Monday, October 08, 2007
Frida Kahlo
Last night I had a dream that I was Frida Kahlo. The first analysis was to recognize the influence of my previous dream day which would be my viewing of the movie Frida starring Selma Hayek. In the dream, I was surrounded by scenes which reflected both the sets in the movie and also the art of Frida. The colors were all vibrant and there was a strong Mexican theme to the dream. There was also some allusion to the Dia de la Muerte, which I recognize as the first available wish fulfillment. I have to install an altar for a deceased Mexican female artiest for my Women Artists course and this part of the dream was a wish that I could be finished with it. While I would not contend that this has been playing heavily on my conscious mind, I can only assume that watching the film helped to stir this desire within me. I experienced some trains of thought surrounding this installation while regarding the film. The other wish that I can see fulfilled, and act of condensation on my part, is the wish that somehow my life could more strongly resemble that of an artist. My artistic talent has always been slightly limited, but I believe there are associations that I place with the artistic lifestyle. As I near graduation, the issue of whether or how I can incorporate more of this element into my own life and I feel that this dream was a fulfillment of this wish. In the dream I had the friends, the social scene, and the fringe existence that I, in some ways, would like to see enacted in reality. I was Frida Kahlo.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Have you ever confused a Dream with Life?
Individual Dream Interpretation
Chiara Corbetto
IDS 3700 Seminar II: Freud
Derek Stanovsky
October 2, 2007
My Past is haunting me.
I was in a classroom and my former biology professor was in it. In this class my ex-boyfriend from ASU was there (I actually do have a class with him this semester, not biology though) and all his friends were in it also. (Real friends of his) At the beginning it was normal and everyone was being decent. But then this one guy started saying mean things to me. So it made me mad and I said, ”You know what you all can go to hell, I didn’t do anything to deserve this, and I only broke up with him! That’s all! People break up with people all the time.” I said much more which I couldn’t recall anymore. I don’t remember the details but everyone else was being kind of mean. He was calm the whole time, just sitting there and not really doing anything. I was sitting near these girls who were friends of his but they were being nice to me, (I don’t know these girls but I have seen pictures of them.) and they started joking around, but the joke was going to end up on me. So the girl put this gold lipstick all around my mouth and I couldn’t get it off, and then she got really close and tried to put her tongue in my mouth but in a very aggressive nasty kind of way. So I got up and everyone was laughing and I thought to myself that I am going to have to change sections, and then this African American girl who had just walked by said she was going to leave, and I said to wait that I would go with her. She couldn’t believe what had happened, she was the only one who wasn’t against me. So I was waiting for the elevator with this girl, the only one that didn’t hate me and she recommended me to switch sections, the only problem was that I didn’t know if there was another section available, and then I thought to myself well, there might be cuter boys in the other section.
In the book, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” Freud talks on chapter three about “Dreams as wish fulfillments.” I think there are many incidents of wish fulfillments in my dream but also in a more distorted way. I think that in the dream when that boy started saying mean things to me and I answered back, it is because I have a desire to tell everyone how I feel. I feel that my ex-boyfriend might be saying mean things behind my back to his friends because of his bitterness and I have to put up with him and his friends attitude in this three-hour class we take together. The relationship didn’t end to well, and we never really had a chance to talk, and I probably wish I could say a lot of things I have kept inside me for a long time. But then there is this random guy I met at a bar which I will mention in more detail later on, who said mean things to me and I never got to say anything back. It is my wish to tell him how I feel, not that I will actually do it because I know he could care less. “The other motive for counter-wish-dreams is so clear that there is a danger of overlooking it, as happened in my own case for a long time. In the sexual constitution of many persons there is a masochistic component, which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic component into its opposite. Such people are called ideal masochists if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain, which may be inflicted upon them, but in humiliation and psychic chastisement. It is obvious that such persons may have counter-wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams, yet these are for them nothing more than wish-fulfillments, which satisfy their masochistic inclinations.” (pp 192). I don’t feel that I have secret wishes of masochism, but I was mistreated in my dream by a whole class almost, which makes this thought very interesting and valid.
The fact that all this hostility was going on in the Biology classroom, which is not even the class I have with my ex-boyfriend, is probably my wish to not have to take that class. Biology is my worst subject and I am very unhappy knowing that this class is required. I wish I didn’t have to take it. The way in which I thought there might be a cuter boy in another section could be my wish to find some boy I like. The African-American girl who was the only person not against me, who happened to be a female is probably my wish to have a good girl friend right now, since lately my girl friends really have not been friends, and have been doing their own thing with their boyfriends. Freud mentions in this chapter how he dreamt he was drinking lots of water and then he woke up thirsty, or how one of his patients wives dreamt that she had started her period, and it was because she did not want to get married. It is things that we don’t or do want happening to us and we have dreams that fulfill those wishes. “But in the cases where the wish fulfillment is unrecognizable, where it has been disguised, there must have existed some inclination to put up a defense against the wish; and owing to this defense the wish was unable to express itself except in a distorted shape.” (pp 175).
There is a lot that is going on in my life right now, which I believe has to do with the reason why I had that dream. A lot of relation with the “waking life” which you will see makes a lot of sense.
“…I must begin with an assertion that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day.” (pp 197) If this were true then that would make a lot of sense. The day before I had this dream I had Biology class, everyone loves the professor and they were asking if he teaches Biology II, and he doesn’t, so everyone was upset because they like his class and did well on his test, and wanted to have him next semester. I think this had to do with the Biology class factor, and when I decided I wanted to change sections in the dream, because it was probably the relationship with the day before when he had mentioned how he doesn’t teach the second section. About the African-American girl, I do not have an African-American friend, so I think that has to do with this random boy I met I the day before, after I got out of Biology class at the “Appalcart” stop at the “Raleigh Traffic circle.” I was walking and he was sitting on the side and put his legs out right when I was walking by. That was his way to get my attention and then he started talking to me. He was very nice and I also thought he was cute. That is probably why in the dream the nice person was an African-American and I was thinking to myself in the dream that at least there might be a cute boy in the other section, cause in real life I thought this guy was cute. But then recently before this dream, I met a guy who is not African-American but is in my Biology class and I think he is cute. Another reason could be that a friend of the random guy who I met at a bar, was African-American and not to long ago he wanted to make sure I knew that he had nothing to do with the way his friend treated me, and he wanted to make sure everything was still cool in between us and was being very nice.
The whole part of my ex boyfriend also has to do with what is going on in my life because I have been thinking in him a lot lately, and it is strange to see a person who I know so much about not even speak to me when we are in the same classroom. I sometimes want to see what he is up to and check his friend’s “Facebook” profiles to see if they have pictures with him since his is set to private. And this is how his friends appeared in my dream. Another incident that had occurred not the day before but maybe a week before this dream was a bad experience I had with a guy I met at a bar. I had just met him and we exchanged phone numbers (he seemed decent at the time), and after some drama in which he sent me text messages pretending to be a jealous girl to my phone I asked him not to call me anymore. He got mad at me and then proceeded by sending me insulting text messages all weekend long. This has to do with the part in the dream where there is a random boy insulting me, because his face was not familiar in my dream not making him a friend of my ex-boyfriend. This guy and I kissed the night we met which is probably why my ex-boyfriend’s friend (which was a girl in the dream) was forcing her tongue into my mouth, after making fun of me. It is probably because of what happened with this guy and the way he acted towards me afterwards. And even though this action was not from the day before it had probably come up somehow. “Whenever it has seemed at first that the source of a dream was an impression two or three days earlier, closer enquiry has convinced me that the impression had been recalled on the previous day and thus that it is possible to show that a reproduction of the impression, occurring on the previous day which may have led to the recalling of the older impression.” (pp 199). “Dreams can select their material from any part of the dreamer’s life, provided only that there is a train of thought linking the experience of the dream-day (the ‘recent’ impressions) with the earlier ones.” (pp 202).
The first thing that comes to my mind after a dream is usually, “whatever, it was just a dream.” Especially when it is one of those bad dreams, like the one I described, I wake up with more of an “I’m glad it was just a dream” feeling and try to forget about it. I never really have wanted to analyze my dreams. Particularly a dream like this one, which seems so ordinary. I’d rather not even think about it because it brings up old memories. “If my little daughter does not like an apple which is offered to her, she asserts that the apple is bitter, without even tasting it. If my patients behave thus, I know that we are dealing with an idea, which they are trying to repress. The same thing applies to my dream. I do not want to interpret it because there is something in the interpretation to which I object. After the interpretation of the dream is completed, I discover what it was to which I objected; it was the assertion that R is a simpleton. I can refer the affection, which I feel for R not to the latent dream-thoughts, but rather to this unwillingness of mine. If my dream, as compared with its latent content, is disguised at this point, and actually misrepresents things by producing their opposites, then the manifest affection in the dream serves the purpose of the misrepresentation: in other words, the distortion is here shown to be intentional- it is a means of disguise.” (pp 74)
So if that were true, if I were trying to disguise my dream, which seems pretty simple then I would interpret it as something completely different, than what I had originally thought. If it was a bad dream then I don’t want to think about it, but why? What am I trying to hide from myself? By reading into this dream, it would seem as if it had to do with me hating the fact that I am taking Biology and taking a class with my ex boyfriend, but lets analyze it by thinking of it as a disguise to what I actually feel.
