Freud Blog

Homework 2/1

2012-02-02T01:43:00.000-05:00

Below is a very eye-opening video that I think perfectly pertains to this class. As you can see, Mr. Flames has clearly felt artistically repressed all of his life which is symbolized by his presence in a lower class neighborhood and by his tendency to "rap" from behind a fence. We also see his desire for women in a dream like state sequence in the video which is indicative of his need to fulfill his wishes as Freud speculates in "The Interpretation of Dreams."

He is going "hard in the paint" to make up for his low status he has felt all his life. He feels a need to rebel and we see this in his urban attire and possession and usage of illicit drugs.

Enjoy this intellectually stimulating experience and, please, go hard in the paint.

-James

2/1/12 hwk

2012-02-01T23:44:00.001-05:00

I found these somewhat amusing, perhaps you will too...sorry if they are offensive or just seem dumb most jokes pertaining to Freud are lol

2/1/2012

2012-02-01T21:21:00.001-05:00

Hey Guys!
so I thought I'd do a couple of things for this one, first here's a little meme i found, its pretty funny and its not completely inappropriate, and a music video by Panic! at the Disco that has very dream-like attributes, hope you like it!

In another note, I will be showing Fight Club in a Lounge here at App Heights this Sunday around 7; if any one's interested just post below!

Hope everyone has a good weekend!
~Danny

Homework 2/1

2012-02-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

Haha sooo, here's my shot at a rage comic!!

2012-02-01T20:42:00.002-05:00

The only one that I had trouble with was the third one.

Answers:

Woman on the side.

Easy as pie.

Separated at birth.

Foreign film.

homework 2/1

2012-02-01T17:46:00.004-05:00

rebus 2/1

2012-02-01T17:00:00.001-05:00

1. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0006.gif
2. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0005.gif
3. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0003.gif
4. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0007.gif
5. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0004.gif
6. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0008.gif
7. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0001.gif
8. http://www.fun-with-words.com/images/rebus/r0002.gif

1. the man in the moon
2. first aid
3. wake up
4. big deal
5. forgotten hero's
6. blue cheese
7. big chance
8. once upon a time

There were a few that took me a minute to figure out, but most of them seem to be pretty easy.

2/1 homework rage comic

2012-02-01T16:29:00.001-05:00

Homework 2/1

2012-02-01T16:25:00.003-05:00

Homework 2/1

2012-02-01T16:23:00.002-05:00

I found this funny and double-relevant,

http://ianwallacedreams.com/crossword-puzzle/

(PS. 41 across is cocaaaaaaine! ha)

2012-02-01T16:22:00.002-05:00

The first puzzle I found to be easy and fun. The second puzzle is harder. I admit I am still working on the second one. I will be really impressed if someone can keep track of every word in their mind. I wish you luck.

Home work 2/1 Rebuses and a Music Video!

2012-02-01T16:14:00.000-05:00

Some good Rebuses I found though only one of them is kind of Freudian. I was able to get all of them though the last one took a little bit of work lol. Hope you find these interesting.

Answers:
4 once in my life
matinae
split personality
down right stupid

And next a Eminem music video exhibiting repressed emotions towards his mom in a very extreme manner. Dreams of killing your own mother probably aren't very common in people with good relationships with their own moms.

Mike Sewell

Homework 2/1

2012-02-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

Homework 2/1, Rage Comic

2012-02-01T11:12:00.001-05:00

Homework 2/1

2012-01-31T22:45:00.000-05:00

I found these two pretty challenging. I managed to figure out the first one apart from the last line, but couldn't get the second one with out looking at the answer. I will post the answers at the bottom.

Answers:

Foreword--Before you go too far into this book get yourself a comfortable chair next

Sleep

Homework for Wednesday 2/1, Kyle Norsworthy

2012-01-31T18:38:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI4m-l2yRZA&feature=related

This video by Avril Lavigne, titled "Alice", is a great example of how dreams work and their characteristics. Freud references Delboeuf, who says that "dreams keep their mental faculties (except perception)- intelligence, imagination, memory, will and morality- remain essentially intact: they are merely applied to the imaginary and unstable objects." In the video, Avril is suddenly dressed in a black dress fit for a princess, and she is in the middle of a beautiful forest with huge mushrooms everywhere. In the book, Freud says that a dream "pictures earthly beauty to our eyes in a truly heavenly splendor and clothes dignity with the highest majesty". Also, some of Avril's lyrics include the phrases "tripping out spinning around, I'm underground, I fell down...I found myself in Wonderland...Is this real? Is this pretend?" Freud says in the first chapter that dreams can be made from past memories and experiences, which is why they can sometimes seem extraordinarily real and surreal at the same time.

Homework 2/1

2012-01-31T17:37:00.003-05:00

Here's one of the few that I was able to figure out. Good luck!

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/93829

Homework Post

2012-01-30T21:43:00.002-05:00

Relevant and hilarious.

Homework for Wednesday, 2/1

2012-01-30T17:11:00.000-05:00

http://archuletafanscene.com/2009/08/28/rebus-puzzles-anyone/

I thought the rebus puzzles you we were shown in class were funny, so I looked for some of my own. Although, I could only get the second one lol. How about you guys?

(The answers are in the first post below the picture, so try not to spoil yourselves!)

Dream Homework

2012-01-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

No class meeting on Wednesday 2/1. Instead, post on at least one of the following topics to our class blog by midnight Wednesday 2/1. Then comment on at least two of your classmates' post by midnight Sunday 2/5.

Post pictures of a challenging rebus or two you find online for us to hone our skills on. Tell us how well you did at decoding each rebus.
Post a link to an interesting crossword puzzle for us to practice on. Tell us how many of the clues you were able to answer.
Post your own original youtube video of a reading, screencast or other video content related to a passage from the readings so far from Freud.
Create and post your own Freudian rage comic related to the readings.
Post an image macro illustrating a passage from the readings.
Embed a music video and explain the connection you find between the song and the readings.
Can you apply the method Freud uses on his Irma dream to interpret one of your own dreams (or a piece of one of your dreams)? Be sure to break your dream down into small parts and to free associate on each detail. Only post details of your dream and its interpretation if you are comfortable sharing it online.
Illustrate and discuss one of the features of dreams recounted by Freud in Chapter 1 with a dream of your own. Again, only post details of your dreams if you are comfortable sharing it online.

Feel free to leave suggestions for other possible future blog posts in the comments below.

The Pervert's Guide To Cinema

2012-01-23T13:38:00.001-05:00

Watch as many of the films below as possible over the course of the semester, but be sure to watch at least two. You may choose any two you like, but please choose two you haven't seen already.

Possessed (1931)
The Matrix (1999)
The Birds (1963)
Psycho (1960)
Duck Soup (1933)
Monkey Business (1931)
The Exorcist (1973)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
Alien (1979)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
The Red Shoes (1948)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Fight Club (1999)
Dead of Night (1945)
The Conversation (1974)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Vertigo (1958)
Solaris (1972)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Lost Highway (1997)
Persona (1966)

These films will be discussed by Zizek in his Pervert's Guide to Cinema which we will be watching later in the semester. Feel free to watch the films with your friends and/or classmates. Many are available on NetFlix. Some are available from Belk Library.

