Classics and the Western Canon discussion

(b) Material from Infancy as a Source of Dreams

If Freud's ultimate destination is an understanding of the unconscious, dreams of memories that have been forgotten or repressed must be irresistible to examine. How is it that the unconscious can recall events (verifiable events even) that the dreamer cannot recall in waking life? More often than this, however, dreams can be traced back indirectly through association to childhood memories. "we find the child, with its impulses, living on in the dream."

[Side note: when Freud continues his analysis of the dream where he sees his friend R. as his uncle Josef he says that the solution he reached initially "failed to satisfy his feelings" so he is compelled to trace it back further, in this case to several childhood memories that seem unrelated but which point out the source of Freud's ambition. Is this "satisfaction of his feelings" the test of validity for dream interpretation?]

Some of the connections and associations he makes to trace dream elements back to memories from infancy strike me as quite wild. If those connections are meaningful for the dreamer perhaps that is all that is required. But this is very subjective territory. Nevertheless, Freud is trying to draw general conclusions. Is he successful?

At the end of this section Freud says that he has explained only one distinctive feature -- the trivial in dream-content -- satisfactorily. He has confirmed the existence of the other two -- recent impressions and childhood memories -- but an explanation awaits. The explanation will be found either in the psychology of sleep, or "in those considerations of how the psychical apparatus is constructed, which we will have to undertake later once we have noted that the interpretation of dreams enables us, like a window, to cast a glance into its interior."

(c) The Somatic Sources of Dreams

Freud assumes that the psyche has a motive and function in dreaming, so somatic disturbances (noises from outside, bodily aches and pains) are subsumed and incorporated into the dream. Furthermore, dreams serve the purpose of guarding sleep. The wish to sleep is one of the motives for the formation of dreams, and the wish-fulfillment expressed by a dream (to stay asleep) often overcomes somatic disturbance experienced during sleep.

This section seems to be in response to theories that have been proposed by others, but there is some interesting material at the end about the "two systems" of the psyche. He brings this up, I think, to demonstrate how the psyche suppresses somatic stimuli. I'm hoping he will describe in further detail how these systems work together. The second system (which is capable of consciousness) censors or inhibits the first. How does the first system respond? Are dreams an expression of rebellion against this inhibition?

(c) Typical Dreams

I’m not sure these are so typical (even Freud says he hasn’t had enough of them to draw from his own experience) and it’s safe to say that Freud’s interpretation was not typical for the time.

The first model he addresses is the embarrassment-dream of being naked in front of others. He argues that this type of dream springs again from memories of infancy, when it is common for children to be naked and unashamed (as were Adam and Eve before the fall… Freud describes this as a “Paradise” that dreams can take us to every night.) If I follow him correctly, exhibition dreams are thus an infantile wish-fulfillment to be in that state of Paradise again. Naturally the second psychical system, the censor, reacts to this with shame.

The second model is a dream about the death of a relative. There are two types of this model. The first type is one in which the dreamer feels no sorrow for the relative. Freud says these are not problematic – they simply express a wish to see the relative. (But of course!) The second type is accompanied by sorrow, and express a desire for the relative to be dead. Not now, necessarily, but in the past, especially during childhood. He describes the hostility that children feel toward their siblings, that sons feel towards fathers, and that daughters feel for mothers. This hostility can result in a “hysterical counter-reaction” for the person as an adult, which results in an exaggerated fear of the relative’s death.

“In this connection, it is no longer inexplicable why hysterical girls so often cling to their mothers with such extravagant tenderness.” [Because as children they wanted their mothers dead.]

Enter Oedipus. Freud does not read Oedipus the way we normally do – as we just did, actually. On the surface the story concerns “submission to the will of the divinity and insight into his own powerlessness” but he insists the power of the story comes from deep psychological motives. Is this a fair reading or is Freud taking liberties with Sophocles?

" If Freud's ultimate destination is an understanding of the unconscious, dreams of memories that have been ..."
I think Freud's ultimate destination is to cure the patient. It cannot be that of "understanding the unconscious," which is self-contradictory. Whatever is understood would then be conscious. I think he wants to recover elements from the unconscious to bring them into consciousness, which is the function of interpreting the dream, reconciling the conflict, and neutralizing the neurosis.

Sam wrote: "" I think Freud's ultimate destination is to cure the patient. It cannot be that of "understanding the unconscious," which is self-contradictory. "

I think he intends to do both -- to cure the patient AND understand the unconscious. Maybe it's useful to see the unconscious in terms of "latency" and the conscious as "manifest," at least in the way he uses those terms. Dreams are manifest expressions of latent thoughts, the "dream-work" that the unconscious does. That latent content is never made manifest, or conscious, but it can be understood in a way that makes its *meaning* manifest. In that way the unconscious can be understood... or so he claims.