I really do hate taking Biology, but inside me I am kind of happy about the professor I have even though I did not do so well on his first exam. He is a good person and I like him, which makes me not hate Biology all that much. About my ex-boyfriend, there wasn’t ever really a resolution and I have been thinking in him a lot and it bothers me when someone doesn’t speak to me. Sometimes I wish I could go talk to him but I know how he would react. And even though I broke up with him, I sometimes miss him and wish he were still in my life. Even though I know I should never date him again. The reason I was probably so angry in the dream and he was so calm is because I really do like him and I want him to stop ignoring me, and he was probably calm because he has moved on and is completely comfortable with the way things are right now. And that is probably what bothers me the most. The guy that insulted me in the classroom was disguised as being a friend of my ex-boyfriend even though the face wasn’t recognizable but was really the guy from the bar. The African-American girl was a disguise for either the boy I met at the “Appalcart” stop or the friend of the guy I had met at the bar. The kissing my ex-boyfriend’s friend who was a girl, I think is a disguise for the guy at the bar, which I had kissed. It is a symbol of humiliation I would think.
Dreams are very interesting and very tricky and I had really not thought about really breaking up the dream and analyzing it in different ways up to now. It all makes sense now, and I realize what might be the reason where I get these crazy ideas that appear in my dreams. The reason why I was able to analyze these dreams was because all the points that I used that Freud writes about in this book are useful and make a lot of sense. My dream did relate to what had occurred the day or days before, it was indeed disguised because it would not make a lot of sense if I interpreted just as it was. And it might have been a wish fulfillment that I am still trying to get myself to admit even though it is hard and I do not want to.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey.
New York: Avon Books, 1998.
Individual Dream Interpretation
Chiara Corbetto
IDS 3700 Seminar II: Freud
Derek Stanovsky
October 2, 2007
My Past is haunting me.
I was in a classroom and my former biology professor was in it. In this class my ex-boyfriend from ASU was there (I actually do have a class with him this semester, not biology though) and all his friends were in it also. (Real friends of his) At the beginning it was normal and everyone was being decent. But then this one guy started saying mean things to me. So it made me mad and I said, ”You know what you all can go to hell, I didn’t do anything to deserve this, and I only broke up with him! That’s all! People break up with people all the time.” I said much more which I couldn’t recall anymore. I don’t remember the details but everyone else was being kind of mean. He was calm the whole time, just sitting there and not really doing anything. I was sitting near these girls who were friends of his but they were being nice to me, (I don’t know these girls but I have seen pictures of them.) and they started joking around, but the joke was going to end up on me. So the girl put this gold lipstick all around my mouth and I couldn’t get it off, and then she got really close and tried to put her tongue in my mouth but in a very aggressive nasty kind of way. So I got up and everyone was laughing and I thought to myself that I am going to have to change sections, and then this African American girl who had just walked by said she was going to leave, and I said to wait that I would go with her. She couldn’t believe what had happened, she was the only one who wasn’t against me. So I was waiting for the elevator with this girl, the only one that didn’t hate me and she recommended me to switch sections, the only problem was that I didn’t know if there was another section available, and then I thought to myself well, there might be cuter boys in the other section.
In the book, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” Freud talks on chapter three about “Dreams as wish fulfillments.” I think there are many incidents of wish fulfillments in my dream but also in a more distorted way. I think that in the dream when that boy started saying mean things to me and I answered back, it is because I have a desire to tell everyone how I feel. I feel that my ex-boyfriend might be saying mean things behind my back to his friends because of his bitterness and I have to put up with him and his friends attitude in this three-hour class we take together. The relationship didn’t end to well, and we never really had a chance to talk, and I probably wish I could say a lot of things I have kept inside me for a long time. But then there is this random guy I met at a bar which I will mention in more detail later on, who said mean things to me and I never got to say anything back. It is my wish to tell him how I feel, not that I will actually do it because I know he could care less. “The other motive for counter-wish-dreams is so clear that there is a danger of overlooking it, as happened in my own case for a long time. In the sexual constitution of many persons there is a masochistic component, which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic component into its opposite. Such people are called ideal masochists if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain, which may be inflicted upon them, but in humiliation and psychic chastisement. It is obvious that such persons may have counter-wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams, yet these are for them nothing more than wish-fulfillments, which satisfy their masochistic inclinations.” (pp 192). I don’t feel that I have secret wishes of masochism, but I was mistreated in my dream by a whole class almost, which makes this thought very interesting and valid.
The fact that all this hostility was going on in the Biology classroom, which is not even the class I have with my ex-boyfriend, is probably my wish to not have to take that class. Biology is my worst subject and I am very unhappy knowing that this class is required. I wish I didn’t have to take it. The way in which I thought there might be a cuter boy in another section could be my wish to find some boy I like. The African-American girl who was the only person not against me, who happened to be a female is probably my wish to have a good girl friend right now, since lately my girl friends really have not been friends, and have been doing their own thing with their boyfriends. Freud mentions in this chapter how he dreamt he was drinking lots of water and then he woke up thirsty, or how one of his patients wives dreamt that she had started her period, and it was because she did not want to get married. It is things that we don’t or do want happening to us and we have dreams that fulfill those wishes. “But in the cases where the wish fulfillment is unrecognizable, where it has been disguised, there must have existed some inclination to put up a defense against the wish; and owing to this defense the wish was unable to express itself except in a distorted shape.” (pp 175).
There is a lot that is going on in my life right now, which I believe has to do with the reason why I had that dream. A lot of relation with the “waking life” which you will see makes a lot of sense.
“…I must begin with an assertion that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day.” (pp 197) If this were true then that would make a lot of sense. The day before I had this dream I had Biology class, everyone loves the professor and they were asking if he teaches Biology II, and he doesn’t, so everyone was upset because they like his class and did well on his test, and wanted to have him next semester. I think this had to do with the Biology class factor, and when I decided I wanted to change sections in the dream, because it was probably the relationship with the day before when he had mentioned how he doesn’t teach the second section. About the African-American girl, I do not have an African-American friend, so I think that has to do with this random boy I met I the day before, after I got out of Biology class at the “Appalcart” stop at the “Raleigh Traffic circle.” I was walking and he was sitting on the side and put his legs out right when I was walking by. That was his way to get my attention and then he started talking to me. He was very nice and I also thought he was cute. That is probably why in the dream the nice person was an African-American and I was thinking to myself in the dream that at least there might be a cute boy in the other section, cause in real life I thought this guy was cute. But then recently before this dream, I met a guy who is not African-American but is in my Biology class and I think he is cute. Another reason could be that a friend of the random guy who I met at a bar, was African-American and not to long ago he wanted to make sure I knew that he had nothing to do with the way his friend treated me, and he wanted to make sure everything was still cool in between us and was being very nice.
The whole part of my ex boyfriend also has to do with what is going on in my life because I have been thinking in him a lot lately, and it is strange to see a person who I know so much about not even speak to me when we are in the same classroom. I sometimes want to see what he is up to and check his friend’s “Facebook” profiles to see if they have pictures with him since his is set to private. And this is how his friends appeared in my dream. Another incident that had occurred not the day before but maybe a week before this dream was a bad experience I had with a guy I met at a bar. I had just met him and we exchanged phone numbers (he seemed decent at the time), and after some drama in which he sent me text messages pretending to be a jealous girl to my phone I asked him not to call me anymore. He got mad at me and then proceeded by sending me insulting text messages all weekend long. This has to do with the part in the dream where there is a random boy insulting me, because his face was not familiar in my dream not making him a friend of my ex-boyfriend. This guy and I kissed the night we met which is probably why my ex-boyfriend’s friend (which was a girl in the dream) was forcing her tongue into my mouth, after making fun of me. It is probably because of what happened with this guy and the way he acted towards me afterwards. And even though this action was not from the day before it had probably come up somehow. “Whenever it has seemed at first that the source of a dream was an impression two or three days earlier, closer enquiry has convinced me that the impression had been recalled on the previous day and thus that it is possible to show that a reproduction of the impression, occurring on the previous day which may have led to the recalling of the older impression.” (pp 199). “Dreams can select their material from any part of the dreamer’s life, provided only that there is a train of thought linking the experience of the dream-day (the ‘recent’ impressions) with the earlier ones.” (pp 202).
