At times we go sailing off into sunsets of strawberries, or flying through purple clouds, making love with someone we admire, wrestling with one legged giants or conversing with a deceased relative. At times, we are snapped back into REALITY by a door slamming, a child crying, or our boss yelling. These semi-conscious “day” dreams, bring feelings of bliss for some but great annoyance for others, who watch you transfixed, perhaps with a clear dribble from the side of your lip, staring…at nothing.
Then there are those dreams at night, some we can clearly remember in the morning but others, just a blur of obscure colours and fanciful characters.
Dreams have for centuries been analyzed for their psychological meaning and while academic theories about dreams are vast, a few concepts are essential for a basic understanding of their relevance.
In his publication, The Interpretation of Dreams (1950), psychiatrist Sigmund Freud provided brief synopses of dream philosophies dating from the prehistoric ages to the 1900’s including religious and supernatural explanations, as well as his own thinking on the topic. Contemporary philosophers, including Freud, claim that “The content of dreams is always more or less determined by the personality, age, sex, station in life, education, habits, and by the events and experiences of the whole past life of the individual” (Jessen, 1855 cited in Freud, 1950). Freud puts it simply, “We dream of what we have seen, said, desired, or done”; the main purpose of our dreams being wish-fulfillment.
According to him, there are many ways these wishes are fulfilled in dreams and many thoughts, feelings and memories that are used to create the distorted content of dreams – content created from our unconscious mind that is not easily interpreted by the dreamer.
To continue reading , purchase Vol. 7 #8 2015 issue
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At times we go sailing off into sunsets of strawberries, or flying through purple clouds, making love with someone we admire, wrestling with one legged giants or conversing with a deceased relative. At times, we are snapped back into REALITY by a door slamming, a child crying, or our boss yelling. These semi-conscious “day” dreams, bring feelings of bliss for some but great annoyance for others, who watch you transfixed, perhaps with a clear dribble from the side of your lip, staring…at nothing.
Then there are those dreams at night, some we can clearly remember in the morning but others, just a blur of obscure colours and fanciful characters.
Dreams have for centuries been analyzed for their psychological meaning and while academic theories about dreams are vast, a few concepts are essential for a basic understanding of their relevance.
In his publication, The Interpretation of Dreams (1950), psychiatrist Sigmund Freud provided brief synopses of dream philosophies dating from the prehistoric ages to the 1900’s including religious and supernatural explanations, as well as his own thinking on the topic. Contemporary philosophers, including Freud, claim that “The content of dreams is always more or less determined by the personality, age, sex, station in life, education, habits, and by the events and experiences of the whole past life of the individual” (Jessen, 1855 cited in Freud, 1950). Freud puts it simply, “We dream of what we have seen, said, desired, or done”; the main purpose of our dreams being wish-fulfillment.
According to him, there are many ways these wishes are fulfilled in dreams and many thoughts, feelings and memories that are used to create the distorted content of dreams – content created from our unconscious mind that is not easily interpreted by the dreamer.
To continue reading , purchase Vol. 7 #8 2015 issue
Share this post: