Dream Interpretation Essay, Research Paper

Historical Psychoanalysis and Dream Interpretation:

The Freudian Methodology

A bubble floats down from the sky and a cat appears to be encased within the bubble The cat mews and the bubble shatters and interruptions. Suddenly there are bowls filled with cat embryos. A flourishing voice calls to you and you know it is the voice of God. God is stating you to kill your neighbour, who is truly a devil in camouflage

See the above vision during the twenty-four hours, wide-awake, and you are diagnosed as insane. See the same vision at dark, sound asleep in your bed, and you will be judged absolutely normal ; it is all but a dream. In the dreaming province the normal individual & # 8217 ; s encephalon rather regularly mimics the most blazing manifestations of mental unwellness. In woolgathering the centripetal perceptual experiences are kindred to hallucinations ; the false belief systems similar to the psychotic beliefs of psychosis ; and the deviant thought, memory loss, and confabulatory quality is correspondent to the craze and dementedness of organic encephalon disease ( 168 Hobson ) .

Dreams have long been capable to controversy, whether they are a beginning of foretelling the hereafter, or as Sigmund Freud portrayed them as the & # 8220 ; royal route to the unconscious & # 8221 ; . Sigmund Freud was a celebrated psychologist who, although did non arise the construct of dream reading, was built-in in developing some methodological analysiss of using the dream as a agency of decoding the mind of the dreamer, peculiarly in bring outing and analysing the dreamer & # 8217 ; s psychological jobs. In Freud & # 8217 ; s position, the intent of dreams was to let the single to see the instinctual impulses that society deems unacceptable. Bing that Freud was a merchandise of the Victorian age, much of his dreamwork focused on the symbolism of dreams as projections of feelings of sexual defeat and guilt ( 15, 16 Storr ) .

The taking dream theory since the early 20th century has been that of depth psychology harmonizing to Sigmund Freud. Freud & # 8217 ; s theory encompassed the thought that dream formation is the psychological camouflage of an unconscious want. During the sleep province the self-importance or ego relaxes its watchfulness toward the Idaho or inherent aptitude, which allows out wants or thrusts to get away from their safe parturiency that resides in the unconscious. If these freed desires invaded the consciousness they would interrupt slumber. The portion of the mind called the censor protects sleep by transforming the existent import of the unconscious wants into symbols whose significance is concealed from the dreamer. Freud believed that all facets of the manifest or remembered dream content were the consequence of

censoring and in camouflage of its true content. This means that the true significance of dreams was vague to the dreamer, but that it could be revealed by depth psychology utilizing an interpretative technique that urged the dreamer to free associate in response to the manifest content ( 145, 146 Hobson ) . Freud analogized that dreaming was similar to a neuroticism in that all mental content of both the waking and kiping provinces were symptoms of pathologically repressed wants ( 168 Hobson ) .

Freud & # 8217 ; s theory of dreams embodies a differentiation that he made between two degrees of dreams. One degree is the manifest content of the dream ; this is the content of the dream, which a individual is able to retrieve. If I was able to state person the dream I had experience the old dark, I would be describing the manifest content. Manifest content, in Freud & # 8217 ; s position, possessed no significance or significance because it was the cloaked representation of the true ideas underlying the dream. These ideas make-up the latent contents ( the 2nd degree of dreams ) and consists of unconscious wants and phantasies, which have been, denied satisfaction. These wants find an mercantile establishment through being expressed in a transformed manner and finally look in an unrecognisable signifier in the manifest content. It is as if two linguistic communications are represented, with one being a cleaned-up version of something that is much more natural and rough ( 151-158 Freud ) .

The unconscious is composed of innate, natural stuff, which has ne’er been witting, every bit good as add-ons in which have been banished to the unconscious because they were consciously unacceptable. Responsible for keeping the boundary between witting and the unconscious is the censor that Freud spoke of. The censor acts as a lookout that prevents the instinctual stuff from deriving entree to the sphere of consciousness, while at the same clip coercing any endangering ideas that develop in the consciousness into the part of the unconscious. The censor carries out these supervising responsibilities utilizing the force of repression. During slumber, nevertheless, the censor is non rather as qui vive and can be fooled into leting unconscious stuff to go through through ( Freud 151, 155, 156, 311, 312, 356, 357 ) .

Freud began his surveies at the University of Vienna medical school in 1873. While there he became interested in mechanistic physiology, which was promoted by his physiology instructor Ernst Brucke. Harmonizing to this position, all physiology procedures, no affair how complex, had to be accounted for mechanistically in footings of ordinary physical and chemical Torahs ( 2 Storr ) . Freud worked in Brucke & # 8217 ; s research lab for six old ages, printing several documents on neuroantomy, and he hoped that finally he could prosecute a calling as a research physiologist instead than as a practicing doctor. However, early in the 1880s, he reluctantly concluded that an academic research calling would non be possible because of his Judaic background and the anti-semitic ambiance at the clip in Vienna.

He decided that he would hold to pattern medical specialty after all, and so he went to the General Hospital in Vienna for clinical preparation ( 28, 29 Appignanesi and Forrester ) .

Freud & # 8217 ; s anterior neurophysiological involvements led him to the psychopathology clinic at the General Hospital, which was under the way of the celebrated encephalon anatomist, Theodore Meymert. Under Meymert & # 8217 ; s way, Freud became expert at naming organic encephalon upsets. He now developed aspirations of specialising in this field and as Meymert & # 8217 ; s best pupil he won a family that enabled him to go to Paris, France, and survey with Jean Charcot. Charcot had made his repute by analyzing neurological conditions such as infantile paralysis and multiple induration, but when Freud met him he was deep into the survey of craze. The term craze is derived from the Grecian word hystera, which means womb. Hysteria is a pyschoneurosis, in which unconscious emotional struggles appear as terrible mental dissociation or as physical symptoms ( transition reactions ) , and is non dependent upon any known organic or structural pathology. The implicit in anxiousness is assumed to hold been converted into a physical symptom. Hysteria was considered a specifically female upset and was attributed to a malfunctioning womb ( 2, 3 Storr ) . Freud related that hysterical symptoms frequently resemble in some ways the effects of localised encephalon hurts, but occur in the absence of such hurts ( 11 Storr ) . Most doctors of his epoch dismissed craze as skulking and did non take it earnestly, but Charcot believed that it was a existent status caused by generalised failing of the nervous system, and allowed for a susceptibleness to hypnosis. Because of the

prestigeousness that Charcot possessed he helped to promote the antecedently disreputable topic of craze and hypnosis into scientific reputability, and he introduced Freud to their serious and systematic survey ( 5, 6, Brill ) .

Charcot circa 1886

( Freud and Culture Photo Archives )

After returning from Paris to Vienna Freud found that he could non pull adequate patients to his private pattern by specialising in ordinary neurological and encephalon diseases. He so began accepting patients with hysterical symptoms. At first, his curative armamentarium for such instances was thin, dwelling largely of warm or cold baths ( hydropathy ) and mild electrical stimulation & # 8217 ; s of the afflicted organic structure parts ( galvanism ) . These interventions were of small value in lending to any kind of existent physical remedy. The lone benefit that they attributed was that of the power of suggestion to the patient, but the interventions were virtually a placebo. Freud so tried direct hypnosis, where patients were hypnotized and told that their symptoms would vanish. Patients showed some betterment, but the intervention was far from perfect.

Freud so recalled a instance that might help in his interventions of hysterical patients. The instance he had in head had been described to him by his friend, Josef Breuer ( 11 Storr ) .