The first thing that comes to my mind after a dream is usually, “whatever, it was just a dream.” Especially when it is one of those bad dreams, like the one I described, I wake up with more of an “I’m glad it was just a dream” feeling and try to forget about it. I never really have wanted to analyze my dreams. Particularly a dream like this one, which seems so ordinary. I’d rather not even think about it because it brings up old memories. “If my little daughter does not like an apple which is offered to her, she asserts that the apple is bitter, without even tasting it. If my patients behave thus, I know that we are dealing with an idea, which they are trying to repress. The same thing applies to my dream. I do not want to interpret it because there is something in the interpretation to which I object. After the interpretation of the dream is completed, I discover what it was to which I objected; it was the assertion that R is a simpleton. I can refer the affection, which I feel for R not to the latent dream-thoughts, but rather to this unwillingness of mine. If my dream, as compared with its latent content, is disguised at this point, and actually misrepresents things by producing their opposites, then the manifest affection in the dream serves the purpose of the misrepresentation: in other words, the distortion is here shown to be intentional- it is a means of disguise.” (pp 74)
So if that were true, if I were trying to disguise my dream, which seems pretty simple then I would interpret it as something completely different, than what I had originally thought. If it was a bad dream then I don’t want to think about it, but why? What am I trying to hide from myself? By reading into this dream, it would seem as if it had to do with me hating the fact that I am taking Biology and taking a class with my ex boyfriend, but lets analyze it by thinking of it as a disguise to what I actually feel.
I really do hate taking Biology, but inside me I am kind of happy about the professor I have even though I did not do so well on his first exam. He is a good person and I like him, which makes me not hate Biology all that much. About my ex-boyfriend, there wasn’t ever really a resolution and I have been thinking in him a lot and it bothers me when someone doesn’t speak to me. Sometimes I wish I could go talk to him but I know how he would react. And even though I broke up with him, I sometimes miss him and wish he were still in my life. Even though I know I should never date him again. The reason I was probably so angry in the dream and he was so calm is because I really do like him and I want him to stop ignoring me, and he was probably calm because he has moved on and is completely comfortable with the way things are right now. And that is probably what bothers me the most. The guy that insulted me in the classroom was disguised as being a friend of my ex-boyfriend even though the face wasn’t recognizable but was really the guy from the bar. The African-American girl was a disguise for either the boy I met at the “Appalcart” stop or the friend of the guy I had met at the bar. The kissing my ex-boyfriend’s friend who was a girl, I think is a disguise for the guy at the bar, which I had kissed. It is a symbol of humiliation I would think.
Dreams are very interesting and very tricky and I had really not thought about really breaking up the dream and analyzing it in different ways up to now. It all makes sense now, and I realize what might be the reason where I get these crazy ideas that appear in my dreams. The reason why I was able to analyze these dreams was because all the points that I used that Freud writes about in this book are useful and make a lot of sense. My dream did relate to what had occurred the day or days before, it was indeed disguised because it would not make a lot of sense if I interpreted just as it was. And it might have been a wish fulfillment that I am still trying to get myself to admit even though it is hard and I do not want to.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey.
New York: Avon Books, 1998.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The Foreign Dream in Three Parts:
I was standing in a wide field that stretched towards the horizon in front of me, and was bordered by trees on either side – about one hundred yards on either side of me. For some reason I knew I was in Finland. The ground was flat but covered in small mounds that mushroomed up from the ground and were entirely covered by small, dense green bushes. These bush-mounds were about twenty to thirty feet apart from each other in a somewhat random pattern. A man would run screaming in Finnish, with apparent rage, through these little mounts and as he did, would rip up as many bushes as he could grab. On nearly every mound, previously covered by the bushes, small children would be laying down on the ground. Another man standing next to me, through a heavy accent, said, “Sometimes that happens; they wander in and can’t find their way out.”
Without any segue, I was standing in a similar field but instead of having small mounds of bushes there were clumps of giant trees sixty to seventy feet apart from each other – again in a random pattern. Again I knew where I was for no apparent reason – somewhere in England. In one wide-open area of the field there was a group of fifteen to twenty people playing soccer. For no reason I ran full force at the person dribbling the ball and body checked him. He fell to the ground, stood up, picked up the ball, stared down at me, and with a heavy British accent said, “You are not a lemonhead.”
Again, without any segue whatsoever, I was standing inside a house located in what I thought to be Mexico. The house was one out of many row-style houses that were located on the same street. Inside the houses the walls were torn down and the frames were exposed. Groups of construction workers clambered about hammering and sawing things – apparently renovating. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, noticed that the sky looked like rain, and went back inside. Upon walking back into the house I realized that the workers had nearly finished, but the walls were made of fluorescent pink drywall, and the floors were done with fluorescent green tiles. All of the surfaces in the house were of these two colors and seemed to be covered by a thick layer of a chalky substance.
Analysis
Finland, England, what I thought to be Mexico. According to Freud, dreams, “are psychical phenomena of complete validity – fulfillments of wishes” (Freud 155). In this dream, I believe that multiple wishes are trying to be fulfilled. The primary wish being fulfilled is my desire to be overseas although I have a current inability to do so. I love traveling and have been to Europe multiple times, although never to Finland, Spain, or South America. The knowledge that I was in these countries indicates my desire to travel to these new places, and back to England – one of my favorite countries. I am unable to travel currently because of school, so it seems natural to dream that I am in those places in order to fulfill the desire. The idea of location could be viewed as a work of overdetermination in the dream as it was, “represented in the dream-thoughts many times over” (Freud 318).
Without any segue. Instead of taking days of traveling in order to go between these three locations, in my dream the transition is instant. The apparent lack of travel time represents my wish for travel to be an instant endeavor – from one location then instantly to another – instead of the time consuming one it is now. This reflects on another subconscious wish shown by the dream – that I desire only the end results and pleasurable activities without the necessary work, or time, intensive means to that end.
Through a heavy accent. Throughout the dream, I never speak, but am spoken to by characters with heavy accents as if they know my inner thoughts. First the Finnish man speaks in English to answer the question I was thinking of, and then the English soccer player speaks to me in an extremely mild manner for having just assaulted him. I believe this touches on a subconscious desire that people will understand what I am thinking, and answer my questions, without me having to explain myself or my actions. This further goes on to show my desire for Americans to be understood overseas instead of being stereotyped in the negative manner, which I have personally seen multiple times. The English soccer player’s comment about my, “not [being] a lemonhead,” can be explained by the phenomena of condensation. Freud states that, “condensation in dreams is seen at its clearest when in handles words and names” and further goes on to tell us that “words are treated in dreams as though they were concrete things, and for that reason they are apt to be combined in just the same way as presentations of concrete things” (Freud 330). This explains the transfer from British people being “limeys” to myself – and not being one of them – not being a “lemonhead.”
In a wide field – bordered by trees. The appearance of the green, outdoor settings in the first two parts of the dream can be accounted by events of the dream day, which follows Freud’s “assertion that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day” (Freud 197). I was hiking on the parkway during the afternoon and evening of the dream day. The trail I was hiking brought me first through small hills, then up through a wide field with patches of trees along either side. The images found within the first two parts of my dream are nearly identical to these descriptions – the only discrepancy is the appearance of the small, mound-like hills as opposed to the traditional image of a standard hill, like the ones I hiked through.
The ground was flat but covered in small mounds. The explanation for the appearance of the bush-mounds is due to a subconscious connection from the idea of travel and is most likely explained by my subconscious mind thinking of the small burial mounds surrounding Stonehenge, which I visited on my first trip to Europe. I was about eight years old at the time and was visiting family in Scotland with my family. One of the days we visited Stonehenge and I only remember it in specific images – the burial mounds being the clearest. This childhood is brought out because of its significance to the subject at hand, even if it is “material which is in part neither remembered nor used in the activities of waking thought” (Freud 49).
England – playing soccer. England was naturally the next connection for my mind to make from Scotland, the country in which Stonehenge resides. My mind then again made the connection from England to soccer, as the majority of the friends I have made in England are soccer players themselves. The most memorable of these people, functioning as the image of the English football hooligan whom I ran into at full force, was a friend I met on my first trip to London by the name of Adrian, or Adie for short.
Inside the houses the walls were torn down and the frames were exposed. This image is most easily explained by Freud’s ideas of representation and condensation. The relationships between Adie (the English football hooligan), my friend Andrew – who has similar mannerisms, physical build, and name as Adie – and another friend of mine by the name of Jeff, are all connected because of similarities I have recognized between them. Andrew, who works as a framer and carpenter, and Jeff, who works mostly in home construction and renovation doing tile work, are represented as one image (the unfinished house) because according to Freud, “instead of two elements, a single common element intermediate between them [finds] its way into the dream” (Freud 374). While thought connections alone are responsible for these three people – and their personalities – being in my dream, representation is responsible for the transition into the image of houses that were being renovated from the English soccer field.
Groups of construction workers clambered about hammering and sawing things. Both Andrew and Jeff have told me multiple stories about workers rushing through their work in order to be better paid and to finish earlier in the day. These stories obviously helped with my image of the busyness of the scene inside, and the relative quickness in which it was done (the time it took to smoke one cigarette). Coincidentally, both Andrew and Jeff both smoke cigarettes heavily.
