On Dreams
This essay will explain Freud's theory of dream-work and its operative mechanisms. The analysis of dreams forms a significant part of Freud's understanding of the unconscious mind. Freud argued that the superstitious beliefs surrounding dreams possessing hidden meaning were, in fact, closer to the truth than the popular scientific opinion of the time – which was that dreams were mere physiological processes.[1] Freud believed the psyche could express itself best in sleep, allowing thoughts from the unconscious to emerge freely. Through the analysis of dreams, he came to understand layers of meaning that went far beyond the superficial appearance of the dream. According to Freud, repressed thoughts return as dream-thoughts during the dream state, and the dream-work enables those thoughts to get past the censorship of the ego and into the dream. The dream-work involves converting unconscious thoughts into dream content using a highly complex process and a symbolic vocabulary. Psychoanalysis attempts to decipher this abstract vocabulary using free association. Freud concluded that 'the unconsciousness of dream ideas, or their relationship to consciousness and to repression, are linked questions of the greatest psychological importance.' [2] According to Freud, dreams are vital in helping individuals access the unconscious, whereby they may identify and manage their unresolved inner conflicts.
Dreams express unconscious wishes, urges and feelings and are a way of understanding things typically hidden during waking life. Dream-work is the thinking process that happens during sleep which is responsible for producing dream content drawn from those hidden, unconscious realms. Its primary task is to transform unconscious or repressed thoughts, which Freud termed latent content, into symbolic imagery, which Freud termed manifest content. According to Freud, this can be accomplished either scene-by-scene or by replacing the entire dream with a symbol representing the dream's underlying meaning.[3] The main mission of the dream-work is to smuggle repressed unconscious thoughts past the censorship of the ego by converting them into more acceptable dream elements – all without waking up the dreamer. Freud claimed that psychic material is buried in the unconscious during waking life and that it returns in the form of dream content during sleep. The dream content is what the dreamer typically remembers upon waking and could also include day residue (material from the day before). By observing free associations linked to the manifest dream content during psychoanalysis, Freud claimed that the dream's precious latent content (repressed thoughts) could be revealed.
The dream-work cleverly alters repressed psychic content to smuggle it past the ego's censorship using several key disguise processes. The first process is condensation. It plays a minor role in dream censorship. Rather, its primary task is to collapse several dream elements into one single 'mash up', condensing large volumes of latent content into a more compact and easily transferable form of manifest content. Condensation is also one of the reasons why Freud claimed there was not a one-size-fits-all template for dream interpretation, given that each dream symbol could hold several pieces of condensed information. Numerous latent thoughts, including contradictory ones, could be expressed in one ambiguous dream image or word, for example, combining multiple people into one person. Condensation is also responsible for omitting specific latent elements altogether or presenting them only in a fragmented form. Freud likened condensation to an abbreviated translation of a dream's latent content.[4]
The second task of the dream-work is displacement, which involves displacing one dream-thought onto another less blatant dream-thought. Freud defined the process of displacement as an overt form of dream censorship.[5] The purpose of displacement is to bypass the ego by allowing unacceptable or taboo thoughts to appear in more benign forms, for example, displacing repressed sexual thoughts of one's father onto the dream image of an innocuous stranger. Freud suggested that dream elements often appear to be about something entirely different from their actual meaning – emotions attached to seemingly insignificant dream elements could be concerning other more significant, yet disconnected, dream-thoughts.
The third process in dream-work is termed representation, which Freud deemed the most psychologically interesting.[6] Representation involves transforming latent content into representative symbolic imagery comparable to transforming a thought into a visual metaphor. For example, one may dream of an empty cup on a desk representing feeling drained and depleted at the office. Representation can also involve developing a representative symbol with a similar feature, a fragment representing a whole, a component representing its opposite or a linguistic connection.[7] Once deciphered, Freud proposed that representation often contains a sense of humour – which displays similar features to the dream-work with its use of allusion and innuendo. Furthermore, Freud proposed that when several dreams occur on the same night, they frequently contain a similar meaning, using numerous symbols to hint at the same demanding dream-thought. [8]
Although dreams are akin to abstract, psychedelic experiences with no clear or logical structure, Freud claimed that the conscious mind would attempt to apply a secondary narrative to the dream to help it make sense. Freud called this process secondary revision. Secondary revision involves the conscious mind interpreting the dream and forming a sense of coherence around the individual dream elements. This final process in the dream-work may omit or add elements to the dream and functions as a final layer of dream censorship.
In summary, the dream-work acts as a messenger between latent and manifest dream content, transmuting the former into the latter in the most creative ways. The dream-work utilises a variety of clever mechanisms to condense and disguise large amounts of latent content, slipping it past the ego's censor and transforming it into acceptable dream content. The operative mechanisms of the dream-work can also be observed outside of dreams in metaphor, allusion, humour, parapraxes (commonly referred to as Freudian slips) and art. Freud claimed that no important psychological work is accomplished during sleep and the primary function of dreams is to keep the dreamer asleep. He even went so far as to suggest that the soundest sleep is accomplished without dreaming at all.[9] Nevertheless, he did claim that dreams serve the critical task of supplying access to unconscious thoughts and repressed psychic material during psychoanalysis. Freud famously labelled dreams ‘the royal road to the unconscious.’ [10] Each dreamer composes their dreams in a language utterly unique to them, and the nature of that language reveals their true nature.[11] The dream-work's vocabulary reflects a highly complex interplay of unresolved inner conflicts, relationships, wishes, fears, traumas, and defences that form the psyche and can only be understood by the individual dreamer, usually with the assistance of a psychoanalyst.
References
Segal H, Dream, Phantasy, and Art (Tavistock/Routledge 1991).
Sigmund Freud and Eder MD, On Dreams (Dover 2001).
Storey J, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader (London ; New York Routledge 2019).
[1] Sigmund Freud and MD Eder, On Dreams (Dover 2001).
[2] Sigmund Freud and MD Eder, On Dreams (Dover 2001) p. 70.
[3] Sigmund Freud and MD Eder, On Dreams (Dover 2001).
[4] John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture : A Reader (London ; New York Routledge 2019).
[5] John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture : A Reader (London ; New York Routledge 2019).
[6] Sigmund Freud and MD Eder, On Dreams (Dover 2001).
[7] Hanna Segal, Dream, Phantasy, and Art (Tavistock/Routledge 1991).
[8] John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture : A Reader (London ; New York Routledge 2019).
[9] Sigmund Freud and MD Eder, On Dreams (Dover 2001).
[10] Hanna Segal, Dream, Phantasy, and Art (Tavistock/Routledge 1991) p. 1.
[11] Hanna Segal, Dream, Phantasy, and Art (Tavistock/Routledge 1991).
