Dream Interpretation
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Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meanings to Dreams. Various systems of dream interpretation have assigned meanings in terms of future events (oneiromancy), in terms of chance events during the night, and in terms of unconscious mental activity; in terms of symbols and sigils to name a few.
Dream interpretation was taken up as part of psychoanalysis at the end of the 19th Century; the manifest content of a dream (what is perceived in the dream) is analyzed to reveal the latent content of a dream (the underlying thoughts of the dream — why it was dreamt). One of the seminal works on the subject is The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.
There has been much scientific research on dreams, and modern theories attempt to explain as many facts found in scientif, psychological and parapsychological research as possible. These include:
- The cause and purpose of dreams
- The content of dreams
- The varying frequencies of dreams (more before birth, fewer towards death; increased in premature births, etc.)
- The relationship between dreams and personality disorders
- The possible evolutionary role of dreaming
- The supernatural or occult significance of dreams
- The role of Lucid dreaming
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Hall
In 1953, Calvin S. Hall developed a theory of dreams in which dreaming is considered to be a cognitive process [1]. Hall argued that a dream was simply a thought or sequence of thoughts that occurred during sleep, and that dream images are visual representations of personal conceptions. For example, if one dreams of being attacked by friends, this may be a manifestation of fear of friendship; a more complicated example, which requires a cultural metaphor, is that a cat within a dream symbolizes a need to use your intuition. For English speakers, it may suggest that the dreamer must recognize that there is more than one way to skin a cat."
Freud
In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, first published at the end of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud argued that the foundation of all dream content is the fulfillment of wishes, conscious or not. The theory explains that the schism between ego and id leads to "censorship" of dreams. The unconscious would "like" to depict the wish fulfilled wholesale, but the preconscious cannot allow it; the wish (or wishes) within a dream is thus disguised, and, as Freud argues, only an understanding of the structure of the dream-work can explain the dream. In every dream in which he attempts to do so, he is able to establish a multitude of wishes on a variety of levels; conscious wishes for the immediate future ("I hope I pass this test") to unconscious wishes pertaining to the far past.
Freud listed four transformations applied wishes in order to avoid censorship:
- Condensation — one dream object stands for several thoughts
- Displacement — a dream object's psychical importance is assigned to an indifferent dream object
- Representation — a thought is translated to visual images
- Symbolism — a symbol replaces an action, person, or idea
These transformations help to disguise the latent content. The basis for all of these systems, he claimed, was "transference", in which a would-be censored wish of the unconscious is given undeserved "psychical energy" (the quantum of attention from consciousness) by attaching to "innocent" thoughts.
He claimed that the counterintuitivity of nightmares represented a clash between the ego and the id: the id wishes to see a past wish fulfilled, while the ego cannot allow it; he interprets the anxiety of a nightmare as the ego working against the id. (He further claimed that in nearly all cases these anxious dreams are products of childhood, sexual memories.)
Freud is careful to argue that the wishes are not revealed in dream analysis for the sake of conscious fulfillment, but instead for conscious resolution of the inner conflict. His relaxed attitude towards what could be seen as "depravity" in the unconscious is summed up in Plato's words: "the virtuous man is content to dream what a wicked man really does" (emphasis not added: I§F, VII§F; Plato Republic IX).
According to his theory, the most basic desires come from the "Ego, Superego and Id", the childlike portion of the unconscious, and as such often contained material that would be unacceptable to the ego. As the text was written relatively early in his career, he does not use the terms "ego" and "id", but rather "preconscious" and "unconscious", respectively. These terms themselves are not introduced until the seventh chapter of the book, until which his system of dream interpretation is incrementally constructed and argued.
Freud arrived at his theory of dreams by research (though he rejects much of the prior work), self-analysis, and psychoanalysis of his patients (I, VI§H, VII§C); as his theory developed, Freud often used dream interpretation to treat his patients, calling dreams "[t]he royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind" (VII§E).
Jung
To Carl Jung, dreams are communications from the unconscious. Most of the time, dreams can be regarded as "compensatory" views to the conscious, expressing aspects of the individual that are suppressed or neglected. This idea of compensation, of the natural tendency for the
New Age
Interpretation of dreams is also a part of contemporary culture and new age traditions. Edgar Cayce is an example.
Evolutionary Use
An article in Scientific American (January or February, forget which) showed that the more immature an animal is at birth, the more time it spends on REM sleep. For example, the opossum, which sleeps 18 hours a day, is a marsupial and is born after one month of gestation. A human, which goes through approximately nine months of gestation, requires only 8 hours of sleep. According to the article, dreams probably serve the purpose of preparing the brain for sensory input when the eyes, ears, etc. are still developing.
References
- Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams
- James A. Hall, Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and Practice, Inner City Books, 1983, ISBN 0-919-12312-0
- Elsie Sechrist with foreword by Hugh Lynn Cayce, Dreams, Your Magic Mirror, Warner Books, 1974, mass market paperback, ISBN 0-446-31384-X
