The Brief: Analyse each others dreams in the style of Freud, Jung or WH Rivers.
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Jennifer's
Dream
(1
Main Dream) I was at my parents house in
(2 Following night) There was
loads to the dream but the main bit was where I went to a clothes shop
and bought three pairs of boots - a red pair, a black pair and a silver pair.
The red and black pair were very similar to a pair of ankle boots that I own
but the silver ones were knee high and glittery and really really glam and
spangly. I wore them out to the park and put the other
pairs in my bag. Everyone in the park
commented on how nice my boots were. After
a while I thought i'd change into one of the other pairs but when I looked
in my bag they were broken! The heels
had snapped off both pairs which was weird cos I hadn't worn them. I took them back to the shop then went to a
festival to watch the Vines play (they were no 3 in the chart). I was going out with their bass player - who's
called Patrick. Hmmmm.
Comments:
Shoes aren't really my thing.
I prefer coats. And as for Patri
- well, much as I like PB i can't say i give him much thought out of working
hours. Patrick Vine is just some bloke.
Prob wouldn't even recognise him of he passed me in the street.
BUT, Tracey did fancy him at the aftershow (real life) and she was
at the festival (dream) I did say to you last night that I wanted new clothes...(and
I bought a really cute mini skirt in my dream).
Freudian
Dream Analysis
According
to Freud, dreams are spyholes into our unconscious. Fears, desires and emotions
that we are usually unaware of make themselves known through dreams. To Freud
dreams were fundamentally about wish-fulfillment. Even "negative"
dreams (punishment dreams and other anxiety dreams) are a form of wish-fulfilment
- the wish being that certain events do not occur. Very often these dreams
are interpreted as a warning.
Freud
believed that although our dreams contain important messages, they are encoded
- disguised. The unconscious mind doesn't speak any verbal language therefore
it must communicate with us via symbols. Some of these symbols are near-universal,
others very personal. Freud distinguished between the "manifest
content" of dreams (what we actually dream) and the "latent
content" of dreams (the unfulfilled wish that the dream represents).
Dream
content is rarely presented by the mind in a simple and direct fashion. Instead
a complex dream is constructed from the basic elements. The raw dream symbols
are distorted via "condensation" (compression, conflation
and omission of dream elements) and "displacement" (shifting
emphasis). This is followed by a process of "secondary revision"
that takes all these (by now distorted) elements and assembles them into some
more or less coherent structure.
Freud
went further and suggested that very often our conscious mind actively tries
to reject the messages of our dreams; we "repress" this knowledge.
Dreams are often an expression of a repressed wish that we would rather not
admit to - they thus indicate conflict that can in turn be at the core of
mental disturbance.
Freud's
main technique for analysing the dream was "free association".
Here the dreamer is encouraged to look not at the direct content of the dream
but at the thoughts and emotions it generates. These will then lead to other
thoughts and emotions and so on. At it's simplest
free association is simply saying whatever comes into your head.
The
job of the Freudian analyst is to record the chain of associations and assist
the dreamer's self-understanding. Freud would look at each individual component
of a dream and use each as a starting point for free association then attempt
to pull all the threads together into an overall analysis. In this way the
dreamer can "sneak up" on repressed emotions.
Freud
famously mapped apsects of the mind to a trio of components, very loosely:
the ego (self image) , the id (desiring, wanton, unrepressed), the
super-ego (ego control, watchman,
"the thing my ego is trying to trying impress or appease even when other
people aren't there"). He also had a theory of infant sexuality which
he said lead to a complex he called the Oedipus complex (his definition: child
subconsciously seeks sexual congress with parent of the opposite sex).
The
Dream Analysed (in the style of Freud)
The
following analysis is partly based on Freud's approach to a dream by a girl
called Irma whom he analysed in the summer of 1895.
1.
Establish overall theme (take away the detail leave only the action). Match the overall theme to an area
of the person’s life (one’s duty to one desires)
Overall theme - "Conflict". An anxiety dream - the overall wish-fulfillment
is that something does not occur.
Summary:
Displacement of brother by another non-family member (PB). PB in conflict
with mother, moves to J's room. J investigates mother's possessions,
judges them positively. Mother enters and tells J to leave. Conflict. J returns to her room, PB may or may not be there.
Later, at dinner father is unaware of conflict, other brother is normal, J
and PB still unhappy about conflict. Mother still aggravated.
Conflict 1 (the
Conflict 2 (the Revision, the making sense): Conjugal
duty (present) vs Oedipal duty (present). Bedroom;
shoes (female sexuality), mother (chiding)
Post-Revision (the Coherent Structure): Oedipal duty.