Josef Breuer and married woman

( Freud and Culture Photo Archive )

Josef Breuer was a extremely respected Viennese doctor who had supported Freud both financially and morally when he was a fighting medical pupil. Breuer had confided in Freud refering a instance in his pattern. The patient in his instance was Bertha Pappenheim, who was a immature adult female that was stricken with terrible hysterical symptoms. Normally Breuer did non accept hysterical patients, but the Pappenheims were household friends. Under those conditions Breuer had agreed to make what he could to assist Bertha. Over a period of several months, he and Bertha together developed the basic carthartic method of intervention. This method consisted of seting Bertha under hypnosis, where upon she would remember antecedently forgotten, but emotionally charged experiences that related to the oncoming of her symptoms. After retrieving them and showing the antecedently repressed emotions associated with them ( a procedure Breuer and Freud subsequently called catharsis ) the symptoms disappeared. The intervention seemed effectual, although towards the terminal of the interventions Bertha begun to show a strong emotional fond regard

to Breuer. This carthatic method was all but forgotten by Freud, until in his ain private pattern he needed a intervention other than the simple hypnotic suggestion ( 12 Storr ) .

However, Freud faced a drawback utilizing the hypnosis method of bring outing repressed ideas. Not all hysterical patients could be hypnotized. A more widely applicable technique was needed for accessing his patient & # 8217 ; s unconscious infective thoughts. There was besides the inquiry as to why these thoughts had become unconscious in the first topographic point. This led Freud to contrive & # 8220 ; free association & # 8221 ; , where patients were in the normal waking province, reclined on the sofa with eyes closed ; were instructed to allow their heads wander freely to any ideas that were aroused by their symptoms, no affair how pathetic or anxiousness eliciting the ideas were. This process was hard in pattern because the patients necessarily experienced what Freud called opposition ( a blocking, redacting, or baning of their histories that could be overcome merely with great continuity and encouragement from the healer ) . Freud was convinced that infective thoughts became unconscious because there was something basically anxiety eliciting about them, so much that they were actively repressed from consciousness, and the symptoms appeared in their position. Freud deduced that unconsciously the patients seemed to hold made the determination that it was better to endure the hurting of the symptom than that of believing the idea. The symptom hence represented a defence against the witting recognition of the idea ( 12, 13, 30, 45 Storr ) .

The first dream that Freud analyzed utilizing this method was one of his ain ( The Dream of Irma & # 8217 ; s Injection ) . In the dream, Freud was at a assemblage at which Irma ( one of his ain patients in existent life ) fell badly after being injected by one of his co-workers with propyl. Freud so saw vividly before him the expression for the chemically related substance trimethylamin, printed in heavy type. Like dream contents are this dream was disjointed, slightly eccentric, and made no obvious sense. When Freud free-associated to this straight experienced but absurd content of his dream, nevertheless, a series of unsuspected thoughts emerged that did do sense. These included the remembrance that his best friend Fliess, who was a physician ( although non the physician in his dream ) , had been perilously negligent in an operation that he had asked Fliess to execute on Irma in existent life. Freud besides recalled a recent conversation with Fliess in which they had speculated about the function of trimethylamin in the chemical science of the organic structure & # 8217 ; s sexual procedures. These remembrances in bend led to a whole clutter of conflict-laden ideas and wants sing both Fliess and Irma. These encompassed feelings of bitterness and choler towards his friend Fliess and of a certain sexual attractive force between himself and his patient ( Irma ) . Many of these ideas were anxiousness eliciting and hard to accept, but Freud felt forced to admit that they were true, that they made sense, and that they hence constituted the existent motive and significance of his dream ( 139-153 Freud ) .

