Classics and the Western Canon discussion

e. Examples: Calculating and Speaking in Dreams

Freud believes that dream-work is incapable of calculation and speech -- the dream uses bits of speech and numbers as they are recalled from conscious experience, and it uses them to realize its intention.

f. Absurd Dreams

Absurdity in dreams is occasioned by the dream-thoughts when they are in need of a judgement. Dream thoughts are never absurd, he claims, but dream-work "produces absurd dreams or dreams with single absurd elements when criticism, mockery, and scorn are present in the dream-thoughts and waiting to be represented in its forms of expression." Dreams appear to employ absurdity as a means to hide or disguise latent content, matters that the conscious mind does not want to acknowledge. How common is it for us to wake up from an absurd dream and immediately dismiss it as ridiculous? Freud maintains that this not accidental. For this reason, the judgements that we make about the dream after waking must be included as part of the dream interpretation.

Freud describes an interesting dream of his own where an old professor has given him the task of dissecting his own pelvis. He traces this back to a critical comment made by an assistant and his concern about publishing his own work. He awakens with thoughts full of terror. Any thoughts on this dream of Freud's?

It is becoming increasingly clear that for Freud dreams mean nothing on their own; the meaning is to be found in the associations that the dreamer has to elements in the dream. And then he goes a step further, to the motivations behind the associations. Is anyone finding this helpful in interpreting their own dreams?

g. Affects in Dreams

Affects -- feelings or emotions -- frequently linger when someone has awakened from a vivid dream. Freud notes that sometimes the feelings don't match the tenor of the dream. A disgusting dream may leave no lingering distate upon awakening, or a fairly mundane scenario might leave someone with thoughts of terror. He claims this is because the dream content has become distorted. If I am reading this correctly, what causes the emotion is the latent content behind the dream; in most cases, the dream-work has the effect of inhibiting this emotion. How does he account for the feelings of terror that he awakens with after the dream about dissecting himself?

h. Secondary Revision

The fourth factor in the formation of dreams endeavors to make coherent sense of the dream elements. Freud says it is the weakest of the factors, but it also seems that it has the hardest job of all. It attempts to create a story from the dream contents, which often have very differnt origins and sometimes contradict each other. The result is that the dream appears less absurd than it actually is. It clarifies the dream, and the parts that have been subject to secondary revision seem clearer to us.

The last paragraph attempts to summarize the whole of dream-work. It all makes sense now, right?

I think Freud would say that the mysteries of the night are unknown because we don't want to know them. The "unknown" is actually knowable, but we resist knowing certain things that we are unable to cope with -- memories of trauma or abuse, for example. Sometimes this repression can lead to behavior that makes no sense, like the man Freud describes who won't leave his apartment because he can't escape the idea that he is a murderer. He becomes so obsessed with this that he locks himself in, and even then he reasons that he might be leaving in his sleep and murdering people. Freud says he cured this man, and that the source of his neurosis was hostile thoughts about his father connected with his sexuality. Clearly these are events that the man does not want to think about, but which absolutely have to be dealt with on some level. Psychoanalysis can bring these repressed thoughts into the open, and by exposing them the neurosis is dissolved.

Which makes me wonder if Freud believes in mysteries of the mind at all! Maybe the answers are all there, just waiting to pounce if we let down our guard.

Thomas wrote: " Which makes me wonder if Freud believes in mysteries of the mind at all! "
Around the time IoD was published, there was a general feeling that Science had learned everything there was to learn. Freud was, above all, a scientist and may well have believed that everything about the mind could be revealed. The irony was that his own work was seminal in cracking that attitude and opening up the limits of what could be known.