Conclusion
This dream demonstrates Freud’s theory of dreams quite well; it is clearly an exercise in wish fulfillment, has been influenced by memories of the dream day and my childhood, uses overdetermination and representation, and condensation of the dream is apparent when comparing the length of the dream and the length of this highly limited analysis. The majority of my analysis deals with a strong desire to travel to different areas of the world, and focuses on my desire to be with my close friends. I am not really the biggest fan of Boone, and the people that I was good friends with have all graduated and left, and I feel as though I am currently stuck here at school; through interpretation I realized that this dream acted to fulfill my wishes of travel and seeing friends, instead of being an extremely bizarre three-part series of scenes. I have not seen Adie for close to two years and travel to London is necessary to see him, Andrew is one of my best friends from Charlotte and recently moved to Florida, and Jeff was the last of my friends to graduate from here and move away; the different wishes of travel and seeing friends make sense to be linked within the latent content of the dream.
I was standing in a wide field that stretched towards the horizon in front of me, and was bordered by trees on either side – about one hundred yards on either side of me. For some reason I knew I was in Finland. The ground was flat but covered in small mounds that mushroomed up from the ground and were entirely covered by small, dense green bushes. These bush-mounds were about twenty to thirty feet apart from each other in a somewhat random pattern. A man would run screaming in Finnish, with apparent rage, through these little mounts and as he did, would rip up as many bushes as he could grab. On nearly every mound, previously covered by the bushes, small children would be laying down on the ground. Another man standing next to me, through a heavy accent, said, “Sometimes that happens; they wander in and can’t find their way out.”
Without any segue, I was standing in a similar field but instead of having small mounds of bushes there were clumps of giant trees sixty to seventy feet apart from each other – again in a random pattern. Again I knew where I was for no apparent reason – somewhere in England. In one wide-open area of the field there was a group of fifteen to twenty people playing soccer. For no reason I ran full force at the person dribbling the ball and body checked him. He fell to the ground, stood up, picked up the ball, stared down at me, and with a heavy British accent said, “You are not a lemonhead.”
Again, without any segue whatsoever, I was standing inside a house located in what I thought to be Mexico. The house was one out of many row-style houses that were located on the same street. Inside the houses the walls were torn down and the frames were exposed. Groups of construction workers clambered about hammering and sawing things – apparently renovating. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, noticed that the sky looked like rain, and went back inside. Upon walking back into the house I realized that the workers had nearly finished, but the walls were made of fluorescent pink drywall, and the floors were done with fluorescent green tiles. All of the surfaces in the house were of these two colors and seemed to be covered by a thick layer of a chalky substance.
Analysis
Finland, England, what I thought to be Mexico. According to Freud, dreams, “are psychical phenomena of complete validity – fulfillments of wishes” (Freud 155). In this dream, I believe that multiple wishes are trying to be fulfilled. The primary wish being fulfilled is my desire to be overseas although I have a current inability to do so. I love traveling and have been to Europe multiple times, although never to Finland, Spain, or South America. The knowledge that I was in these countries indicates my desire to travel to these new places, and back to England – one of my favorite countries. I am unable to travel currently because of school, so it seems natural to dream that I am in those places in order to fulfill the desire. The idea of location could be viewed as a work of overdetermination in the dream as it was, “represented in the dream-thoughts many times over” (Freud 318).
Without any segue. Instead of taking days of traveling in order to go between these three locations, in my dream the transition is instant. The apparent lack of travel time represents my wish for travel to be an instant endeavor – from one location then instantly to another – instead of the time consuming one it is now. This reflects on another subconscious wish shown by the dream – that I desire only the end results and pleasurable activities without the necessary work, or time, intensive means to that end.
Through a heavy accent. Throughout the dream, I never speak, but am spoken to by characters with heavy accents as if they know my inner thoughts. First the Finnish man speaks in English to answer the question I was thinking of, and then the English soccer player speaks to me in an extremely mild manner for having just assaulted him. I believe this touches on a subconscious desire that people will understand what I am thinking, and answer my questions, without me having to explain myself or my actions. This further goes on to show my desire for Americans to be understood overseas instead of being stereotyped in the negative manner, which I have personally seen multiple times. The English soccer player’s comment about my, “not [being] a lemonhead,” can be explained by the phenomena of condensation. Freud states that, “condensation in dreams is seen at its clearest when in handles words and names” and further goes on to tell us that “words are treated in dreams as though they were concrete things, and for that reason they are apt to be combined in just the same way as presentations of concrete things” (Freud 330). This explains the transfer from British people being “limeys” to myself – and not being one of them – not being a “lemonhead.”
In a wide field – bordered by trees. The appearance of the green, outdoor settings in the first two parts of the dream can be accounted by events of the dream day, which follows Freud’s “assertion that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day” (Freud 197). I was hiking on the parkway during the afternoon and evening of the dream day. The trail I was hiking brought me first through small hills, then up through a wide field with patches of trees along either side. The images found within the first two parts of my dream are nearly identical to these descriptions – the only discrepancy is the appearance of the small, mound-like hills as opposed to the traditional image of a standard hill, like the ones I hiked through.
The ground was flat but covered in small mounds. The explanation for the appearance of the bush-mounds is due to a subconscious connection from the idea of travel and is most likely explained by my subconscious mind thinking of the small burial mounds surrounding Stonehenge, which I visited on my first trip to Europe. I was about eight years old at the time and was visiting family in Scotland with my family. One of the days we visited Stonehenge and I only remember it in specific images – the burial mounds being the clearest. This childhood is brought out because of its significance to the subject at hand, even if it is “material which is in part neither remembered nor used in the activities of waking thought” (Freud 49).
England – playing soccer. England was naturally the next connection for my mind to make from Scotland, the country in which Stonehenge resides. My mind then again made the connection from England to soccer, as the majority of the friends I have made in England are soccer players themselves. The most memorable of these people, functioning as the image of the English football hooligan whom I ran into at full force, was a friend I met on my first trip to London by the name of Adrian, or Adie for short.
Inside the houses the walls were torn down and the frames were exposed. This image is most easily explained by Freud’s ideas of representation and condensation. The relationships between Adie (the English football hooligan), my friend Andrew – who has similar mannerisms, physical build, and name as Adie – and another friend of mine by the name of Jeff, are all connected because of similarities I have recognized between them. Andrew, who works as a framer and carpenter, and Jeff, who works mostly in home construction and renovation doing tile work, are represented as one image (the unfinished house) because according to Freud, “instead of two elements, a single common element intermediate between them [finds] its way into the dream” (Freud 374). While thought connections alone are responsible for these three people – and their personalities – being in my dream, representation is responsible for the transition into the image of houses that were being renovated from the English soccer field.
Groups of construction workers clambered about hammering and sawing things. Both Andrew and Jeff have told me multiple stories about workers rushing through their work in order to be better paid and to finish earlier in the day. These stories obviously helped with my image of the busyness of the scene inside, and the relative quickness in which it was done (the time it took to smoke one cigarette). Coincidentally, both Andrew and Jeff both smoke cigarettes heavily.
Conclusion
This dream demonstrates Freud’s theory of dreams quite well; it is clearly an exercise in wish fulfillment, has been influenced by memories of the dream day and my childhood, uses overdetermination and representation, and condensation of the dream is apparent when comparing the length of the dream and the length of this highly limited analysis. The majority of my analysis deals with a strong desire to travel to different areas of the world, and focuses on my desire to be with my close friends. I am not really the biggest fan of Boone, and the people that I was good friends with have all graduated and left, and I feel as though I am currently stuck here at school; through interpretation I realized that this dream acted to fulfill my wishes of travel and seeing friends, instead of being an extremely bizarre three-part series of scenes. I have not seen Adie for close to two years and travel to London is necessary to see him, Andrew is one of my best friends from Charlotte and recently moved to Florida, and Jeff was the last of my friends to graduate from here and move away; the different wishes of travel and seeing friends make sense to be linked within the latent content of the dream.
Lance: Censored Dream Paper
Preamble
I was beginning to face the decision of whether I would return to Davidson for the spring semester and consider other options. I had been in email and phone communication with my cross country teammates at Davidson throughout the summer and outset of the semester, yet I spent much of my free time at ASU socializing with their team. Runners on both teams were courting me with valid reasoning, and I had to address the main nagging questions in my life at that time: where I was going to attend classes in the spring.