Freud was convinced that virtually any dream could be interpreted in much the

same mode as he interpreted his ain dream of Irma and moreover could be shown to hold

some singular similarities to hysterical symptoms. When the remembered dream experience, referred to by him as its manifest content, was subjected to liberate association in the same manner that hysterical patients & # 8217 ; symptoms were, a antecedently unconscious latent content was revealed. This latent content seemed to stand in many of the same relationships to the manifest content that unconscious infective thoughts stood to hysterical symptoms. In both cases the witting merchandises were psychologically safer ( less anxiety eliciting ) than the original unconscious thoughts that had to be recovered through free association. Further, single symptoms and manifest dream images both seemed to stand for several different unconscious thoughts at one time ; e.g. , a whole group of different infective thoughts frequently underlay a individual hysterical symptom, merely as a big figure of complexly interrelated thoughts had been associated with his brief dream sequence of Irma & # 8217 ; s injection dream. Freud called this phenomenon overdetermination in the instance of symptoms and condensation in the dreams ( 130-138 Freud ) .

One of Freud & # 8217 ; s most interesting patients where he employed his dream analysis was the instance of Ida Bauer a.k.a. & # 8220 ; and his Dora & # 8221 ; . During October of 1900 an industrialist took his

18 twelvemonth old girl ( Freud used for her the name of & # 8220 ; Dora & # 8221 ; ) to see Doctor Freud. Dora was moving peculiar and stating unusual things. Freud welcomed Dora as a patient who would supply him with a suited trial of his theories of craze, his analysis technique and of his reading of dreams ( 146-149 Appignanesi and Forrester ) . Freud described Dora & # 8217 ; s household as follows: her male parent ( Phillip Bauer ) as a dominating figure, in his late mid-fortiess, holding unusual activities and endowments ( which Freud did non lucubrate on ) and populating in a criterion of comfort. Freud described Dora as being tenderly attached to her male parent, but took discourtesy at many of his actions and distinctive features. Her female parent ( Katherina Gerber Bauer ) was purportedly an uncultivated adult female, who

concentrated all her involvements upon domestic personal businesss and seemingly had an compulsion with cleansing and frights of soil and taint. Her brother ( Otto Bauer ) served as a function theoretical account for her, but their relationship had become distant during the last few old ages. Dora was on first-class footings with her governess until she found out that the governess was in love with her male parent ( 64 Kanzer ) .

Dora recounts her first dream to Freud as follows: In her dream their house was on fire. Her male parent was standing beside her bed and woke her up. She dressed rapidly. Her female parent wanted to halt and salvage her jewel-case ; but her male parent said that he refused to allow himself and his kids to be burnt for the interest of her jewel-case. They hurried downstairs, and every bit shortly as she was outside she woke up ( 64 Kanzer ) .

Her dream was analyzed by Freud utilizing the house on fire, her male parent standing beside her bed, and her female parent desiring to salvage her jewel-case from the firing house as the chief constituents. He interpreted the male parent standing beside her bed as the male parent being at that place to protect her from the fire of sexual desire, which threatened to destroy them, by wetting them with gross outing gender, the jewel-case stand foring her genitalias. Trying to understand Dora & # 8217 ; s disgust for gender, Freud probed her memory loss of early onanism, linked to her bed-wetting that lasted tardily into her childhood, and her first hysterical symptoms: & # 8220 ; these had been sympathetic designations with her male parent & # 8217 ; s physical efforts in intercourse, compounded by her compunctions for her vaginal discharge, which she linked to the frivolous and untrusty gender of work forces, as her governess viewed it & # 8221 ; . Her symptoms of crazes expressed an designation with an exhilaration in her male parent & # 8217 ; s gender, but they were besides an effort to get away taint ( her male parent had syphilis ) by get awaying heterosexual contact ( 153 Appignanesi and Forrester ) .