After you've watched one of these films, please post to this blog a brief description of one of the scenes from the movie that you think might be ripe for a Freudian interpretation.

Angela Davis!

2012-01-23T12:08:00.001-05:00

Angela Davis is speaking on campus tomorrow night! You are all invited to attend. Bring a friend! In addition to being a fabulous speaker and an iconic figure of the civil rights movement, Angela Davis was also a student of the late Herbert Marcuse who was himself an extraordinarily influential Freudian theorist. Please come hear her speak. Consider it a class assignment, although roll will not be taken.

The 26th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration: An Evening with
Angela Davis
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Farthing Auditorium
Appalachian State University
6pm Talk followed by 7:30pm Book Signing and Dessert Reception
Free and Open to the Public

From Wikipedia:

Angela Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis emerged as a nationally prominent activist in the 1960s, when she was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of "Critical Resistance,"an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.[2] Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music and social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons.[3]

Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California.

She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.

Welcome!

2012-01-18T13:47:00.001-05:00

Welcome to our Freudian Dreams course and to our class blog!

My apologies for not being able to be with you on our first day of class. I will be here on Monday and we'll begin our discussion of Freud in earnest.

In the meantime, here are the things you should do between now and Monday:

Read our online syllabus.
Acquire a copy of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams from the bookstore.
Check your campus email for an invitation to join this blog as an author.
Begin keeping a dream journal where you record in as much detail as possible the dreams you remember this semester. You will not have to share this journal with anyone, however, if you wish to share some of your dreams with the class on this blog, you may.
For Monday read the "Preface to the First Edition," and Chapter I, "The Scientific Literature," pp. xxiii-xxiv, 35-73 of The Interpretation of Dreams.

See you all Monday!

2011-05-01T12:28:00.003-04:00

It was being weird but finally it is up...you can change the resolution to 1080p for the fullest HD.

The Beard Group

2011-04-29T18:42:00.002-04:00

Check the Title for the link for this one, and if you can't figure that one out then here ya go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svgY9RBwXYQ

Hope you guys enjoy it, please leave your comments on this post so we can get some feedback. (:

Dora's First Dream - Fixed

2011-04-29T10:53:00.001-04:00

Kayla, Dan, Anna's Dream

2011-04-29T10:52:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIu8O25u944&feature=related

Bare Nicki

2011-04-29T08:29:00.001-04:00

Final Presentation for Brianna, David, and Nicki.

Dora's Second Dream

2011-04-28T22:30:00.002-04:00

Burning Child Dream

2011-04-28T20:24:00.001-04:00

Freud Video for Scooby Doo Group

2011-04-28T18:53:00.003-04:00

It was too large to upload directly to the blog, but here it is!

Edit: Nevermind. Apparently Camtasia uses an unsupported data type, so we'll just have it on a flash drive tomorrow.

Last Week!

2011-04-25T14:59:00.000-04:00

Monday 4/25, meet in class. We will be watching Part I of A Pervert's Guide to Cinema.

Wednesday 4/27, no class meeting but you should meet with your groups to continue work on your final video project.

Friday 4/29 at 9:00 am, meet in class to screen your final video projects!

Remember

2011-04-05T12:05:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday you will meet with your video group in the library in or near the Digital Media Studio in Belk 355 during class time.

Get good work done.

By Monday 4/18 your groups will be presenting video samples of your work in progress. Be ready.

Scooby-Doo Freud Group

2011-03-30T15:20:00.003-04:00

Hey you guys. Was looking back at my dream journal and thought this could make an interesting film, at least potentially. So, the night after we all took the freud exam, I had this dream:

I started off in the classroom, looking down at my freud test. Within the context of this situation, I had studied quite hard the night before, and had almost all the terms memorized. I looked at the exam briefly, grabbed my pen, then looked back at the exam. The first question was something like (but not necessarily) "Describe how hzgfah affects bababdleelalal dreams dabbaa." I did an odd little doubletake on the question and it changed several times, from that to "This dream hazbabeheb irma burning children hahabebebaba lakjda," and so on. I looked around the classroom to realize I was the only person in the classroom, but everyone's belongings and tests were still on their tables, and they were organized in a way pretty similar to the waking life arrangement of the people in the room. I looked outside to see if something was going on, and on my glance over realized the room had flooded, and so had the hallways. I walked out into the hallway which was then foot-deep in water, and looking outside I saw that everything outside was on fire (and I mean quite literally everything), except that people were walking around normally, as if everything was okay. Very perplexed by this, I went outside (completely ignoring my exam at this point) and went out to the LLC side parking lot (next to the stairs going up to the greenwood trail) and saw my smoker friends, as well as my father, my friend ed, and my friend from home which is nicknamed fluffy. they were all smoking cigarettes (despite the fact that fluffy doesn't smoke) and I went to join them, by the time I had gone over there everything seems to have changed back to normal, no flooding and no fires, and I joined them for the smoking.

The only thing I can really think of as far as wish fulfillment here is that I was potentially a little homesick, and it maybe didn't help that I was in the process of re-converting over to my e-cigarette and was kind of craving some actual tobacco. Either way, tell me what you two think of making this into a potential film. Also, if you guys have any dreams you'd like to add, please do! (:

~Jared Kerney

Disney + Dali

2011-03-20T18:07:00.002-04:00

This is the video that I mentioned on Wednesday. I'm not sure if it was supposed to represent a dream or not, but it's extremely similar to the Dali scene from Spellbound. Either way, it's enjoyable.

Review Sheet

2011-03-16T14:12:00.001-04:00

Here are some terms and ideas to use as a starting place in studying for our upcoming exam:

Some history of dream interpretation
Irma dream
Botanical monograph dream
Burning child dream
Uncle with the Yellow Beard dream
over-determination
wishes
distortion
manifest vs. latent content
censorship
conscious
unconscious
repression
recent and indifferent material in dreams
infantile material
somatic sources
embarrassing dreams
death dreams
exam dreams
Oedipus and Hamlet
dream-work
condensation
displacement
representability
secondary revision
dreams as "regressive"
pleasure principle
reality principle
cathexis
anxiety dreams
Hitchcock's Spellbound

Dream Video

2011-03-02T12:46:00.000-05:00

Your final group project this semester will be to create a digital video representing one of Freud's dreams, or a dream of your own, along with its Freudian interpretation. There will be a final symposium during our regularly scheduled final exam period during which groups will present their final video projects to the class for discussion. Each group will choose one of the following:

Irma's injection.
A child is burning.
Yellow-bearded uncle.
Dora's first dream.
Dora's second dream.
A dream from the dream paper by one your group's members.
Another dream from Freud's writings.
Another dream from your group.

Your group video should provide a creative recreation of the dream itself making use of both images and words. You may wish to use screencasting for parts of this project. Then create a clear and compelling retelling of the dream's psychoanalytic interpretation.

