the case of one in a state of slumber. Freud suggests that dreams often take on sadistic characteristics. Though one may not want to admit to a desire or find disgust in a desire existing, it is more common for pain and suffering to present itself in dreams than pleasure. Freud insinuates that “in our dreams pain and disgust are more frequent than pleasure…there are also anxiety dreams, in which this most terrible of all the painful emotions torments us until we wake,” (Basics, 217). He does not address undesirable dreams as nightmares. In fact, he alludes to the possibility that an undesirable thought may be responsible for the creation of a dream, but just because a thought is undesirable does not mean pleasure is not derived from the dream in which such a desire is fulfilled. In a waking state, people often attempt to rationalize the presence of pleasure associated with any given undesirable thought. This opens the potential for the undesirable thought to be disguised inside the dream as a desirable one, otherwise known as dream distortion.
Dream distortion is often associated with the anxiety of fears or unwanted desires. Dreams that possess more disturbing characteristics are often claimed to be distorted. Freud knew that “we feel justified in connecting the unpleasant character of all these dreams with the fact of dream distortion, and in concluding that their wish fulfillment is disguised recognition, precisely because there is a strong revulsion against—a will to repress—the subject matter of the dream or the wish created by it” (Basics, 235). Revulsion towards strange or unsatisfactory dreams is not an uncommon reason for claiming distortion. The distortion claimed has more to do with the self esteem of the subject who produced the dream and their understanding of themselves. Freud speculated that “the anxiety is only fastened onto the idea which accompanies it, and is really derived from another source” (Basics, 236), and perhaps the dream had nothing to do with the undesired thoughts presented in the dream. People have secret desires and fears they wish never to see the light of day. Humans often seek to present themselves as the best possible version that could be presented. This reality that is still experienced by the majority of the population could offer insight to why one would insist on a dream being subject to distortion. Freud sought to expose those fears and unwanted desires in order to understand the reasons for their presence in the dreamscape. Perhaps he endeavored to understand the process by which a mind recedes into its own insanity as a result of continued dream distortion.
Freud became a foremost expert in the fields of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation. After some time Freud was considered to be the judge of what was and was not considered to fall under the category of psychoanalysis. His pupils worshipped his expertise is a field of vague ideas that consisted of the irrational inter-workings of the human mind. He created a scientific manner of dream interpretation that was a first attempt at approach the cause and effect of the dreamscape with little concern for bias towards any particular meaning. This revolutionary redefined the approach to psychological study as a science over an act of ritualistic design and attempted to turn chaos into order. His radical theories and practices continue to be further investigated and expanded upon as a reputable line of inquiry to this day.
Works Cited
Erikson, Erik. The Modern Critical Interpretation of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of
Dreams. ed. Howard Bloom. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. ed. Dr. A. A. Brill. New York, NY:
Random House Inc., 1938. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis: The Standard Edition. New York, NY:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1910. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. “The Oedipus Complex”. ed. Lee A Jacobus. World of Ideas. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013. Print.
Thruschwell, Pamela. Sigmund Freud. New York: NY, Routledge, 2001. Print.