The 2nd dream that Dora related to Freud was that she was walking approximately in a town, which she did non cognize. She saw streets and squares, which were unusual to her. Then she came into a house where she lived, she went to her room, and found a missive from her female parent prevarication at that place. In the missive her female parent wrote her that since she had left town without her parents & # 8217 ; knowledge she had non wished to compose her stating that her male parent was badly. The missive said, & # 8220 ; Now he is dead, and if you like you can come & # 8221 ; . She so went to the station and asked about a 100 times: & # 8220 ; Where is the station? & # 8221 ; She ever received the same reply, which was & # 8220 ; five proceedingss & # 8221 ; . She so saw a thick forests before her, which she went into, and at that place she asked a adult male who she met the inquiry of & # 8220 ; where is the station? & # 8221 ; The adult male assistance to her: & # 8220 ; Two and a 30 minutes more & # 8221 ; . The adult male offered to attach to her, but she refused and went entirely. She saw the station in forepart of her and could non make it. At the same clip she had the usual feeling that 1 has in dreams when one can non travel frontward. Then she was at place. She felt that she must hold been going in the interim, but she knew nil about that. She so walked into the porter & # 8217 ; s Lodge, and inquired as to where their flat was. The housemaid opened the door to her and replied that her female parent and the others were already at the graveyard ( 94 Kanzer ) .

To Freud this 2nd dream of Doras was far more complex than her first dream. He interpreted that the associations in the dream revealed Dora & # 8217 ; s designation with a immature suer of hers who was an applied scientist that was shacking in Germany, who would hold to wait until his ain hereafter was secure before he could prosecute her. Traveling on entirely in the dream reminded Dora of her visit to the Dresden art gallery, where she had spent two hours sitting entirely and look up toing the Sistine Madonna. Freud felt that by picturing herself alternately as a immature adult male far from place, or entirely and placing with a virgin female parent, Dora was ordaining a phantasy of retaliation against her male parent.

& # 8220 ; The following phase of the reading confirmed this vindictive craving: Freud discovered in the dream a image of the defloration of the female genitalias, in the clever puns on medical footings he attributed to Dora, turning the forests and nymphs glimpsed in a picture into pubic hair and vulva, her ain vulva into which the immature applied scientist would one twenty-four hours dip, with this treachery with a adult male other than her male parent carry throughing the desire for retaliation in another manner. Dora even managed to pun on her household name, the name of her male parent: Kalter Bauer means to blurt out from nocturnal emanation or from onanism. A new piece of the dream came to consciousness: & # 8217 ; she went calmly to her room, and began reading a large book & # 8217 ; . From this dream-element emerged the narrative

of her onslaught of appendicitis, shortly after her aunt & # 8217 ; s decease, which Freud, with no resistance from Dora, interpreted as a & # 8216 ; phantasy ( sic ) of childbearing & # 8217 ; one time he had calculated that the onslaught took topographic point nine moths after the scene by the lake & # 8221 ; ( 154 Appignanesi and Forrester ) .

Shortly after this piece of dream reading, Dora discontinued her Sessionss with Freud ( 154 Appignanesi and Forrester ) .

Freud thought that Dora & # 8217 ; s 2nd dream was incompletely understood because the analysis was broken off while it was being discussed ( 155 Appignanesi and Forrester ) . One would presume that Freud possessed a significant instance history of Dora a.k.a. Ida Bauer, sing that he was good friends with her male parent and knew the important others that played prevailing functions in her life. Besides Freud & # 8217 ; s ain abode was located on the same street as the Bauer & # 8217 ; s place ( 147 Appignanesi and Forrester ) . An effort by this author to construe Ida Bauer & # 8217 ; s two dreams one hundred old ages subsequently is hard particularly without possessing the familiarity that Freud had available to him refering this instance. In Ida & # 8217 ; s first dream where she relates to Freud that the house is on fire and that she had to fly the place ; I would construe this as her wanting to get away her household life. With her male parent standing beside her bed I would oppugn Ida as to why her male parent would stand beside her bed. In existent life did she frequently wake to happen her male parent standing beside her bed? This would take me to inquire if there was incest happening between Ida and her male parent. In the dream, she said, that she had dressed rapidly. Would this mean that she was kiping wholly bare in an epoch where extreme modestness was the norm? Her female parent wanted to halt and salvage her jewel-case, but her male parent would non allow her. The