Dream of September 16th-17th, 2007 (a Sunday night)
Standing on top of a hill away from the main crowd below me…Everyone was lined up, watching something else, maybe a horse race or a track meet…Roger Goddell in the infield amongst the masses…Craig appeared to my left and began to descend down the hill…Followed after him and waved at Brad as I was descending…Lots of Davidson folks, waved at some but didn’t speak to them…Strong feeling of anxiety about seeing anyone from Davidson…At the bottom of the hill, Kwame shook my hand and said “thanks for coming out.”…Continued following Craig through the crowd of spectators until we were amongst students watching a UNC basketball game on an outdoor Jumbotron screen…Talked to Karthik about his double pump and how Josh sucks…Feeling that we were witnessing history, something special…Craig mentioned that UNC would be in the NCAA tournament soon, which would be a whole different level/feeling of spectating…I said “more intense”…Tuba player began leading a snake cheer in which the students (including me) all sang and got on the floor at times…His instrument was made of several narrow pipes.
I awoke at 7:30 AM with the sense that there was water, rain, and flooding while I was in a house. I heard the loud rush of water coming down the pipes in the wall, located directly behind my head and originating from the shower of the apartment above, which may have caused me to wake.
Analysis
Standing on top of a hill away from the main crowd below me. I was looking down at the crowd below me, but they did not notice me because they were focused on the athletic event. The hill is a very important symbol in the dream, especially since I start out at the top, looking down on the masses and eventually join them after following Craig down. Perhaps standing at the top represents the identity I forged in high school and at Davidson—or at least my perception of it. In both communities I was respected and applauded for my academic and athletic accomplishments, and I reveled in the attention.
Everyone was lined up, watching something else, maybe a horse race or a track meet. According to Freud’s principle of overdetermination, each dream-thought can be represented by multiple dream-images and vice versa. Thus, the event is both a horse race and a track meet simultaneously. For Freud, horse races symbolize close competitions, perhaps referring to the tough decision I was making between returning to Davidson and staying at ASU. Regardless, these spectators are the first of many images related to an athletic theme. Sports are one of my greatest passions, both to participate in and to follow. Additionally, one of my main concerns in deciding between colleges was how I would contribute to and enjoy the cross country and track teams, and how my teammates at Davidson would respond if I transferred to Appalachian.
Roger Goddell in the infield amongst the masses. Roger Goddell, the NFL commissioner, was all over the news during the dream day, handing down his punishment to the Patriots for videotaping the signals of opposing teams. Freud asserts that the source of dreams is most often “an internal significant experience (e.g. a memory or a train of thought), which is in that case invariably represented in the dream by a mention of a recent indifferent impression.” (Freud 213) Thus, Roger Goddell’s public condemnation and sanctioning of the Patriots was the source of my dream.
Craig appeared to my left and began to descend down the hill. Craig and I were roommates at the NC School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) senior year. The summer before senior year he took me hiking on the backside of Grandfather Mountain, following no trespassing signs which he said “marked the trail.” We ended up getting caught in a thunderstorm at the top of the mountain, isolated from any paths down by slick rock faces and thick underbrush. In other words, we were lost, unprepared, and stuck at the top of a mountain without cover in a thunderstorm. After 3-4 hours, we finally made it down, uninjured and wet. This near-death experience forged a bond between us that made rooming together easy.
I had been in email correspondence with Craig in the week leading up to the dream. In fact, I sent him an email on the dream day. Craig was in Ecuador scaling 15,000 foot peaks, so it is not surprising this element made its way into the dream. Furthermore, Freud stresses that powerful experiences and memories from childhood often find their way into dreams.
Freud claims that reality and fantasy are given equal status in dreams, and reality only matters inasmuch as how it affects our fantasies and unconscious desires. (Freud, 323) Thus, we do not think much of occurrences in dreams that do not operate according to the rules of reality. This operation of fantasy combined with overdetermination enables a person to exist as two (or more) objects in a dream-image at the same time. In my dream, Craig and I both seem to stand for aspects of myself. Craig represents the part of me that broke the rules and forged his own path up the mountain. In another sense, I succumbed to the temptations that Craig presented to me; he demonstrated that societal regulations should be broken at times.
The hill seems to be the nodal point of the dream-thoughts, its presence overdetermined by associations and connections with several of them, and therefore representative of multiple symbols and interpretations. Descending the hill with Craig could also be understood as the outset of a journey. “‘Departing’ on a journey is one of the commonest and best authenticated symbols of death.” (Freud 420) In this case, my previous identity had died. I experienced a great deal of identity confusion because the qualities and achievements I had taken pride in were no longer valid.
Followed after him and waved at Brad as I was descending. Brad is one of my teammates on the track team at Davidson and one of the nicest, generous, most genuine people I know. The anxiety I experienced when seeing Brad is a definite distortion because I would never be anxious about running into him in waking life, even if I had transferred to a rival school.
Lots of Davidson folks, waved at some but didn’t speak to them.
Strong feeling of anxiety about seeing anyone from Davidson.
At the bottom of the hill, Kwame shook my hand and said “thanks for coming out.” Kwame, like Brad, is one of my track teammates. It is interesting that of all my teammates, Brad and Kwame were the ones to appear, as they are the two that would most likely support me no matter what I choose to do, and thus their inclusion in the dream creates a distortion in terms of the anxiety I felt in their presence.
I had been in Facebook correspondence with Kwame two weeks before the dream, but I may have thought of him on the dream day when I looked up how Davidson’s football team fared on the previous day (Saturday). Kwame plays linebacker on the team, and I try to keep up with the team and support his efforts.
I cannot determine the significance of the phrase “thanks for coming out,” but I am certain that I have heard it on many occasions in association with attendance at athletic events. It may even be something I said to others when I was interviewing athletes at track meets this summer.
Continued following Craig through the crowd of spectators until we were amongst students watching a UNC basketball game on an outdoor Jumbotron screen. I can’t pinpoint a specific, moving instance where I watched a game on a screen, but I have viewed several sporting events, including basketball games, with Davidson students on a projection screen set up in the student union. In any case, I have moved from one community to another with Craig, and I am now among my peers.
Talked to Karthik about his double pump and how Josh sucks. Karthik was one of my classmates at NCSSM, who was at best a peripheral acquaintance. However, we were both selected to represent our math modeling class on a three-person team in the 2005 Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). Hence, Karthik symbolizes another type of teammate with whom I worked and had success.
Josh was another high school classmate that I spoke to occasionally but mostly felt indifferent towards. I would never have said “he sucked,” but I am almost certain Craig and others, possibly even Karthik (who lived on his hall), did express sentiments in those exact words. More importantly, though, Josh began his college career at UNC and subsequently transferred to NYU, seemingly with positive results. The idea of someone switching schools is being met with resistance and disapproval by the students from the original institution, a circumstance I was undoubtedly anxious about myself.
Feeling that we were witnessing history, something special. This could be related to ASU’s upset of Michigan or similar feelings I associate with several Davidson basketball games and other athletic contests.
Craig mentioned that UNC would be in the NCAA tournament soon, which would be a whole different level/feeling of spectating. Davidson’s basketball team made it to the NCAA tournament both years I was there, each time barely losing in the first round but gaining a lot of national respect for fighting valiantly and almost pulling off the upset.
I said “more intense.” This phrase is the exactly the one I have used when describing the Davidson workload to others, especially prospective Davidson students and my classmates at ASU.
Tuba player began leading a snake cheer in which the students (including me) all sang and got on the floor at times. As a boy, I attended many NCSU home basketball games with my dad. During a timeout, some of the band members would spell out the letters of S-T-A-T-E with their bodies on the court—which always looked like the undulations of a snake to me—while the trumpet, trombone, or tuba players would lead the cheer with the crowd.
It is possible that I am again simultaneously appearing as two different people: a member of the crowd and the tuba player. If so, I am leading the crowd through an enjoyable cheer and fulfilling narcissistic desires for attention and prestige. I have regained the exalted status I possessed at the beginning of the dream except this time amidst the masses. In any case, the dream concludes on a positive note of celebration and incorporation into a community despite coming down the hill.
The appearance of a positive childhood memory—having fun with my dad at a basketball game—suggests the presence of a fundamental wish: to regain my father’s favor. “Not only, as our examples have shown, may they [dreams] include several wish-fulfillments one alongside the other; but a succession of meanings or wish-fulfillments may be superimposed on one another, the bottom one being the fulfillment of a wish dating from earliest childhood.” (Freud 253) I have a very strong relationship with my dad, and he has always set high expectations for my behavior.
His instrument was made of several narrow pipes. This has to be related to the noisy water I heard in the pipes behind my head upon waking. Of course, Freud would have related it to phallic symbolism; indeed he comments “every water-pipe is a reminder of the urinary apparatus.” (Freud 382)
Conclusion
In analyzing the individual dream-images, I hope my overall interpretation of the dream has been apparent. At the time of the dream, the biggest outstanding decision in my life was whether I would return to Davidson for the spring semester or stay at ASU. I was anxious about how my teammates would react if I decided to run for Appalachian and how my relationships at Davidson would be affected by a permanent transfer. Thus, I think the main wish (outside of the childhood one) expressed in this dream is to once more feel true membership in a community of my peers by developing close relationships and feeling fully accepted and embraced by the student body.