The video should be 5-10 minutes in length. Please try not to go significantly over this time limit. Your video should be posted to youtube and embedded on the class blog for viewing.

Groups:

1. Miquela, Dani, James
2. Kayla, Anna, Dan
3. Delaney, Jack, Booke
4. Brianna, Nicki, David
5. Nate, Kelsey, Alexandra
6. Jared, Jordan, Alex
7. Zachary, Elsy, Ren

Hoping for Closure

2011-03-01T20:58:00.003-05:00

I was at an old friends house, but I was the only one there. I heard a knock at the door so I went and answered it. When I opened the door I saw my ex-boyfriend Richie, who died about a year and a half ago in Afghanistan. He rushed in the door shutting and locking it quickly behind him. Before I could even speak I heard another car pull into the driveway. He grabbed my hand and ran down the hall into the bathroom (where there are no windows). He tells me that his death was faked. During his time in Afghanistan the work he was doing was dangerous and he learned too much about the wrong people, so to protect him they decided to fake his death. The people found out that his death was faked and were now out hunting him down. The last thing he told me was that he came to say goodbye ... and then i woke up.

Revised Due Date

2011-03-01T10:27:00.001-05:00

Remember, as we discussed in class, you may turn your Dream Paper on Wednesday, March 2 and your paper may be up to 2000 words in length if you wish.

Dream Piece

2011-02-25T09:51:00.008-05:00

I apologize for the lateness of the assignment, but this past week has been insane and it just slipped my mind. Anyway, here's the dream I will be interpreting for the essay.

I had to move to where I assume was Asheville or somewhere I don't know. Everyone came with me, including teachers and friends. I realized why my old car was sold, because it began to run by itself and drove it off, but I was able to control it back home. I was working on a computer when people I may or may not have known were being kidnapped and used for some sick experiments. One in particular was throwing up a dark liquid, I can only guess it was blood. It got a lot of people sick too. I was then over at my best friend Zach's house and suddenly someone else comes over and he begins to disregard me completely. The strange part of this person is that he looked exactly alike to my friend. I ended up spending the rest of the dream talking to Zach's mother.

Who Invited the Squatters

2011-02-24T23:13:00.003-05:00

We were driving in my bright red convertible across state lines. We were there to get alcohol using a fake ID thinking that since no one knew us it would be cool. However, as soon as we pulled up to the grocery store, the cops arrested us. It turned out one of the girls with us was the policeman's daughter and she had tipped him off about us. We were supposed to be booked in the sting operation by a field office set in a tent at a field across from the store. As we were being booked the policeman's daughter and some other kids came across the green singing about a party that was happening with the implication that it was going to be alcohol free. Then a groups of people who looked like a cross between clowns and hobos came over a parking deck singing the same tune as the kids. The group (both the 'clowns' and the kids) circled the park continuing to sing, but I overheard two of the kids talking. "Who invited the squatters?" one of them sneered to the other and I remember thinking how petty it was to look down on them when they were all supporting the same cause.

dream fragment.

2011-02-24T22:27:00.002-05:00

i'm walking around a town i'm convinced is boone, taking photos on my cell phone of cool things to send to my sister. as i'm walking, i keep seeing a guy i know in various places around town. i keep running into him but he never says anything to me. suddenly, i'm joined by a friend, and we decide to walk around town, and explore. we run into some people she knows, and they invite us to go hang out with them. she accepts while i decline, and we part ways. i continue walking around town by myself and run into that same guy and his friends while i'm out. they invite me to go hang out with them, so i do, and we all walk on together. all of his friends are talking to me, but the boy still doesn't speak. soon enough, we end up at a big brick building and start walking up a long set of wooden stairs to get to a huge deck that overlooks the town. the whole way up, this girl from one of my classes keeps telling me how this boy is the coolest, he's so cool, soo coool! and all the while we still haven't spoken to one another. eventually, we reach the top of this flat wooden deck, and we're completely surrounded by water, as if it's now suddenly floating on top of a lake, but i can still see school buildings sticking up over the horizon....

Piece of my dream

2011-02-24T21:47:00.002-05:00

The dream started off with me and a close friend of mine, which appeared to be a combination of more than one friend, entering a hobby store. The kind of store with super geek stuff like D&D and models. We started browsing amongst the strangely arranged wares which were particularly awesome and had alien and other worldly qualities I couldn't identify. Then, a nemesis from my past entered the store looking like they did in high school and rage consumed me. I attacked and was restrained by store staff and my friend. Oddly, both I and my Judas returned to browsing. Then a second time, over come with anger, I attacked and boxes of hobby models and supplies seemed to juggle through the air. Again I was restrained and warned that further outbursts would result in expulsion from the store. I attempted to plead my case to the cashier but before I could speak I awoke.

Dreams, dreams, dreams.

2011-02-24T19:06:00.002-05:00

So, I feel asleep to re-runs of Cops, the TV show, and as I fell into a dream state...

I am running down the street, my team and I, for I am a member myself of the Cops program. I feel the gun at my side and my sense of power. I'm looking frantically about in search of the perpetrator, but he is no where to be found. Suddenly, I shift frames of view and I myself become the perpetrator, climbing to the tip top of a tree in hiding. I am still, silent. I somehow manage to evade the police and eventually feel safe enough to climb down. Next thing I know, I am returning "home", which really wasn't my home, and as I enter the door my father is just standing there, waiting for me with calla lilies in hand. He is just standing there, staring me down with this blank, thoughtless expression...

Then I awoke...

Dream for Interpretation

2011-02-24T15:46:00.002-05:00

I was in a van being driven by my father with my mom, my brother, and some friends as passengers. Dad was speeding and ran over two sharp pipes which popped the rear tires. Dad continued to drive until some family friends pulled up in their Hummer and forced him to stop so they could help change the tires.

While Dad and Gary (friend's dad) changed the tires, me and the rest of the people from the van climbed into the back of the hummer where we sat onto a dirt floor, a warm wind, and a piece of coral that would be perfect for my fish back home.

I have a few ideas for what these things mean, but I know there is something here.

Dream Assignment Dream Choice

2011-02-22T16:46:00.000-05:00

Night of January 26, 2011

1. This dream was short lived, and for good reason. In this dream I was babysitting at a water park. I was trying to drive my car out of the water park, and I’m not sure why the car was in the pool in the first place. While trying to leave the park, I remembered that is was supposed to be chaperoning the kids. I found the kids and they were all making out (middle-schoolers). I wasn’t sure what to do, but another parents taught me how to stop them from getting too much physical contact—she starting hitting them on the head with a mini wooden bat. I followed suit until the kids stopped making out. The rest of the dream is spotty but I do remember being chased out of the water park on a huge boat—almost as if there were pirates trying to stop us from leaving the park.

Dream Paper in the works

2011-02-21T21:47:00.001-05:00

Wishful Thinking

Dream of January 12-13, 2011

Last night I dreamed that I was going over to my boyfriend Nathan’s house to meet his family and play in the snow with his young cousins. When I got there, there was no snow on the ground and suddenly we were in a “church” I had never seen before. The “church” had blue green-screens like those used by newscasters covering all of the walls. Somehow Nathan was sitting next to me and I was in a wedding dress. His family and other people were all around in the “church” but the next time I looked down I was wearing normal clothes and we were leaving the “church”. It was located in a strange rainy environment much like the northwestern United States. All of the people leaving around us were solid black shadow figures and just stood around outside and were oddly very tall.

Analysis

I dreamed that I was going over to my boyfriend Nathan’s house... I almost always spend my time at his house whenever I am home. Rarely if ever do we spend time with my family or at my house. It feels commonplace to be at his house as it feels most comfortable for both of us.

…to meet his family… I have never met his extended family except for one uncle and his grandmother. For both of us, it is a major thing to meet each other’s relatives because this suggests permanence in the relationship. I want to me his family and he knows this so my dream is probably suggesting exactly this unfulfilled desire.

... and play in the snow with his young cousins. This also plays into the wish to meet his family. However, it also plays into the fact that I associate snow with living in the Northern US which is where most of his family lives. This knowledge coupled with the fact that the cousins are young children who presumably enjoy playing outside suggests I want to become close with them doing an activity they would enjoy.

…there was no snow on the ground… I may not get to meet his family or more specifically his cousins anytime soon when there would be snow.

…we were in a “church” I had never seen before. The inside of the building looked to me like a church. We have gone to his church together multiple times and it appeared to be the same design.

…had blue green-screens like those used by newscasters covering all of the walls. The green screens covered all surfaces in the building and reminded me of those used by weathermen. The screens represent to me an ability to project both a future for myself.

this is it thus far...

Dream Essay Interpretation

2011-02-18T13:42:00.004-05:00

For my essay the dream I choose seemed to be a simple one.

I was in class, everyone had to pick partners to come up with topics for the upcoming presentations. I chose the person next to me by putting my arm through theirs. Everyone was jumping up and down trying to be the first one to get picked. Everyone in the class had their hands up as high as they could go. Finally, the teacher picked I got picked to go first. I told everyone the topic I wanted to do--Discriminatory acts towards Deaf People and then everyone clapped.

Right off the bat I knew one of the wish fulfillments of this dream that were based off of the manifest images. The major one was that for that project I wanted to do my topic and I wanted others to do it as well. I am doing a major project in one of my classes and we are all suppose to come up with a topic that we would like to research so that is where my topic comes into play. Another thing that seemed to be easy to interpret was the topic I chose. Discriminatory acts towards Deaf People this topic is one that I have done plenty of times before due to the fact that my parents are deaf. So the manifest interpretation of that to me was that I wanted to do this major project on that once again. One thing that I am stuck on is the clapping part-everyone clapped. If I were to bring this back to my deaf parents it would not fit, because they do a different clap (an air clap) and in my dream I specifically remember everyone clapping and making noise. So this part of the dream is something that is forcing me to stray away from the idea that my parents or Deafness is a part of it. Another thing that stood out was the part about raising hands-everyone in the class had their hands up as high as they could go. This immediately reminded me of the pervious day, because in one of my classes two boys kept trying to get their hands higher then the others. These are just a few of the things I am looking at in my dream. I am still interpreting it, it now seems as if this dream was and is more complex than I originally thought.

Riverride

2011-02-17T13:16:00.004-05:00

I had a strange one the other night. I was out with some friends going to a place similar to the parkway only we could not drive our vehicles up the mountain. Instead we parked our vehicles and took a motorboat for a while and then walked up the remainder of the hill. We came across the cave we wanted to explore and went inside. We got back there and there was this old backpack with junk in it. For some reason I thought this was treasure, but I could see that it was just old newspapers, cups, pieces of torn cloth, and some kind of cheap brass plate thing. Well I'm trying to haul all of this out to the front of the cave and find myself face to face with a Forrest Patrolman at the mouth of the cave. He tells me that they are shutting down the cave because some guy got hurt. I look over and see Micheal Scott from the Office with his foot trapped in a rock. The Forrest Patrolman then begins to pour gasoline all over the entrance to the cave. I decided I had to go back into the cave to get the treasure (which was still a bunch of junk that I needed to have). Me and two females enter the cave, get the rest of the treasure and go to make our way back. By the time we get to the entrance of the cave there is already an enormous fire where the Forrest Patrolman had poured the gasoline. As we retreated back into the cave we found ourselves in waist deep water with a bunch of debris, kind of like a burning shipwreck type of deal. All of a sudden, the water in the cave begins to flush out, like someone pulled out a massive drain. The 3 of us gather on a piece of debris and begin to go rushing down the river. I start yelling out to start paddling with our hands or we're going to die. As we go soaring down the river it suddenly goes from being night time back to day time. The river gets calm and we see where we had parked our motorboat before we went up the mountain. I decide to go find the vehicle we came in and take off in the motorboat. It seemed as though I was going down I-40 but instead of it being a road it was a river. I even saw an exit sign for Hickory with a river overpass. Before I head through a tunnel though I am bumped into a guard rail by another boat, crashing and the waking up.

Digital Media Workshops Next Week

2011-02-16T14:39:00.001-05:00

Next week, we will not have our regular class meetings. Instead, you have two alternate assignments.

1. On one of the class days, you will go to the Digital Media Studio in Belk Library 355 for a workshop on editing digital video and screencasting. Ask questions and pay close attention. Remember, you will be working in groups to produce a video of a dream and its interpretation for your final projects. Here are the groups for next Monday and Wednesday.

Monday: James, Miquela, Alex, Sam, Nicki, Elsy, Jack, Kayla, Delaney, Ren, Dani,

Wednesday: Brooke, Anna, Jordan, Zachary, Jared, Brianna, Nate, David, Kelsey, Dan, Alexandra

2. Post something to the blog about your Dream Paper. This could be a piece of the dream you are interpretating, part of the interpretation itself, some possible associations, examples of condensation / displacement / etc. you are considering using. In short, start working on your essay and share with us on the class blog some of your thoughts and work in progress. You should post this by midnight, Thursday 2/24.

Good luck!

short analysis

2011-02-16T10:37:00.002-05:00

This is not related to the dream analysis that we are supposed to turn in, I just got kind of excited when I found this dream so easy to figure out. So to begin with, the day before I had the dream, Feb. 13, I had changed my earrings into a pair that are wood and a little to big. The only ear they really give any trouble is my right ear which seems to not stretch as well. That night I had a myriad of strange thought dreams... dreams where there was really only one thought that I could derive from the entire thing. Amongst these thoughts was a dream where I was wearing a pair of earrings I had received as a gift and really loved. An indistinguishable voice asked me "what happened to your other earring?" In the dream I felt my right ear and it was just an empty hole with the earring missing. The next day I decided to wear those earrings just on a whim but realized that the previous earring in my right ear had torn the side of the hole and made it stressed. This was what I thought as a very obvious example of external sensory stimuli. The right ear was stressed and to become unstressed, needed to have the earring removed -- so in my dream there was no earring in my right ear.

Dream Paper Assignment

2011-02-14T11:13:00.001-05:00

Your assignment is to write a well written, and well argued paper interpreting either:

1) one of your dreams from your Dream Journal using Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams

or

2) one of Freud's own dreams or some other dream discussed by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams. You may wish to consult the Index of Dreams on p. 653 for a complete list.

In either case, your paper should include the following:

First, recount the dream. Look at Freud’s Irma dream (pp. 130-142) for an example. Title the dream and then describe the dream in a short italicized paragraph or paragraphs. Then analyze the 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” (183). What wish(es) may be fulfilled in the dream? Be clear and specific. You should also discuss the presence or absence of at least two other elements of Freud’s interpretation of dreams with reference to your chosen 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 and relevant reference to Freud’s writing. Finally, evaluate the dream and its interpretation in terms of Freud's theory. How well does this 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 start of class time on ~~Monday, February 28~~ Wednesday, March 2. 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 Belk Library.

Also, you are welcome to post a copy of your paper to our class blog. This is not required, but sharing your work with the class is always very helpful.

Your paper should be typed, double-spaced in a 12 point font with standard margins.
It should be a 750-~~1500~~ 2000 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.

M 2/14 Class

2011-02-14T08:27:00.002-05:00

Today in class we'll divide you into to small groups to discuss some of the dreams from the lengthy Chapter V. Bring your books, and come ready to delve into some of Freud's sample dream interpretations.

1. Botanical Monograph, pp. 193-199.
2. Meat Shop, pp. 206-207.
3. I went into a kitchen, pp. 225-229.
4. I was riding on a grey horse, pp. 249-252.
5. Embarrassing dreams of being naked, pp. 260-266.
6. Oedipus and Hamlet, pp. 266-267 and 278-284.
7. Flying dreams, pp. 288-290.
8. Examination dreams, pp. 291-293.

Percocet dreaming

2011-02-07T01:56:00.003-05:00

I have been out of class for the past two weeks due to undergoing a tonsillectomy. I had a rather rough recovery, although it was made some what bearable by the pain medication, Percocet. This detail is significant in that it majorly effected the content and mood of my dreams.

Dream #1: My parents had moved into a strange house and decided to turn a bonus room into their bedroom/living room. I walk into the room to find that the walls were covered in a fuzzy, tie dye material that matched a tie dye shag rug carpeting the floor. My parents were a bit too happy about the room and even unveiled the information that they had let a former eccentric co-worker of mine decorate. I suddenly got "the spins" in my dream and had to dig my fingers into the deep shag carpet to hold on while my vision and consciousness began to blur until I awoke.

Dream #2: I found myself in a very dark environment with steep cliffs that dropped off into what seemed to be an eternity of clouds. The sky was dark with lighting bolts flashing overhead. Black military looking towers stood in the distance, seeming to hoover over the dark clouds that filled the space below. I walked around until I ran into strangers who then condemned me for my behavior until I could not take living in the sinister world any longer. With the same concept used in playing video games like Spyro the Dragon when I was a child, I decided to kill myself so that I could start a fresh life in a better place and situation. To do this, I dove off of the cliff into the bottomless dark clouds, surrounded by nothing but black with accented neon colors lining the buildings as I past them in a free fall.

Dream #3: I dreamed that I was an art student (I am not and never have been) and that I had to put together a mixed media showcase for a large gallery as a final exam grade. I was on a college campus much like ASU, surrounded by piles of snow and harsh winds. I was dressed in all red and had quite a time carrying a large piece of wood that was painted as a splotchy tie dye print into the art building as part of my work. For the other half of my artwork, I became a ballerina that was required to twirl repeatedly. I began to twirl as hard and as fast as I could until my peers surrounded me and instructed me to wait on twirling until the final revealing. I waited in anticipation until I could finally twirl and right before I was to go on stage with the rest of my artwork, I woke up in need of more medicine. I had a very hard time distinguishing between waking life and dreaming while on the Percocet. In this dream the twirling as practicing for the showcase was equated as taking another dose of the medicine. I kept myself waiting to spin while really keeping myself from waking and medicating.

Finally a dream

2011-02-06T10:55:00.002-05:00

I'm in an old comic book store that I have only been inside once in my life, probably a little over ten years ago. There is a man behind the counter looking over baseball cards. I'm looking through the boxes when I come across an Amazing Spider-Man 122. I ask if I can examine it. "Gerry Conway is an ass," he says. "Well it was John Romita that killed Gwen Stacy," I reply. "And it was the right move." He says, "I liked Death in the Family more". I pick up his baseball cards and throw them at his face. "You don't know shit about comics". I storm out.

A Dream of Mine (after the fact)

2011-02-03T20:34:00.004-05:00

I apologize for this entry being late Dr. S. Swear on the Bible, I have never interacted with a blog before and I have been trying to navigate our blog (until recently an unsuccessful endeavor).

I had a dream almost a month ago in which I dreamed I was going over to my boyfriend Nathan's house to meet his extended family and play in the snow with his young cousins (all of whom live all over the country). When I got there, there was no snow on the ground and suddenly we were in a "church"-like setting I had never seen before. All of the walls in this "church" were covered in green-screens such as those used by weather forecasters. Somehow Nathan was sitting next to me and I was in a wedding dress. His family was all around sitting throughout the church. The next time I looked down I was wearing normal clothes and we were leaving. The building was in an unfamiliar rainy Washington-state type of environment. All of the people leaving around us just stood around without speaking and were very very tall.

Day Late and a Dollar Short

2011-02-02T13:33:00.002-05:00

This my post for the homework assignment. I have been lacking on the dream front as of late, but I found this article that talks about Freud's theory of stuttering. My title references the fact that the post is a couple days late, sorry Dr. S, and how Freud did not have access to certain technologies, i.e., brain scanners, when he was alive. A lot of people didn't have a lot of things and made really profound discoveries, but I feel like Freud caught, and continues to catch, so much flack for his beliefs based on his domain of study. He was tackling areas that seemingly required his thought patterns due to his lack of technology to "know." This article isn't about dreaming, but I feel like it can relate to Freud in general.

A dream

2011-01-31T15:24:00.002-05:00

Well, I am not the best at remembering my dreams, but what I can tell you is that it was bizarre. It seemed to be that the world was coming to a sudden end, and only my friends and I were left on the Earth, which was split into two large sections. One still sustaining some life, and the other completely dead. Anyway, what I remember was running around in dream world collecting left over cell phones with left over minutes and collecting all things possible to help me to continue to live. At some point my friends and I end up on, the only existing plane, don't ask me how, and flying to the other side of the world to keep forging through life and to hopefully life as long as possible. Bizarre, and that's all I got in the memory.

Freud in the News

2011-01-31T00:50:00.002-05:00

This article from the wall street journal is about how one of Freud's descendants, Jane McAdam Freud, has spiritually continued Freud's work. She is a sculptor and her work is supposed to embody Freud's theories in physical form. In true Freud fashion, her work is said to be layered, complex, provocative, and erotic.

A Past Dream

2011-01-31T00:28:00.003-05:00

I had a dream in highschool that I still remeber really vividly and it was one of the most vivid dreams I have had. It started with me from a third person view, that switched rapidly much like a cheesy horror film, in a spooky pitch black forest. Disturbed by a noise from the within the darkness I began to run and the source of the noise chased after me. I fell over a root and rolled onto my back and found Smokey the Bear standing over me. He proceeded to sternly tell me that only I could prevent forest fires. Then he mauled me to death.

Freud Booming in China

2011-01-30T16:22:00.003-05:00

Freud’s Surging Popularity in China

I found this really interesting. Apparently after Inception was released in China people become more interested "to understand the mysteries of our interior lives." China's bookstores have begun to sell out of Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams, because of this new fascination. It's odd to me that it took a movie about dreams to make people more interested in learning about their subconscious...

between the gaps of memory

2011-01-30T14:56:00.004-05:00

"entre les trous de la memoire,"

dominique appia

i like to think that this painting really embodies the mixture of realistic and whimsical elements of dreams, and taking things from everyday life and placing them in a new and unexpected context, as can happen quite frequently in dreams.

Lack of Dreaming means crossword

2011-01-29T20:03:00.002-05:00

Well, as you may guess from the title, I haven't had much in way of dreams, so I decided to do a crossword puzzle. It's been a while since I did one of these, especially one from a newspaper, but it was fun, and challenging, so I guess it was a success?

Grandma's Dead, Move On...

2011-01-29T19:00:00.002-05:00

One of the most disturbing dreams I have experienced in a long while involved my grandmother dying at my house. However, it is not the death itself that bothers me, but the way that everyone acted following her death. We left her on the floor in our living room and pretty much ignored her for days. At one point in my dream, I can remember stepping over her and acting like it was nothing. Not only does it bother me because that is completely different from my normal behavior, but I know that nobody mourned her death. Moral of the story-love your grandparents.

Music vs. Dreams in the brain

2011-01-29T17:59:00.003-05:00

This semester I made the questionable decision of taking two IDS classes that are both about things I'm terribly interested in: music and the subconscious (in the form of dreams). Not only does this mean that I've agreed to an insane amount of reading, but I also feel like these classes are going to strangely relate the entire semester -- and so far I'm right about that. A favorite quote of mine has been this by Sir Thomas Beecham, "The purpose of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought." Through reading just the first chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams I found when Freud was bringing up points of view during The Relation of Dreams to the Waking Life the people he quoted stated similar things about the process of dreaming. I. H. Fichte is quoted to say "In dreams, daily life, with its labours and pleasures, its joys and pains, is never repeated. On the contrary, dreams have as their very aim to free us from it." Freud also quotes Strumpell saying "A man who dreams is removed from the world of waking consciousness." All of these quotes are beautiful ways to think about these brain processes, but both what Beecham said as well as what Fichte and Strumpell said are very wrong when you delve into the way the brain has to work for both dreams and music to not only happen, but be comprehended on the level that human brains comprehend. I think to myself now 'why didn't I realize that before' when I notice how similar music and dreams, two things I am infinitely curious about, work in the brain. It's also striking how similarly they are approached in the research world. We understand that the brain processes these events and is obviously the creator of the emotions derived from them, but other than that understanding there is no research that can verify just what the brain does to be able to have us make sense of the happenings. I still agree with the quotes I cited from above, even though I know that they are wrong. However, isn't it a bit nicer to think of things without the mumbo jumbo of neurons and your brain having to do all the work? It does it anyway...

Why Freud Became a Doctor

2011-01-29T12:36:00.002-05:00

It has been said that when Freud started out working in a science lab. At the age 26 he met Martha Bernays and fell in love with her. He knew that there was no way he would be able to support a family on the wage he made in the science lab. Six months after they met he decided to give up his career in the science lab to become a doctor spending three years away from his fiance training at the Vienna General Hospital. Four years later the two got married and ended up having 6 kids ... talk about love.

Freud Museum

2011-01-29T11:33:00.001-05:00

http://www.freud.org.uk/about/

panthers, engagement rings, cults

2011-01-29T10:24:00.000-05:00

Night of January 28, 2011

1. I own a Black Panther. Not only do I own a black panther, I have a huge basement where she can roam and play all day long. This panther is more then just a pet, she apparently had saved my life, and I return the favor by keeping her healthy and active. I recall he huge fangs and the size of her paws on my chest when she wanted to play. More people were scared of the big cat (100 pounds or so).

2. My roommate Griffin is considering asking his “sort-of” girlfriend to marry him. Basically he’s desperate, and I’m not sure why. I’m pretty sure I convince him otherwise and he didn’t ollow through with it.

3. This was a weird dream. Somewhere in Boone, there is a church/cult-like compound. The only way to get there was on an old dirt trail passing broken down barns. I found a silver-plated flask that had an OSU symbol on one side and the name of a church on the other “Friendship Church”. Once we arrived at the creepy compound, we thought it was the work of a Satanist cult group. There were little wooden shacks scattered everywhere with odd outlines of human bodies on them. We heard a noise and quickly jumped into the banks of a nearby river. Then we heard a gun shot and saw 4 people spreading out. The two walking on the other side of the river never saw us but, we were spotted by two others and were told to get out of the river’s edge. It turns out that they were nice people and were just making sure we were clean (not suing drugs). They patted us down and I gave them back the flask that belonged to one of their brothers. Then we got the hell out of there and met back up with my brother

Is this a made-up fact?

2011-01-28T13:25:00.002-05:00

"A little known fact about Sigmund Freud, the founder of the science of psychology - he was deathly afraid of the number 62 and would not book a room in any hotel with more than 62 rooms in case he was allotted that particular room!" - funfacts.com

Beating the kids at the Water Park

2011-01-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

This dream was short lived, and for good reason. In this dream I was babysitting at a water park. I was trying to drive my car out of the water park, and I’m not sure why the car was in the pool in the first place. While trying to leave the park, I remembered that is was supposed to be chaperoning the kids. I found the kids and they were all making out (middle-schoolers). I wasn’t sure what to do, but another parents taught me how to stop them from getting too much physical contact—she starting hitting them on the head with a mini wooden bat. I followed suit until the kids stopped making out. The rest of the dream is spotty but I do remember being chased out of the water park on a huge boat—almost as if there were pirates trying to stop us from leaving the park.

Freud In China

2011-01-28T08:43:00.002-05:00

Via.

Snyder, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University, is the president and founder of the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance. At a time when the prevailing media narrative of Chinese economic ascendancy does little to shed light on the rapidly changing sociology of the country, the very existence of organizations like CAPA and the growing popularity of this therapeutic model (largely seen to be past its prime in the U.S.) in an authoritarian state strike many as counterintuitive — and fraught with failure.

And this...

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM CHINA about increasing demand for psychoanalysis among the Chinese. Writer tells about Elise Snyder, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale who, in 2001, began recruiting American analysts to provide analysis to Chinese patients over the Web via Skype.

