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Subject: What I saw here...then

Author: Hemant Krishna V.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 20:32:43 12/16/04 Thu Understanding dreams! - By, Hemant Krishna V. What can a child wish for, better than a blithesome picnic? During my schooldays, the one thing, I awaited with bated breath was the annual outing organized by my school. The night preceding the picnic would bring me a special dream, always. In my dreams, I would have already reached the picnic spot. When my Mom would wake me up early next day, there was no way I could believe that I was still at my home and had to actually start for the picnic. Dreams have put scientists and psychologists to their wits’ end since ages. Even today the ‘mystery of dreams’ remains a mystery. The ancients treated dreams as warnings or harbingers of a future event. Aristotle is said to have known that dreams convert slight sensations into intense perceptions. For example, if the body becomes slightly warm - when the person is asleep - in his dreams he has a feeling of walking in fire. Thus it was concluded that dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of any incipient physical change, undetected during the daytime. However, to date, Sigmund Freud – considered as the ‘Father of Psychoanalysis’, was the one to furnish the most successful exposition to the dream-phenomenon. Here is an attempt to interpret the procedure of dreams, with Freud’s theory as the bedrock and other hypotheses as support shafts. Dreams can be seen as the guardian of sleep. Before we doss down, we draw the curtains down, turn off the lights and endeavor to disconnect from the reality, by extinguishing all the external stimuli. The dream protects the sleep from being interrupted by external sensations like noise, temperature, numb arm, itching, desire to smoke etc. It also keeps at bay the internal stimuli like the emotions of fear, dissatisfaction, frustration etc. Freud explained that for an undisturbed sleep forbidden thoughts and secret ambitions - which will have been censored when in the conscious state - should be revealed. Hence dreams, if understood correctly, may lead to a greater understanding of the dreamer’s subconscious. A dream is composed of two parts. First, the ‘latent’ content, which constitutes of the suppressed desires and second the ‘manifest’, which we remember as soon as we wake. The integral dream can be hence thought of as a transformation where the latent is converted into the manifest. This process happens in four phases: 1) Merger: Two or more latent thoughts merge together to shape up a meaningful sequence of thoughts. 2) Orientation: Instead of directing the resultant sequence toward the intended object/person, it is transferred on to an unrelated and inexistent object. 3) Symbolism: Where complex and vague concepts are converted into dream images. For this, the mind may use the images of similar sounding and less intrusive objects, as substitutes to the original cryptic thoughts. 4) Revision: This is the final stage. Here the dream loses the appearance of absurdity and incoherence. In essence, revision can be explained as the reorganized pattern of the dream in sync with the dreamer’s experience of everyday life. Dreams are mostly convenient. That is to say they may be regarded as blatant wish fulfillments. I can quote a dream, which I can experience at will, experimentally, as it were. When I eat salted foods in the evening, I am awakened in the night by thirst. But the awakening is always preceded by another dream: I gulp the water down; and it tastes delicious to me as only a cool drink can when one is dying of thirst. And when I wake up, I really have to drink. Dream is the thirst, which I feel when I wake up. However, if I can slake my thirst by dreaming that I am drinking, I don’t need to wake up at all! Thus the dream caters to my convenience. Due to the restriction and taboo in the material world, repressed desires pile up in the mind, making it difficult for the conscious to carry on its normal thought process. Dreams help in liberating these ‘repressed ideas’. Blinking of our eyes frequently might be considered essential for the same purpose: To cleanse the mind of unfulfilled fantasies. So to be terse, dreams predominantly are the fulfillers of [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]