Due to limited scope and time restrictions, I have neglected to deal with any sexual interpretations of my dream. It is not lost on me that invariably all dreams have a sexual interpretation according to Freud. My dream contains many of the sexual imagery Freud explains in The Interpretation of Dreams. “Many landscapes in dreams…may clearly be recognized as descriptions of the genitals.” (Freud 391) Specifically, hills symbolize the mons veneris (Freud 402). Likewise, the people “‘down below’ in dreams often relate to the genitals” (Freud 445). Lastly, “I added from my own knowledge derived elsewhere that climbing down, like climbing up in other cases, described sexual intercourse in the vagina.” (Freud 401)
This dream illustrates Freud’s theory of dreams pretty well. In the analysis, I pointed out instances of overdetermination, distortion, contact with the dream day, childhood memories, somatic sources, and representability. I saw evidence of my own internal censor, responsible for secondary revision, at work in discussing aspects of my dream with others. Moreover, the sheer length of the analysis and conclusion compared with that of the dream itself should make the process of condensation of many dream-thoughts into select dream-images clear. The latent content of anxiety about self-image and inclusion is well demarcated from the manifest content of the dream-images, which center on the painless, entertaining imagery of sports. Most importantly, though, there seem to be a number of wishes fulfilled in the dream.
I was beginning to face the decision of whether I would return to Davidson for the spring semester and consider other options. I had been in email and phone communication with my cross country teammates at Davidson throughout the summer and outset of the semester, yet I spent much of my free time at ASU socializing with their team. Runners on both teams were courting me with valid reasoning, and I had to address the main nagging questions in my life at that time: where I was going to attend classes in the spring.
Dream of September 16th-17th, 2007 (a Sunday night)
Standing on top of a hill away from the main crowd below me…Everyone was lined up, watching something else, maybe a horse race or a track meet…Roger Goddell in the infield amongst the masses…Craig appeared to my left and began to descend down the hill…Followed after him and waved at Brad as I was descending…Lots of Davidson folks, waved at some but didn’t speak to them…Strong feeling of anxiety about seeing anyone from Davidson…At the bottom of the hill, Kwame shook my hand and said “thanks for coming out.”…Continued following Craig through the crowd of spectators until we were amongst students watching a UNC basketball game on an outdoor Jumbotron screen…Talked to Karthik about his double pump and how Josh sucks…Feeling that we were witnessing history, something special…Craig mentioned that UNC would be in the NCAA tournament soon, which would be a whole different level/feeling of spectating…I said “more intense”…Tuba player began leading a snake cheer in which the students (including me) all sang and got on the floor at times…His instrument was made of several narrow pipes.
I awoke at 7:30 AM with the sense that there was water, rain, and flooding while I was in a house. I heard the loud rush of water coming down the pipes in the wall, located directly behind my head and originating from the shower of the apartment above, which may have caused me to wake.
Analysis
Standing on top of a hill away from the main crowd below me. I was looking down at the crowd below me, but they did not notice me because they were focused on the athletic event. The hill is a very important symbol in the dream, especially since I start out at the top, looking down on the masses and eventually join them after following Craig down. Perhaps standing at the top represents the identity I forged in high school and at Davidson—or at least my perception of it. In both communities I was respected and applauded for my academic and athletic accomplishments, and I reveled in the attention.
Everyone was lined up, watching something else, maybe a horse race or a track meet. According to Freud’s principle of overdetermination, each dream-thought can be represented by multiple dream-images and vice versa. Thus, the event is both a horse race and a track meet simultaneously. For Freud, horse races symbolize close competitions, perhaps referring to the tough decision I was making between returning to Davidson and staying at ASU. Regardless, these spectators are the first of many images related to an athletic theme. Sports are one of my greatest passions, both to participate in and to follow. Additionally, one of my main concerns in deciding between colleges was how I would contribute to and enjoy the cross country and track teams, and how my teammates at Davidson would respond if I transferred to Appalachian.
Roger Goddell in the infield amongst the masses. Roger Goddell, the NFL commissioner, was all over the news during the dream day, handing down his punishment to the Patriots for videotaping the signals of opposing teams. Freud asserts that the source of dreams is most often “an internal significant experience (e.g. a memory or a train of thought), which is in that case invariably represented in the dream by a mention of a recent indifferent impression.” (Freud 213) Thus, Roger Goddell’s public condemnation and sanctioning of the Patriots was the source of my dream.
Craig appeared to my left and began to descend down the hill. Craig and I were roommates at the NC School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) senior year. The summer before senior year he took me hiking on the backside of Grandfather Mountain, following no trespassing signs which he said “marked the trail.” We ended up getting caught in a thunderstorm at the top of the mountain, isolated from any paths down by slick rock faces and thick underbrush. In other words, we were lost, unprepared, and stuck at the top of a mountain without cover in a thunderstorm. After 3-4 hours, we finally made it down, uninjured and wet. This near-death experience forged a bond between us that made rooming together easy.
I had been in email correspondence with Craig in the week leading up to the dream. In fact, I sent him an email on the dream day. Craig was in Ecuador scaling 15,000 foot peaks, so it is not surprising this element made its way into the dream. Furthermore, Freud stresses that powerful experiences and memories from childhood often find their way into dreams.
Freud claims that reality and fantasy are given equal status in dreams, and reality only matters inasmuch as how it affects our fantasies and unconscious desires. (Freud, 323) Thus, we do not think much of occurrences in dreams that do not operate according to the rules of reality. This operation of fantasy combined with overdetermination enables a person to exist as two (or more) objects in a dream-image at the same time. In my dream, Craig and I both seem to stand for aspects of myself. Craig represents the part of me that broke the rules and forged his own path up the mountain. In another sense, I succumbed to the temptations that Craig presented to me; he demonstrated that societal regulations should be broken at times.
The hill seems to be the nodal point of the dream-thoughts, its presence overdetermined by associations and connections with several of them, and therefore representative of multiple symbols and interpretations. Descending the hill with Craig could also be understood as the outset of a journey. “‘Departing’ on a journey is one of the commonest and best authenticated symbols of death.” (Freud 420) In this case, my previous identity had died. I experienced a great deal of identity confusion because the qualities and achievements I had taken pride in were no longer valid.
Followed after him and waved at Brad as I was descending. Brad is one of my teammates on the track team at Davidson and one of the nicest, generous, most genuine people I know. The anxiety I experienced when seeing Brad is a definite distortion because I would never be anxious about running into him in waking life, even if I had transferred to a rival school.
Lots of Davidson folks, waved at some but didn’t speak to them.
Strong feeling of anxiety about seeing anyone from Davidson.
At the bottom of the hill, Kwame shook my hand and said “thanks for coming out.” Kwame, like Brad, is one of my track teammates. It is interesting that of all my teammates, Brad and Kwame were the ones to appear, as they are the two that would most likely support me no matter what I choose to do, and thus their inclusion in the dream creates a distortion in terms of the anxiety I felt in their presence.
I had been in Facebook correspondence with Kwame two weeks before the dream, but I may have thought of him on the dream day when I looked up how Davidson’s football team fared on the previous day (Saturday). Kwame plays linebacker on the team, and I try to keep up with the team and support his efforts.
I cannot determine the significance of the phrase “thanks for coming out,” but I am certain that I have heard it on many occasions in association with attendance at athletic events. It may even be something I said to others when I was interviewing athletes at track meets this summer.
Continued following Craig through the crowd of spectators until we were amongst students watching a UNC basketball game on an outdoor Jumbotron screen. I can’t pinpoint a specific, moving instance where I watched a game on a screen, but I have viewed several sporting events, including basketball games, with Davidson students on a projection screen set up in the student union. In any case, I have moved from one community to another with Craig, and I am now among my peers.
Talked to Karthik about his double pump and how Josh sucks. Karthik was one of my classmates at NCSSM, who was at best a peripheral acquaintance. However, we were both selected to represent our math modeling class on a three-person team in the 2005 Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). Hence, Karthik symbolizes another type of teammate with whom I worked and had success.
Josh was another high school classmate that I spoke to occasionally but mostly felt indifferent towards. I would never have said “he sucked,” but I am almost certain Craig and others, possibly even Karthik (who lived on his hall), did express sentiments in those exact words. More importantly, though, Josh began his college career at UNC and subsequently transferred to NYU, seemingly with positive results. The idea of someone switching schools is being met with resistance and disapproval by the students from the original institution, a circumstance I was undoubtedly anxious about myself.
Feeling that we were witnessing history, something special. This could be related to ASU’s upset of Michigan or similar feelings I associate with several Davidson basketball games and other athletic contests.
Craig mentioned that UNC would be in the NCAA tournament soon, which would be a whole different level/feeling of spectating. Davidson’s basketball team made it to the NCAA tournament both years I was there, each time barely losing in the first round but gaining a lot of national respect for fighting valiantly and almost pulling off the upset.