jewel-case was evidently a valuable point, possibly the jewel-case represented Ida and she wanted to salvage her from being sexually victimized. Most female parents hold their kids as & # 8220 ; valuable & # 8221 ; and a normal female parent would salvage her kid foremost from a firing edifice. But, Ida & # 8217 ; s father would non allow her mother salvage the jewel-case, evidently the male parent was the dominant figure in the place and this dream portrays this fact. His married woman and kids are traveling to make as he wills, and no 1 is traveling to salvage Ida from his will, non even her female parent could. In the 2nd dream where Ida sees herself as walking in a town that is unknown to her, I would construe this to intend that in existent life she is baffled and bewildered, non cognizing what her hereafter holds. The missive that she finds from her female parent could associate to the fact that her female parent could non support or talk for herself in existent life, therefore she had to show her feelings without talking them, therefore the missive. This would motivate me to oppugn Ida refering her female parent & # 8217 ; s actions and feelings in existent life. Her female parent provinces in the missive that now that Ida & # 8217 ; s male parent is dead that she could come. With him dead, does this mean that the place is now safe and that Ida would non hold to digest her male parent & # 8217 ; s sexual maltreatment? In the dream Ida hunts for the train station and inquiries the going clip over and over once more. To me this points to confusion in her existent life. She enters into thick forests in her dream and meets a adult male who offers to attach to her to the station, but she refuses and goes on entirely. The thick forests to me stand for that her life is confined in some manner. Her refusal of the adult male & # 8217 ; s offer to attach to her, could it be that Freud himself was the symbolic adult male in the dream? After all, as her analysand he would be the one to & # 8220 ; accompany & # 8221 ; her in her journey through her existent life to assist her overcome her jobs. In her dream she refused the adult male & # 8217 ; s offer to attach to her. It

is known that after this dream reading that Ida ended her Sessionss with Freud. Ida may hold felt that at this point she no longer needed or wanted Freud & # 8217 ; s therapy. She preferred to go on her life & # 8217 ; s journey without Freud. In the dream where she felt that she could non travel frontward, possibly she felt that with Freud she was mired in her current therapy and that it was suppressing her from traveling frontward. At the terminal of her dream she finds herself at place. The servant tells her that her female parent and the others are at the graveyard. The graveyard would to me propose decease, possibly a decease of her past life and an chance for her to either travel to the graveyard ( return to her former household jobs ) or to travel on in her life ( to construct a new life ) without her male parent, who is dead in her dream, and without the counsel of Freud himself.

It is easy for me knock Freud & # 8217 ; s intervention, particularly after a hundred old ages of growing and research in the country of psychological science. One must retrieve that Freud was an conceiver of much of psychological science & # 8217 ; s modern twenty-four hours pattern. The constructs of his that have endured in modified signifier are transference-countertransference, the unconscious, defences ( like repression ) , free association, historical/developmental influences on psychological development, penetration, dream reading, unconscious phantasy, the metaphysical construction of the head ( i.e. , Idaho, self-importance, superego ) , and the function of sex and aggression in personality and abnormal psychology. Many of his constructs are used otherwise than he originally intended, but this does non do them of less importance. In add-on we must

note that the procedure and ends of therapy are different now than they were in Freud & # 8217 ; s epoch ( 1 Important Questions on Psychotherapy ) .

There had ne’er been a existent scientific attack to the apprehension of dreams until Freud published his book Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. His book Interpretation of Dreams is a authoritative work that provides an appraisal of earlier parts to woolgather theory and focal points on wish fulfilment as the motivation force behind dreaming ( 47 Montague and Zimmerman ) . In the custodies of a modern healer a dream becomes an instrument for examining and facing. The accomplishments of a modern professional may ease dream work for those who are resistive to it, but they do non change the nature of dream work itself. Dream work provides today & # 8217 ; s healer with a tool, which enables them, a perforating glance of what lives beneath the surface of one & # 8217 ; s mind ( 315, 316 Montague and Zimmerman ) .