One of my dreams

2011-01-27T18:39:00.003-05:00

Last night, I had one of the most vivid and memorable dreams I have had in a long time. I dreamed that I was on a building on a hill in Boone with my friends from back home. All of the sudden the tornado alarm went off and we all rushed to the bottom of the building. For some reason, we were sitting next to a window watching it all happen. A tornado came down and got sucked into one of the buildings at the bottom of the hill, then it exploded. Then my alarm just woke me up.

Tornadoes have been a reoccurring dream since I was younger. Every time I have a dream with a tornado in it, i'm in some school building.

Memory and Forgetting

2011-01-26T10:42:00.001-05:00

Via.

This astonishing 18ft drawing of the world’s most famous skyline was created by autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire after he spent just 20 minutes in a helicopter gazing at the panorama.

This picture gives some idea of just how much we are capable of remembering, and how much most of us are capable of forgetting as well.

Sometimes dreams do come true...

2011-01-25T14:26:00.000-05:00

In high school I had a strange dream about the Beatles. They were playing at an elementary school in the gym; all the little kids were sitting on the floor watching the concert. Paul was playing bass and singing, Ringo was on the drums, John was playing his guitar, and there was some young guy standing in for George. The song ended, and John walked offstage and left the gym to smoke a cigarette (he was wearing a black leather jacket and had his hair slicked back--Greaser John). He looked really upset, so I followed him outside to ask him what was wrong. All he said was, "George, man, f***in' George."

The next morning I told my brother about my dream. He thought it was strange and that I was pretty weird for dreaming it. After school that day when we were headed to our bus, my brother comes running at me screaming "Did you hear?" over and over again. George Harrison had died that day. We were both a bit shook up about that one.

Dreaming and Reality

2011-01-25T14:19:00.003-05:00

It's interesting to think that dreams can be so interconnected with realtime and past events. I have two short dreams to share that go along with examples used in Chapter I of the class book.

One dream is based on the physical body, and how that affects how your dreams work. This one was when I was younger, so I cannot remember many details of it, but I do have it contained in my memory because I thought it was quite odd, and can only understand how it happened as of the last year or so. I was fighting in a huge war, and I was the leader of a troupe of warriors, swordsmen and lance-carrying men, all dressed in various types of armor, with about 1000 soldiers on my side, and it was about the same for the other side, except they were dressed in an orange/red outfit, whereas my men were dressed with various colors. I remember charging into the war with a sword, killed a few people by beheading or impaling, and then I remember looking to my side, where a spear burst through my shoulder. I woke up almost instantly after that, and had a bad shoulder pain for about an hour afterward. Of course, when I was young, I thought that the dream had physically hurt me and sort of freaked out, because I was superstitious (still am, somewhat), and now I know it was because of the shoulder pain that I experienced the felt-pain in the dream.

Another dream is based on talking in realtime, as well as what I can imagine would be pictured memories of places I've never been to, nor would I know what they looked like even if I knew what they were called anymore. Essentially, I was playing the role of a "hero" back in ancient Greece (or rome, or somewhere of the like. I also remember being a viking, for some reason, so I think there was no historical value in my part of the dream whatsoever, hahaha.) I remember trying to save the goddess named Athena, and the only way to find her was to find some mystical treasure that was located out in the ocean, on a small booby-trapped island, inside of a cave. In REAL life, my grandmother came into my room and insisted I needed to get up in order to go to school. In the dream, I heard this, and I remember getting incredibly annoyed, screaming "THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! THERE'S NO TREASURE THERE!" I went through a few sentences like this before I realized I was dreaming, and when I woke up I felt sort of ridiculous.

It's interesting how things that are affecting us in reality can also affect us very directly in our dreams. How our mind connects these two features with such a flow, I have no idea, but it's certainly something to look into.

Just killing eachother, no big deal

2011-01-25T14:12:00.002-05:00

I have very vivid and detailed dreams. This one in particular happened about a month ago - and i can recall it just as well as I could when I woke in the middle of the night.

I was in my home in Columbus, Ohio. In this dream i was my sister, kait, who's 24 years old. how i knew i was Kait I do not know. I walked into my room (Kait's room) and found myself watching a stomach-churning event. I watched Dan (me) and his girlfriend (Sarah) of five years shooting eachother in the face. Not only were they shooting each other in the face, they were acting as if there wasn't anything wrong with what they were doing. Sarah looked at me and asked what was wrong. I couldn't even speak. I just stood there watching an image of myself commit suicide with my girlfriend, like it was no big deal! I woke from the dream in a panic and could remember very specific details about the dream. For instance, the pistol we were shooting ourselves with was a model 1911 Kimber Custom 9mm - the same handgun I shot months prior to this dream. I also remember seeing 2 bottles of red wine on the table beside the bed where they sat. The bottles were my favorite wine, Wolf Blass 2006 Gold Label Cabernet Sav.

Creepy, huh?

Dream

2011-01-25T13:26:00.001-05:00

While fleeing from an enemy army (!?), I run into a series of rooms which I arrive at in some buildings on a golf course. I open the glass doors, into a court room, and see curtains. behind the curtains, which are raised slightly above the ground, I see a line of feet dangling above the floor, and think to myself "A hung jury, how clever." I push myself through the curtain, and through the line of hung, apparently embalmed individuals and notice a large number of them throughout the room in different poses. When I come into contact they appear to be partially responsive, but not in any alive capacity - they utter a few words, meaningless and mindless and snap back to the same position. I have some trouble with a lady who is holding the door knob to the exit of the court room. After finally prying her loose I slip out and enter a room with four women. On 3 different chairs, facing eachother in a comfortable, collegiate atmosphere - like the room of an Ivy League library - they sit discussing. I ask them if they embalm live. One of the women hesitates, but I turn to a couple - an older, middle aged couple sitting together on the same chair. "We don't always embalm live. But sometimes, when we have students who especially frustate us, we're forced to. At the end of the year, we put in a form to the dean which notifies the student that we really appreciate their participation, arrange a meeting and then perform the embalming. We have a machine which does it." They continued to talk about the machine, and the purposes thereof, but the dream ended here.

Family Fire Dream

2011-01-24T11:24:00.004-05:00

When I was younger I had a dream that I was in my house. My brother and I were at the top of our staircase and the rest of my family was at the bottom. My brother and I needed to get to the bottom of the staircase, because we were suppose to be going somewhere. The problem was that the staircase was on fire and we couldn't get down without getting burnt. In the end nothing happened we stayed at the top of the stairs avoiding the fire.

Childhood Dream

2011-01-23T17:54:00.002-05:00

I was in an unrecognizable cartoon world. At first I thought it was one of the most interesting things to happen to me in a while. But then I saw Odie run past with a terrified look on his face. I turned to see what he was fleeing only to find myself being chased by a large, demonic, and hungry looking Garfield. So I began to run and scream, my little cartoon heart beating as fast as it could as I ran from this childhood icon turned monster.