I said “more intense.” This phrase is the exactly the one I have used when describing the Davidson workload to others, especially prospective Davidson students and my classmates at ASU.
Tuba player began leading a snake cheer in which the students (including me) all sang and got on the floor at times. As a boy, I attended many NCSU home basketball games with my dad. During a timeout, some of the band members would spell out the letters of S-T-A-T-E with their bodies on the court—which always looked like the undulations of a snake to me—while the trumpet, trombone, or tuba players would lead the cheer with the crowd.
It is possible that I am again simultaneously appearing as two different people: a member of the crowd and the tuba player. If so, I am leading the crowd through an enjoyable cheer and fulfilling narcissistic desires for attention and prestige. I have regained the exalted status I possessed at the beginning of the dream except this time amidst the masses. In any case, the dream concludes on a positive note of celebration and incorporation into a community despite coming down the hill.
The appearance of a positive childhood memory—having fun with my dad at a basketball game—suggests the presence of a fundamental wish: to regain my father’s favor. “Not only, as our examples have shown, may they [dreams] include several wish-fulfillments one alongside the other; but a succession of meanings or wish-fulfillments may be superimposed on one another, the bottom one being the fulfillment of a wish dating from earliest childhood.” (Freud 253) I have a very strong relationship with my dad, and he has always set high expectations for my behavior.
His instrument was made of several narrow pipes. This has to be related to the noisy water I heard in the pipes behind my head upon waking. Of course, Freud would have related it to phallic symbolism; indeed he comments “every water-pipe is a reminder of the urinary apparatus.” (Freud 382)
Conclusion
In analyzing the individual dream-images, I hope my overall interpretation of the dream has been apparent. At the time of the dream, the biggest outstanding decision in my life was whether I would return to Davidson for the spring semester or stay at ASU. I was anxious about how my teammates would react if I decided to run for Appalachian and how my relationships at Davidson would be affected by a permanent transfer. Thus, I think the main wish (outside of the childhood one) expressed in this dream is to once more feel true membership in a community of my peers by developing close relationships and feeling fully accepted and embraced by the student body.
Due to limited scope and time restrictions, I have neglected to deal with any sexual interpretations of my dream. It is not lost on me that invariably all dreams have a sexual interpretation according to Freud. My dream contains many of the sexual imagery Freud explains in The Interpretation of Dreams. “Many landscapes in dreams…may clearly be recognized as descriptions of the genitals.” (Freud 391) Specifically, hills symbolize the mons veneris (Freud 402). Likewise, the people “‘down below’ in dreams often relate to the genitals” (Freud 445). Lastly, “I added from my own knowledge derived elsewhere that climbing down, like climbing up in other cases, described sexual intercourse in the vagina.” (Freud 401)
This dream illustrates Freud’s theory of dreams pretty well. In the analysis, I pointed out instances of overdetermination, distortion, contact with the dream day, childhood memories, somatic sources, and representability. I saw evidence of my own internal censor, responsible for secondary revision, at work in discussing aspects of my dream with others. Moreover, the sheer length of the analysis and conclusion compared with that of the dream itself should make the process of condensation of many dream-thoughts into select dream-images clear. The latent content of anxiety about self-image and inclusion is well demarcated from the manifest content of the dream-images, which center on the painless, entertaining imagery of sports. Most importantly, though, there seem to be a number of wishes fulfilled in the dream.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Dream analysis paper
Dad and Rosemary
I was at a house that belonged to my father and his wife, Rosemary. I am not sure if the furniture belongs to them as an element of the non-dream reality, but it looked like furniture they would own. I remember that recognition as necessary in my positioning within the dream. There were flower printed plush couches, ornate frames, and antiques. At first only Dad and I were there—as usual he was talking but I have no idea what he said. It seems as though someone else was in the room at times. In retrospect I think it was Wendy. Rosemary called on a speaker phone and said that she was on her way up (which leads me to think the residence was in MD). We asked “if she needed help carrying anything” but she said she was “okay.” Once Rosemary joined us she took on the role of coordinating everything and everyone when all of a sudden we were having a luncheon. She then made reference to the pictures on the wall telling me how he (my father) liked to stare at them all day. She went so far as to say he was “obsessed with them.” I didn’t recognize anyone in the pictures on the wall. I remember having the sensation that this was “typical.”
When I first began to analyze this dream the immediate realization of my wish fulfillment became available. Rosemary, my step-mother and father’s sixth wife, died in July of lymphatic cancer. The dream was a manifest wish that she be alive again. At first the latent content seemed non-existent, an example of displacement as my conscious mind performed its task as “gatekeeper.”
The more I thought of the characters in the dream, namely my father and Rosemary, the more I pondered whether or not there was more to the dream than the wish that Rosemary be alive again. That seemed almost too easy. It was too available. If, as Freud stated, dreams are influenced by “…trains of thought reaching back to earliest childhood (and) lead off even from dreams which seem at first sight to have been completely interpreted…” (252), then I absolutely refused to accept the absence of latent content. I could not dismiss the interpretation as complete because the resolution was so easily attained. My relationship with father and all of the emotions surrounding it compounded with the nagging thought of incompleteness and I began to further reflect on Rosemary’s resurrection in my dream. I decided that I needed to take a more objective approach in my analysis. It was with this objectivity that I was able to realize that in some ways Rosemary’s presence in my life often signified a state of emotional static for my father and my relationship.
It was once this realization occurred that I was able to recognize the latent wish present in the dream; the wish that my relationship with my father would return to some to some of my best memories of it. In many ways, the reappearance of Rosemary suggested a return to the peace that that particular relationship maintained, both during her life and as a direct result of her death. For me, this idea was reflective of Freud’s dream analysis of the young girl who saw her sister’s little son lying dead in his coffin (500).
While my psychical mind had not in this instance replaced Rosemary’s person for another, as in the dream above, the death represented a wish for the return of an emotional sensation. Freud’s analysis of the young girl’s dream above proved that the funeral service for her nephew did not in fact represent a wish that he be replaced for his older brother as she had originally suggested. When he pushed this patient to further explore the possibilities of this dream, he found in dreaming of the funeral she was not exercising this wish at all. Instead its latent content provided that the dream material represented her desires to see the object of her affection once more.
It was here that this correlation occurred in my analysis. By recognizing Rosemary’s reappearance in my life as a wish for the way it re-established a healthy relationship with my father, I was able to understand the dream in its entirety. I was able to piece together that it was only after her appearance in the dream that the party-like atmosphere of a luncheon instead of the complacent environment represented by her absence was available. The latent and more disguised wish in my dream was that Rosemary be alive again so that I could resume a healthier relationship with my father, which has been weighing heavily on my mind since her death.
I was at a house that belonged to my father and his wife, Rosemary. I am not sure if the furniture belongs to them as an element of the non-dream reality, but it looked like furniture they would own. I remember that recognition as necessary in my positioning within the dream. There were flower printed plush couches, ornate frames, and antiques. At first only Dad and I were there—as usual he was talking but I have no idea what he said. It seems as though someone else was in the room at times. In retrospect I think it was Wendy. Rosemary called on a speaker phone and said that she was on her way up (which leads me to think the residence was in MD). We asked “if she needed help carrying anything” but she said she was “okay.” Once Rosemary joined us she took on the role of coordinating everything and everyone when all of a sudden we were having a luncheon. She then made reference to the pictures on the wall telling me how he (my father) liked to stare at them all day. She went so far as to say he was “obsessed with them.” I didn’t recognize anyone in the pictures on the wall. I remember having the sensation that this was “typical.”
When I first began to analyze this dream the immediate realization of my wish fulfillment became available. Rosemary, my step-mother and father’s sixth wife, died in July of lymphatic cancer. The dream was a manifest wish that she be alive again. At first the latent content seemed non-existent, an example of displacement as my conscious mind performed its task as “gatekeeper.”
The more I thought of the characters in the dream, namely my father and Rosemary, the more I pondered whether or not there was more to the dream than the wish that Rosemary be alive again. That seemed almost too easy. It was too available. If, as Freud stated, dreams are influenced by “…trains of thought reaching back to earliest childhood (and) lead off even from dreams which seem at first sight to have been completely interpreted…” (252), then I absolutely refused to accept the absence of latent content. I could not dismiss the interpretation as complete because the resolution was so easily attained. My relationship with father and all of the emotions surrounding it compounded with the nagging thought of incompleteness and I began to further reflect on Rosemary’s resurrection in my dream. I decided that I needed to take a more objective approach in my analysis. It was with this objectivity that I was able to realize that in some ways Rosemary’s presence in my life often signified a state of emotional static for my father and my relationship.
It was once this realization occurred that I was able to recognize the latent wish present in the dream; the wish that my relationship with my father would return to some to some of my best memories of it. In many ways, the reappearance of Rosemary suggested a return to the peace that that particular relationship maintained, both during her life and as a direct result of her death. For me, this idea was reflective of Freud’s dream analysis of the young girl who saw her sister’s little son lying dead in his coffin (500).
