Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) - 'Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.'
Despite the widely-recognized failure of Freudian psychotherapy to heal disturbed people effectively and the rejection of many of his major theories Freud remains one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Freud's basic insight that our minds preserve memories and emotions which are not always consciously available to us has transformed the way humanity views itself ever since. Freud said that there had been three great humiliations in human history: Galileo's discovery that we were not the center of the universe, Darwin's discovery that we were not the crown of creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control of our own minds. The tendency of modern people to trace their problems to childhood traumas or other repressed emotions begins with Freud. One of Freud's more important discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious surface in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried feelings. Whether the mechanism is exactly as Freud describes it, many people have derived insights into themselves from studying their dreams, and most modern people consider dreams emotionally significant, unlike our ancestors who often saw them either as divine portents or as the bizarre side-effects of indigestion. Freud argues that dreams are wish-fulfillments, and will ultimately argue that those wishes are the result of repressed or frustrated sexual desires. The anxiety surrounding these desires turns some dreams into nightmares.
Despite the widely-recognized failure of Freudian psychotherapy to heal disturbed people effectively and the rejection of many of his major theories Freud remains one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Freud's basic insight that our minds preserve memories and emotions which are not always consciously available to us has transformed the way humanity views itself ever since. Freud said that there had been three great humiliations in human history: Galileo's discovery that we were not the center of the universe, Darwin's discovery that we were not the crown of creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control of our own minds. The tendency of modern people to trace their problems to childhood traumas or other repressed emotions begins with Freud. One of Freud's more important discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious surface in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried feelings. Whether the mechanism is exactly as Freud describes it, many people have derived insights into themselves from studying their dreams, and most modern people consider dreams emotionally significant, unlike our ancestors who often saw them either as divine portents or as the bizarre side-effects of indigestion. Freud argues that dreams are wish-fulfillments, and will ultimately argue that those wishes are the result of repressed or frustrated sexual desires. The anxiety surrounding these desires turns some dreams into nightmares.
If, according to dream analysis, the dream represents a fulfilled wish, what creates the astonishing and strange form in which this wish-fullfillment is expressed? What transformation have the dream thoughts undergone to shape the manifest dream which we remember when awake? Through what means has this transformation taken place? What is the source of the material which has been reworked into the dream? Where do the many peculiarities which we notice in dream thoughts come from, for instance that they may be mutually contradictory? Can a dream tell us so mething new about our inner psychological processes? Can its content correct the opinions that we have held during our waking hours?
I have been having the strangest dreams at the moment!! Then I go to bed and realise it's actually my real life!! lolol !! Is life one big dream state which we wake from eventually once we have gone through the process of regenerating birth-life-death? :-D
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