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 — 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 scientific 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 depression
- The possible evolutionary role of 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."
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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" (V§D.δ)) to unconscious wishes pertaining to the far past (VI§F.II).
Freud listed four transformations applied to 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 object that does not raise the censor's suspicions
- 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, transforming it into the manifest content, what is actually seen by the dreamer. 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 infantile, 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 "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
[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]New Age
Interpretation of dreams is also a part of contemporary pop and new age culture. Edgar Cayce is an example.
[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]Evolutionary Use
An article in Scientific American, November 2003 [2] put forth the theory that dreams provide sensory stimulation to the brain when the eyes, ears, etc. are still developing. Testing showed that REM-deprived (but not sleep-deprived) cats tended to develop visual problems. Also, analysis showed a direct correlation between immaturity of an animal at birth and its required REM sleep. For example, the platypus, which is born without eyes and must cling to its mother for weeks, needs the most REM of all mammals; the dolphin, which at birth is a self-sufficient swimmer, gets almost none.
The article also suggested that since humans wake more quickly from REM than normal sleep, dreams could have evolved to keep us alert for predators in the night. Nightmares may be a specialized form of this; a human makes a sudden, reflexive movement when awoken from a nightmare, which can (by pure chance) collide with a beast that would otherwise have killed him.
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