While my psychical mind had not in this instance replaced Rosemary’s person for another, as in the dream above, the death represented a wish for the return of an emotional sensation. Freud’s analysis of the young girl’s dream above proved that the funeral service for her nephew did not in fact represent a wish that he be replaced for his older brother as she had originally suggested. When he pushed this patient to further explore the possibilities of this dream, he found in dreaming of the funeral she was not exercising this wish at all. Instead its latent content provided that the dream material represented her desires to see the object of her affection once more.
It was here that this correlation occurred in my analysis. By recognizing Rosemary’s reappearance in my life as a wish for the way it re-established a healthy relationship with my father, I was able to understand the dream in its entirety. I was able to piece together that it was only after her appearance in the dream that the party-like atmosphere of a luncheon instead of the complacent environment represented by her absence was available. The latent and more disguised wish in my dream was that Rosemary be alive again so that I could resume a healthier relationship with my father, which has been weighing heavily on my mind since her death.
prostituting my talents
Last night I had a dream that I was in a room that appeared to be a cross between the salon I work in and a hotel room. There was flourescent lighting like work, beds like a hotel/motel room, and a television. There were a lot of people there that seemed familiar to me: my mom, my friend Tony, and my friend Darby are the only ones I can remember. We were keeping ourselves busy when a client came in to get a haircut. It turned out that he was acquainted with Darby from when she lived in Wilkesboro. We kept trying to get him to get his hair cut, but he was only interested in lounging on the bed and attempting to maintain his image of "coolness". We were still attempting to get him off the bed and cut his hair when the alarm went off.
The thing that becomes immediate to me when I reflect upon this dream is the conversation that I had today with one of my co-workers about us prostituting our talent for my current job as well as the usage in both hair and prostitution of words like "client" and "service."
The thing that becomes immediate to me when I reflect upon this dream is the conversation that I had today with one of my co-workers about us prostituting our talent for my current job as well as the usage in both hair and prostitution of words like "client" and "service."
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Apologies
My apologies for standing you up this morning. On Thursday we will talk about all of Chapter VII, so just continue on in the reading.
TH 9/27 Chapter VII, "The Dream-Processes," A-C, pp. 547-611 and D-F, pp. 612-660.
Also, keep working on your Dream Papers. You can find the assignment below if you didn't get a handout.
TH 9/27 Chapter VII, "The Dream-Processes," A-C, pp. 547-611 and D-F, pp. 612-660.
Also, keep working on your Dream Papers. You can find the assignment below if you didn't get a handout.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Dream Paper Assignment
You are to write a well written, and well argued paper interpreting one of your dreams from your Dream Journal using Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.
First, recount one of your recent dreams recorded in you Dream Journal. Look at Freud’s Irma dream (pp. 138-154) for an example. Title your dream and then describe the dream in a short italicized paragraph or paragraphs. Then analyze your dream using Freud’s method in The Interpretation of Dreams as completely and fully as possible. In particular, you should discuss Freud’s notion that every “dream is a (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish” (194). What wish(es) may be fulfilled in your dream? Be clear and specific. You should also discuss at least two other elements of Freud’s interpretation of dreams with reference to your own dream. For instance, contact with dream day, childhood memories, somatic sources, condensation, displacement, representability, secondary revision, overdetermination, etc. In your discussion you must make explicit reference to Freud’s writing. Finally, evaluate your dream and it's interpretation in terms of Freud's theory of dreams. How well does your dream illustrate his theory? Why or why not? Give clear and specific reasons in the argument for your view.
Your paper will be due by the end of class time on Tuesday, October 2. There will be no class that day, but you must turn in your paper in my box by 10:45. You may, of course, turn your paper in earlier than this. Late papers will be docked one-third of a letter grade for each day late. Please feel free to make full use of the Writing Center in the Belk Library.
Also post a copy of your paper to our class blog. Read your classmates' papers by class time on Thursday, October 4 and come ready to discuss and ask questions. If you are not comfortable sharing your paper on the very public class blog, come talk with me and we'll make other arrangements.
You will present your paper for discussion in class on Thursday, October 4.
Your paper should be typed, double-spaced in a 12 point font with standard margins.
It should be a 750-1500 words in length.
There should be a cover page including an original and informative title for your paper, your name, this course, my name and the date.
There should be an MLA style bibliography with references for all works cited in the paper.
Papers should be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. No binders or folders please.
Pages should be numbered.
Keep a copy of your paper.
An example of an MLA style citation and bibliographic entry:
It is important to remember, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Freud 647).
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1998.
First, recount one of your recent dreams recorded in you Dream Journal. Look at Freud’s Irma dream (pp. 138-154) for an example. Title your dream and then describe the dream in a short italicized paragraph or paragraphs. Then analyze your dream using Freud’s method in The Interpretation of Dreams as completely and fully as possible. In particular, you should discuss Freud’s notion that every “dream is a (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish” (194). What wish(es) may be fulfilled in your dream? Be clear and specific. You should also discuss at least two other elements of Freud’s interpretation of dreams with reference to your own dream. For instance, contact with dream day, childhood memories, somatic sources, condensation, displacement, representability, secondary revision, overdetermination, etc. In your discussion you must make explicit reference to Freud’s writing. Finally, evaluate your dream and it's interpretation in terms of Freud's theory of dreams. How well does your dream illustrate his theory? Why or why not? Give clear and specific reasons in the argument for your view.
Your paper will be due by the end of class time on Tuesday, October 2. There will be no class that day, but you must turn in your paper in my box by 10:45. You may, of course, turn your paper in earlier than this. Late papers will be docked one-third of a letter grade for each day late. Please feel free to make full use of the Writing Center in the Belk Library.
Also post a copy of your paper to our class blog. Read your classmates' papers by class time on Thursday, October 4 and come ready to discuss and ask questions. If you are not comfortable sharing your paper on the very public class blog, come talk with me and we'll make other arrangements.
You will present your paper for discussion in class on Thursday, October 4.
Your paper should be typed, double-spaced in a 12 point font with standard margins.
It should be a 750-1500 words in length.
There should be a cover page including an original and informative title for your paper, your name, this course, my name and the date.
There should be an MLA style bibliography with references for all works cited in the paper.
Papers should be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. No binders or folders please.
Pages should be numbered.
Keep a copy of your paper.
An example of an MLA style citation and bibliographic entry:
It is important to remember, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Freud 647).
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1998.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Lance: Dream #5
It's been awhile since I've had a dream worthy of posting. I've had a few where I could only remember a few scarce details, but no full blown narratives like the previous dreams I've posted.
I was trying to take pictures of my little brother's pet rabbit, Oak, and a fairly large turtle. The two animals were licking each other at my dad's house. My bedroom was different: it had a sweet staircase, wall bookshelf, and a huge bed with nice sheets. I awoke first, went to use the bathroom, which awoke my dad, and then I saw the animals. I tried to drink some water after waking, but it didn't taste good, so I looked at it and it was slightly murky with 3 spiders in it. My dad said the turtle must be from Duke. I said it can't be good for the turtle to be in the house. He said it wasn't his fault. I tried to take pictures of the animals, but the camera wouldn't capture any photos, no matter how much I tried to change the settings and zoom.
When I returned to my room, two of my friends from Davidson, Gretchen and Devin were there. I tried to take a picture of the 3 of us, but once again with no luck.
At another point in the dream, I checked my email and had 25 new messages, which was much more than I expected. I looked at 2 of them from the same reply-all thread, which was apparently from SAE's email list. My friend Hoyt had started the chain by unintentionally sending to the wrong graduation class. My friend Peter was also mentioned as having a hairy neck.
The dream ended when I awoke in real life knocking on the wall beside my bed, which was somehow correlated with what was going on in the dream.
I was trying to take pictures of my little brother's pet rabbit, Oak, and a fairly large turtle. The two animals were licking each other at my dad's house. My bedroom was different: it had a sweet staircase, wall bookshelf, and a huge bed with nice sheets. I awoke first, went to use the bathroom, which awoke my dad, and then I saw the animals. I tried to drink some water after waking, but it didn't taste good, so I looked at it and it was slightly murky with 3 spiders in it. My dad said the turtle must be from Duke. I said it can't be good for the turtle to be in the house. He said it wasn't his fault. I tried to take pictures of the animals, but the camera wouldn't capture any photos, no matter how much I tried to change the settings and zoom.
When I returned to my room, two of my friends from Davidson, Gretchen and Devin were there. I tried to take a picture of the 3 of us, but once again with no luck.
At another point in the dream, I checked my email and had 25 new messages, which was much more than I expected. I looked at 2 of them from the same reply-all thread, which was apparently from SAE's email list. My friend Hoyt had started the chain by unintentionally sending to the wrong graduation class. My friend Peter was also mentioned as having a hairy neck.
The dream ended when I awoke in real life knocking on the wall beside my bed, which was somehow correlated with what was going on in the dream.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
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