It is interesting to see how dreams can be analyzed. Many of us take the dreams very seriously and think that they would come true if seen at a particular time of the sleep and many do not believe them at all and say that it is a “dream”. How notions with dreams are so well attached to our everyday life. For instance we say very often ‘it is a dream come true’. It is interesting for me to see how the concept of dream works in us with the help of science.
As Sigmund Freud talks about in “The Interpretation of Dreams” of concepts like latent content or dream contents and dream – thoughts. The idea that dream is a result of the thoughts of our unconscious mind is another interesting aspect to look at. As it is said in the introduction of Interpretation of dreams that “the idea was that the mind harbors wishes or desires that lie outside awareness but that nevertheless manifest themselves at night in dreams”. Later in the same paragraph we see where it says that dream as a result of unconscious material is always repressed by the consciousness since those desires and wishes are not appropriate for the society. Hence, I interpret the conscious self as a social construct which obeys the norms and the code of conduct of the society and also adapts to it. As Julie Rivkin and Micheal Ryan mention in “Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: psychoanalysis” of the terms introjections and projection. Where introjections stand for adapting to certain characteristics from the society and projection stands for distancing ourselves from some of our own characteristics. Can we then say that it is perhaps the projection which sometimes is projected through our unconsciousness in our dreams? Are the projections our hidden wishes and desires which we throw out perhaps due to the unacceptable nature of the society and therefore they manifest in our dreams?
The other interesting aspect of Freud’s discussion which I can very well relate to my reading of novels is “uncanny”. Even though we strongly defend that we are not superstitious but read with great concentration when the technique ‘uncanny’ is applied by the writers to write suspense novels (detective, horror, etc.). We very well believe that some kind of clue is associated or hidden to certain act when that act is repeated many times in the life of the protagonist. A technique used by the writers which ask the reader to concentrate on those repeated actions to find out the hidden mystery in it and we as readers follow it quite efficiently.
Hola, Upasana: It is very interesting this topic of dreams. Your post make me remember a very common idea in Perú: if you have a bad dream, then you have to tell it to someone, so it doesn’t become reality. On the other hand, if the dream is a good one, then you might not tell anyone. Is interesting comparing this cultural point of view with Freud’s approach. In the first case, the idea is that the dream is some kind of announcement that something good or bad could happen and that we have the chance to change it. In the second case, on the contrary, the dream is the manifestation of something deep of ourselves that we can’t change because is in that inaccessible place called “unconscious”. Only a psychoanalytical therapy could help.
And, of course, there are plenty of interpretations of that strange world of dreams.