Colleague (displaced). Mother (chiding)
2.
Examine the details – free associate
Displacement brother - Patrick Baxter (Later a displaced boyfriend called Patrick). "I can't say I give him much thought out of working hours." Free Association: Patrick, Man, Woman, Me, You, Jennifer.
Patrick
= Irish?
Shoes - glamorous brightly coloured (green, orange, electric blue), really
nice 70's styles. Free association: Electric, Dreams, Sleep, Wake. Blue, Red, Yellow, Sun,
Rain, Cloud. Shoe, wear, clothes.
(Following
night boots (sexuality grown in size/expressiveness?: red,
black, knee high glittery and really really glam and spangly silver)
"Shoes
aren't really my thing."
Dinner
table, food, eat, swallow
Stephen,
family man, absent probably due to having his own family
70s, glam, rock, roll, bread. Vivid memories of the 70s and being a child, didn't spend
the 70s in Birmingham though.
PB's
behaviour - stroppy, stamping, smarting
J's
behavior - stormed off, smarting
Mother's
behaviour - such a bitch; really bad verbal fight, dirty looks
Martin's
behaviour - quiet, normal
Dad's
behaviour - laughing and joking
Conflict 1 (raw state): Ego (self image- brother -
ie on same 'level' - only thought of when he's visible) vs Super-ego (chiding,
absent mother - on 'superior' family level - bitch)
Conflict 2 (the Revision, the making sense): Self
vs Super-ego (complaining - really bad verbal) distortion being Id (Oedipal
sexuality - childhood - glamourous, really nice)
Post-Revision (the Coherent Structure): Self and Ego
structure (dinner table) the distortion (atonement with father - laughing,
joking) with the Super-ego. No resolution (Although other brother - quiet,
'normal')
3.
Outstanding questions
Freud
calls this the "navel" of the dream, the descent into which J either
will not make or will not share with us or herself,
where J appears to abandon or censor very personal thoughts connected with
the dream.
Question in conflict 1 (raw state): What was conflict
about? "Ask your mother." Ego suggests to self that super-ego is
'over-regulating'. Because "He was in her room."
Only implied. Why was PB in the room at all? Did
he want the mother's shoes?
Question in conflict 2 (the Revision, the making sense):
Was PB still in self's bedroom? Ego / libido issues.
Question post-revision: Not stated or strong. Possibly,
why does dad act like nothing happened? Why doesn't conflict happen to the
other family members? Other brother 'quiet' and normal - is this the structure
sought?
4.
'Psycho'Analysis
J's
self image is at odds. Her 'public' 'professional' 'grown up' self image is
out of place with her 'private', Oedipal structure.
(J's infant desire was to have sex with her father. Sensing her mother represented
the reason she could not have sex with her father, J had to compete with her
mother to flirt with the father. The dad-mum-me triangle sets a shifting and
transferable blueprint / default we return to.) She hopes something she fears
could happen won't. Externally, this appears to be conflict, internally it
may be a sense of persecution, or of being misunderstood. There appears to
be no active resolution at the dream's end, which suggests that her wish-fullfillment
on this occasion is internal ie she wishes she would stop feeling a certain
way, rather than wishing a particular incident wouldn't happen.
How
does she make sense of how she is feeling? Why does she think she is misunderstood?
Her libido is being regulated by her super-ego, a normal condition (we'd be
like rabbits otherwise), but it appears to be over-regulated, causing her
distress. Sexuality (shoes - but not boots) is the strongest symbol here,
combined with an almost overwhelming Oedipal theme.
There may be frustration at not being allowed to assume a maternal role. Indeed
there are three colours of shoe - possibly suggesting an even deeper representation
of the Oedipal triangle. The 'missing piece' - was
Patrick in the bedroom? may have been J 'removing'
her mother to have congress with her father.
The
super-ego's reasoning for regulating is again libido. J examines the shoes.
Obviously, they are not being worn (lack of sexual congress) and are only
shoes (not fully fledged boots) and J herself is told to get out (which could
suggest a masturbation guilt). J's boyfriend is from
After
J attempts to structure (the dinner table) her feelings, her father is pleased
(laughter at the end), so in an Oedipal sense she
has returned to her childhood blueprint. 'We'll always be together, forever
in electric dreams', however the persecution by her super-ego is still there.
As J attempts to shift her position in the Oedipal triangle, her desire for
an assumption of the mother role may be being partly rebuked but partly desired.