Freud Dreamwork Essays - Freudian Psychology, Psychotherapy, Dream

Freud Dreamwork 1 INTRODUCTION Although Jung was a pupil of Freud, and one would think they shared the same idea about the interpretation of dreams, that is not exactly true. Freud proposed the notorious idea that dreams are a reflextion of subconsciousness, but Jung expanded on Freud and added another dimension to this relation. In Jung's view, dreams not only lead to personal subconsciousness, but also to collective unconsciousness. This paper attempts to present the two theories of dreams and stress the unique qualities in each of them. I believe the reader will excuse a 'clinical' tone of paper, knowing that originally this text was written as school assignment. In 1995, I wrote this paper under the guidance of Branka Bajgoric, who was my psychology teacher in the high school I attended. I omitted the technical part of the paper: identifying problem and developing the thesis. I also did not include a part in which I discussed the implications of becoming lucid in dream on the interpretation. Not that it would be inappropriate, but I think that subject is so broad that it demands a separate paper in order to sufficiently cover it. I think that nowadays, where there are so much alternative (occult) explanations of dreams available, we often forget about the old thinkers. What is even worse, we tend to think they are out of date or irrelevant in this rush of global spiritual evolution. However, I find the following two scientists, and Jung particularly, extremely contemporary. I hope the following paper will attract some of reader's interest to further study the rich work of both, should I say big men? Ljubljana, July 1998 2 THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION 2.1 FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS With his psycho-analysis, Sigmund Freud opened the door for dreams to become a subject of scientifical research. He became interested in dreams when dealing with his patients because they were telling dreams spontaneously. He soon systematically included interpretation of dreams in psycho-analysis right beside hypnosis and free association. In the end of 19th century he eventually researched the mechanism of dreaming. The analysis of dreams is indispensable tool in therapy for each psychoanalyst since then, and for Freud, dreams are even the key to theoretical understanding of subconscious. He explained also dreams of people, who did not suffer from mental illness, in psychoanalitic way and so he was changing his psychotherapy in theory in the very beginning. 2.1.1 A desire to sleep When we become tired of receiving of and responding to stimuli from environment we try to fall asleep. The main characteristic of psychical state of a sleeper is therefore a withdrawal from reality and cessation of taking all interests in it. We try to fall asleep by disconnecting from all sources of external stimuli. We lay down in a silent, dark room and cover our body to keep it comfortably warm and so minimize input from environment. Of course, an absolute withdrawal in which we would stop to perceive environment is not possible. In other words, the sleeper does not have a 'switch' to switch off at the time of sleeping and switch on back, when the time for awakening comes. After all, if such absolute withdrawal was possible to achieve, the sleeper would risk not to wake up again, since more and more strong stimuli in the morning are exactly what wakes up the sleeper. These stimuli disturb us also during the sleep, and our mentality is forced to respond to them - with dreams. Disturbing stimuli can be either external or internal. External stimuli come from environment and from inside of our physical body. Their task is to warn of imbalance in the body (e.g. full bladder, thirst) or else they contain information about disturbances in environment (e.g. low room temperature, noise). There are lot of evidences how dreams maintain sleep in such cases. For Freud though, the external stimuli are important only to the extent that suggest analogous existance of more important, psychical pressure on sleeper: an internal stimulus. This internal stimulation emerges either because of the continuation of our diurnal mental activity or pressure of our unsatisfied instinctive aspirations. The latter are in psychotherapy very important, because they can express those conflicts,