dream interpretation

The ancient Greek's constructed temples they called Asclepieions, where sick people were sent to be cured. It was believed that cures would be effected through divine grace through dreams experienced within their confines. Dreams were also considered prophetic or omens of particular significance. In ancient Egypt, priests also acted as dream interpreters. Hieroglyphics depicting dreams and their interpretations are evident. Dreams have been held in considerable importance through history by most cultures.

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.

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 one's 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" (V§D.δ))

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 counterintuitive nature 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

Dream analysis is central to Jungian analytical psychology, and forms a criticial part of the therapeutic process in analysis. Jung did not reject Freud's theory of dream interpretation wholesale; However he thought Freud's notion of dreams as encrypted representations of unfulfilled wishes, to be simplistic and naiive. Jung believed that the scope of dream interpretation was far wider and reflected the richness and complexity of the entire unconscious itself, both personal and collective. Jung believed the psyche to be a self regulating organism. Conscious attitudes were likely to be compensated for unconsciously (within the dream) by their opposites. Such transcendance of opposites is necessary to maintain a healthy homeostasis and is a common theme in Jungs work.

Jung believed that archetypes such as - the animus, the anima, the shadow and others - revealed themselves in dreams, as dream symbols acting autonomously. Such figures may sometimes take the form of an old man, a young maiden or a giant spider as the case may be. Each represents an unconscious attitude that is largely hidden to our conscious minds. The acquaintance with such dream archetypes may serve to increase our awareness of our unconscious attitudes, integrating seemingly disparate parts of the psyche and contribute to the process of healing.

Jung postulated that material repressed by the conscious mind, postulated by Freud to comprise the unconscious was similiar to his own concept of the shadow - which in itself is only a small part of the unconscious.

He cautioned against blindly ascribing meaning to dream symbols without a clear understanding of the clients personal situation. Thus although he acknowledged the universality of archetypal symbols, he stated that, one must be careful in attributing fixed meaning to dream symbols. It would be far better to explore their personal singnificance to the patient, rather than having the dream conform to some predetermined myth or archetypal idea. This prevents dream analysis from devolving into a theoretical and dogmatic excercise that is far removed from the patient's own psychological state. Jung stressed the importance of "sticking to the image". This implies that rather than seeking to offer ready interpretations, it was more important to first discover the personal context of the dream image to the patient. He describes for example the image "deal table". One would expect the dreamer to have some associations with this image and the professed lack of any percieved signficance or familiarity whatsoevern, should make one suspicious. He would ask to patient to imagine the image as vividly as possible and to explain it to him as if he had no idea as to what a "deal table" was. Jung stressed the importance of context in dream analysis.

The dream was not merely a devious puzzle invented by the unconscious to be cracked, so that the 'true' causal factors behind it may be elicted. They are not to serve as lie detectors, with which to reveal the insincerity behind conscious thought processes. Dreams like the unconscious had their own language. As representations of the unconscious, dream images have their own primacy and logic. Their meaning must be teased out in relation to conscious life.

Jung believed that dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, irrational experiences and even telepathic visions. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we experience as conscious life, it has an unconscious nocturnal side which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. We do not doubt the importance of our conscious experience, then why second guess our unconscious life?

New Age

Interpretation of dreams is also a part of contemporary pop and new age culture. Edgar Cayce is an example. Cayce claimed that through dreaming, people are given access to their spirit, and further, that all possible questions could be answered from the inner consciousness given the proper awareness ^[1]

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.

See also

• dream

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
• Storr, Anthony, "The Essential Jung, Selected Writings" 1998

1. ^ Bro, Harmon. Cayce on Dreams. 1982

External links

• Valasearch Dreams Section - Dream Interpretation techniques and dream dictionary
• Dream Interpretations Based on Ancient Traditions
• Dream Interpretations
• Dream Interpretation at Freud and Jung
• Dream Dictionary
• Dreammoods Website
• Experience Project Dreams Dream discussion resource
• Easy Dream Interpretation Website