The rest of the dream seemed like a regular chase scene in older cartoons where no matter how far the characters ran, the background was always on an infinite loop. I woke from that dream with my only thought being: "Why does Garfield think I'm a lasagna?"

Almost-Lucid Dreaming

2011-01-20T14:09:00.007-05:00

I had a dream the other night that my mom packed us up and relocated to China. The first thing I remember, was that I decided to take a walk in the local park, which, incidentally, was right next to the house. The park was a loop around a lake; my entry point was near a playground that had giant concrete turtles with chipped gold paint and a covered passageway that lead underground. It was at that precise moment that I realized that this was one of those dreams where I had combined two or three places I had been while awake into a single dream place. As I was standing there, annoyed that I couldn't identify the separate places, a man with a folded up easel under his arm walked past and greeted me in Chinese. I was slow in responding because I was having trouble translating the second half of what he said (he asked something like "are you good?"), but somehow manged to mumble out "Ni Hao" before he had gotten too far from me. At this point I forgot/ignored the fact that I was dreaming an went to visit my cousin at a University connected to the park.

This whole thing struck me for a number of reasons: 1) I don't generally remember dreaming or even get the sensation that I have done so. 2) I was aware of what was going on; I was making decisions not based on some abstract dream logic, but consciously thinking through my actions, to the point where I was (mostly) aware that I was dreaming and attempting to translate Chinese to English. 3) Lastly, I was in a foreign country with few language skills and even though I was aware of that I wasn't bothered by it. I would generally let that part go (I was dreaming) but because I was aware of what was going on, I think that should have bothered me more... or maybe that's why it didn't bother me...

Out of curiosity, I was wondering if this happens to anyone else. So I will pose this question to the class: Do any of you have lucid dreams?

Blog Homework

2011-01-20T13:59:00.001-05:00

Over the next ten days (1/20-1/30) please post to our class blog on at least one of the topics listed below. I may be adding additional topics during that time, so be sure to check back here.

Share one of your dreams with us. It can be one from your dream journal, or an older dream you would like to share. It can be an entire dream, or just a piece of a dream. Please be sure the dream is one you are comfortable sharing in public. No interpretation or discussion is required. Just tell us about one of your dreams.
Post a link and write a brief summary for us about some recent discussion of Freud in the news.
Post a link and write a brief summary for us about a recent book or article about Freud.
Post an example for us from one of your own dreams that illustrates one of the features of dreams discussed by Freud in Chapter I, e.g. continuities and discontinuities with waking life, recent and childhood memories used in dreams, external (alarm clocks) and internal stimuli (hunger/thirst) in our dreams, etc.
Post a comment or question about the reading from Chapter I, or write about a short quote from Chapter I.
Leave substantive comments on posts from at least two of your classmates.
Jacques Lacan's famous advice to a young analyst to "Do crossword puzzles" is still good advice. Do a crossword puzzle or two to sharpen your word association skills. Post a screenshot of your best puzzle work for us.

Syllabus Update

2011-01-20T13:21:00.000-05:00

Contrary to what the syllabus I handed out in class says, our Spring Break will actually be the same as the rest of the university. I've updated the online syllabus so that the dates match up with reality. My apologies for the error.

The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud

2011-01-19T15:13:00.006-05:00

Permanent Link: BF173 .F6253

Freudian Fact

2011-01-12T09:22:00.002-05:00

From my psychology days back in High School, the one thing that I always seem to picture when I think of the word Freud is his focus on sex and how everything we do as humans is centered around it. I also am reminded of the id, ego, and superego, as well as the 5 stages of development including oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital, which once again is connecting sex to natural and developmental aspects such as potty training and finding our gender identity and roles.

Snow Day

2011-01-12T08:13:00.000-05:00

Well... that didn't take long. No class today due to the weather. Finish the reading for today and continue on with the reading for next Wednesday too. It's available on electronic reserves. We'll talk about all of these readings next Wednesday after MLK Day.

Enjoy the snow!

Freud

2011-01-11T20:37:00.002-05:00

To be honest, the first thing that comes to mind when Freud is mentioned is his common relation to phallic symbols and meaning. I know that sex and sexuality were highly incorporated into his works.

Freud's final days

2011-01-11T19:08:00.002-05:00

Freud, a cancer patient, enlisted a friend to help him commit suicide with a lethal dose of morphine to avoid an unecessarily long and painful death. Freud read Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin in a single sitting and is said to have remarked: "This was the proper book for me to read; it deals with shrinking and starvation." He asked his friend to help him die the next day.

Freud Fact

2011-01-11T17:55:00.002-05:00

I took AP psych a while back, in my junior year of high school, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't Freud's anal retentive theory come from the idea that children would derive pleasure from holding in bowel movements?

2011-01-11T17:53:00.002-05:00

Hey. I have an extra copy of Interpretation of Dreams if anyone would like to borrow it for this semester. If you are interested, please just come by room 404.

Things I May or May Not Know about Freud

2011-01-10T16:48:00.000-05:00

I seem to know only odd things concerning Freud, such as anal retentiveness or the Oedipus complex. I also have a vague notion that he was rather sexist...

Freud Trivia

2011-01-10T16:38:00.001-05:00

Check your campus email for an invitation to join this blog. Then, by way of introduction, come share with us something you already know, or think you know, about Freud and post it to the blog for us.

It can be something about Freud himself, or something about Freudian ideas and terms that get thrown around and used in pop-culture and everyday life. It can be something you believe to be accurate or apochryphal.

Be generous in sharing your Freudian hearsay with us.

Welcome

2011-01-06T10:10:00.004-05:00

Welcome to our class blog. Feel free to use this as a place to ask questions, share links, announce campus events, and to talk about all things Freud. It's also available for you to use as a space to record and share your dreams with the class should you wish. During the semester, I'll be asking you to read and post to this blog on a regular basis.

Here's a brief overview of our class this semester: We will begin with a brief overview of Freud and the history of the psychoanalytic movement as well as some of the more recent controversies that continue to swirl around Freud’s ideas. We will read and discuss Freud’s account of the history of the study of dreams from antiquity to the nineteenth century. We will then explore in depth Freud’s theory of dreams and their interpretations and Freud’s critical account of the human psyche and culture. Along the way, we will explore some of the history of the surrealist movement in art and its relation to Freud as well as view and discuss Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film Spellbound which includes a psychoanalyst protagonist and an extended dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali. Finally, we will read Freud’s Dora along with an in-class reader’s theater version of Hélène Cixous’ play "Portrait of Dora" and discuss her feminist critique and re-visioning of Freud.

Frida Kahlo

2007-10-08T08:06:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-10-03T15:58:00.001-04:00

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.

2007-10-02T04:07:00.000-04:00

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.

Lance: Censored Dream Paper

2007-10-02T00:55:00.000-04:00

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.

Dream analysis paper

2007-10-01T20:24:00.001-04:00

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.

prostituting my talents

2007-10-01T07:53:00.000-04:00

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."

Apologies

2007-09-25T09:29:00.000-04:00

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.

Dream Paper Assignment

2007-09-20T09:27:00.000-04:00

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.