Skip to main content

Freud and Dreams

Sigmund Freud believed dreams are the mind's way of fulfilling wishes. In an excerpt from his Interpretation of Dreams, he offers several examples of dreams with obvious ties to wish fulfillment. One of these is from a young medical student who had difficulty waking up in the morning. To help, he asked his landlady to wake him each morning. On one of these mornings, she yelled through his door, "Wake up, Herr Pepi! It's time to go to the hospital!" He dreamed in response that he lay in a sick bed in the same hospital as a patient. In his dream, he said, "As I'm already in the hospital, there's no need for me to go there," and continued sleeping. This dream was a way to reconcile his need to get to the hospital and his desire to continue sleeping.

The examples Freud uses in this excerpt are exclusively positive. They are all dreams that represent some desire being fulfilled, whether it is a dream of Freud himself drinking water to quench his real thirst, a child's dream of a boat trip to satisfy her after a disappointing real-life boat trip the day before, or something else. In the excerpt, at least, he never mentions nightmares, which are far removed from the more pleasant world of wish fulfillment. Freud, however, saw nightmares as unsuccessful attempts by the ego to cover up one's repressed desires. They still relate to wish fulfillment, then, but are an expression of the conflict between the id's wishes and the ego's efforts to keep those wishes in check.*

Freud goes on to say that we would have discovered this truth about dreams had we only noticed the language we use when talking about them. When we say "I should never have imagined such a thing even in my wildest dreams," in his example, we reveal our understanding that dreams are expressions of wish fulfillment.

*Freud used the analogy of a horse and rider to explain the relationship between the id and ego: "in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego uses borrowed forces."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Heroes

Although we have several examples of heroes in our day, one of the best known is of a woman named Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (“Gonja Bojaju”), who devoted her life to sustaining the “poor, sick, orphaned, and dying.” Her venue was Calcutta, India, where she served as a teacher until she began to take notice of the poverty there. Seeking to do something about it, she began an organization that consisted of just thirteen members at its inception. Called the “Missionaries of Charity,” the organization would eventually burgeon into well over 5,000 members worldwide, running approximately 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries; and caring for the orphaned, blind, aged, disabled, and poor. As her personal work expanded, she traveled to countries like Lebanon, where she rescued 37 children from a hospital by pressing for peace between Israel and Palestine; to Ethiopia, where she traveled to help the hungry; to Chernobyl, Russia, to assist victims of the nuclear meltdown there; and to ...
2 comments
Read more

Haiti 2012

In case anyone would like to help this trip, or would like to know what we will be doing, here is my support letter for our Haiti trip in June. February 11, 2012 Dear Friends, Family, and Fellow Believers: Last year, a group of eleven people traveled to an orphanage in southern Haiti called the Hands and Feet Project. During the week we were there, we witnessed poverty, disease, and overcrowding. We heard stories of abandoned children, natural disaster, and the uncertainties and isolation of missions work. We felt tangibly the confusion of a country wracked by hopelessness and overwhelming difficulty. In the midst of it all, however, we experienced something more. We witnessed the hope of future orphanages and clean water, heard stories of unity and compassion for children left behind, and felt tangibly the love of God for the people of Haiti through a group of unified people whose goal is to serve him. It was these experiences of hopefulness that left many of us change...
Post a Comment
Read more