Susanna wrote: "More from Dave Eggers, "Did you ever think that perhaps our minds are delicately calibrated between the known and the unknown? That our souls need the mysteries of night and the clarity of day?"

and in between, in the liminal

Here's a stab at rephrasing Freud's summary in the last paragraph of Part VI:

The psyche generates dream-thoughts and transforms them into dream content according to specific requirements. These requirements serve the purpose of evading "the censor." Dream-thoughts themselves are entirely logical, but the psyche disguises them through a process of displacement and condensation so that they appear absurd. Displacement and condensation result in a kind of metaphor for the dream-thought, but one that doesn't always follow in an obvious way. Sometimes it's even the opposite of what it appears to be, hence Freud's calling it a "transvaluation of all psychical values." (A phrase he borrowed from Nietzsche and then modified.) A secondary revision upon waking tries to make sense of the absurdity, but this often results in further distortion. The mood or feeling that the dreamer associates with the dream is a suppressed expression of the dream-thought, again an attempt to satisfy the censor. The whole process of dreaming appears to be a distortion of true and honest dream-thoughts into dream elements that only hint at the truth. It's like the sleeping psyche is a little Jack Nicholson yelling, "You can't handle the truth!"

Thomas, thank you for that lucid summary.
I still have trouble seeing the difference between dream thoughts and dream content.

It's hard to say what dream thoughts are exactly because they occur in the unconscious. I think you noted this a couple weeks back, and it's a serious problem for Freud. His claim is that the dream thoughts are logical, but how can he know this? He seems to be trying to describe a cause he can't observe based only on its effects. And in the next section he expands that into a whole system, still without having access to the unconscious. It reminds me of the epicyclic description of planetary orbits that astronomers used before Kepler. Just because it describes the phenomena doesn't mean that it's correct. On the other hand, he had to start somewhere, and he should get credit for making a risky guess.

Thanks for clarifying my ongoing confusion. So the dream-thoughts are another layer below the latent content? I do give Freud credit for making a go at what they call the "hard problem" of consciousness.

Dream-thoughts are themselves latent in the sense that they haven't risen to the surface yet and become the dream itself, the "manifest content.". So I think when he says "latent content" he means the same thing as dream-thoughts. Check out the first couple paragraphs of Part VI and see if that clarifies it at all.

Thomas suggested, "Check out the first couple paragraphs of Part VI and see if that clarifies it. "
That was a helpful fingerpost. I think I see how he keeps dipping into the passage from the unconscious and uses different word packages for the murkiness: dream thoughts, dream contents, latent images, or just latent as opposed to manifest.
I have now gotten into part VII, which I guess I must wait until the topic is started. Because of his drawn diagrams going from perceptual systems to motor systems.

I think some help could be useful on the seemingly simple diagrams and "regression."

I could use some help with that as well. I'll post something tonight on the next section but I'll tell you right now that I'm not real clear about regression. I think this is an idea that developed over time and what we see in this edition is an earlier version, though I'm not sure that the later version (which I haven't read) is any clearer than this one.

Thanks for hanging in with this, Sam!

Sections (E) and (F) were completely rewritten in later editions of IoD. I am reading the Basic Books edition, which is based on the third (revised) English edition, and which attempts to serve as a variorum.
(E) underwent a process of revision, being largely rewritten in 1901, 1911 and 1914. The revisions are so extensive that my edition follows each paragraph with the date when it was written. Only two paragraphs date from the original edition! All the rest is new.
(F) was also largely revised, and the first half of this section in my edition is completely new material.
Also, a detailed discussion of Regression will be found in Part VII.

A lot of this reads like a rough draft at times, so it's gratifying to learn that much of it was revised. I almost laughed when I read his comment at the end of VII(b): "It may be that we ourselves have not found this first part of our psychological study of dreams particularly satisfactory."

I think we have to acknowledge that Freud was exploring new territory in a fearless way, and he must have known that what he was doing was not flawless. At best it would have to be modified and updated; at worst it would be replaced by a better theory of the psyche. He knew he was onto something though, and even if his psychological theories have been largely abandoned, he left an indelible mark on western culture.

That comment at the end of VII(b) was unchanged in the final edition.

Lol. A certain Rolling Stones song comes to mind.