FREE ESSAY ON FREUD'S INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

FREUD'S INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Sigmund Freud's
The Interpretation of Dreams
by
Jackie Zee
Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was originally published in 1900. The era
was one of prudish Victorians. It was also the age of the continued Enlightenment. The
New Formula of science, along with the legacy of Comte's Positivism, had a firm hold on
the burgeoning discipline of psychology. Freud was groomed as both scientist and
Romantic, but his life's work reflected conflict of the two backgrounds and a reaction
against each one. It is my opinion that The Interpretation of Dreams was not simply
written as a methodology of deconstructing dreams and assigning them meaning, but its
latent content (as it were) was a critique of science's New Formula, and was designed to
question, and even undermine, the possibility of objective methodology in psychology, and
indeed in the sciences as a whole.
The importance of his innovations were wholly unappreciated; Freud was an anomaly. Many
of his contemporaries rejected his work on the grounds of invalid methodology and
inconsistency. Neurologists and psychiatrists today still continue to discount his
theories. The point of Freud's subversion of contemporary mental science, was, however,
quite missed, and many critics and reviewers continue to systemically assail his work,
utterly oblivious to the inclusive meaning of his theories, rather than the meanings of
his words themselves.
Clinical studies convinced Freud that hysterical symptoms could be analyzed and
deconstructed to understandable statements expressive of some underlying and utterly
logical thought. From this interest, Freud embarked on a comprehensive study of dreams,
and in the process, created a theory that drew meaningful attention to the unconscious, a
previously unaddressed part of the human psyche.
Freud's dreambook presented a new psychology for the times, as well as a new
understanding of dreams. The implications of this novel understanding spilled over into
the budding field of humanistic psychology, as well as into many new theoretical writings
spanning areas from social sciences to fine arts.
Freud's work made interesting contributions to general psychology because, in offering
the idea that dreams have meaning that could be comprehended and interpreted, he was
taking the side of the ignorant and the superstitious against the positivist philosophy
of early science psychology. Thus, the text can be read not only in the context of social
and intellectual traditions impinging on fin-de-siecle 
culture, but more generally in relation to a broader framework of changing western
conceptions of the nature and importance of dreams. Freud's writings on dreams provide an
ideal psychology of modern life, and this is especially clear if his work is viewed in
the context of the major transformations in the understanding of dreams that have
characterized different periods of development within psychology.
For Freud, the possibility of dream interpretation is contingent on the premise that
their puzzling and seemingly nonsensical elements actually contain a series of clues from
which their originating ideas can be deduced. Dreams are, in some sense, designated to
conceal events/emotions that would be too painful for a person to recall, but nonetheless
do so in such a way as to still communicate those very events or emotions in a disguised
and indirect form. Freud distinguishes between latent (hidden) and manifest (surface)
contents of dreams. There is a complex process of partial concealment, both the function
and method of which require elaboration.
Freud began to analyze his own dreams, and was quite excited by the analytic insight
which he believed his first dream interpretation produced. This dream specifically became
known as the dream of Irma's Injection, and serves as the 'specimen dream' that Freud
uses for the starting point of The Interpretation of Dreams. The interpretation of this
dream, as of any other, depends on the spontaneous association of the dreamer to each of
its elements. It is the dreamer, and not the analyst, who provides the interpretation.
Therefore, in this case, Freud begins the analysis with his own immediate reactions to
the dream. It comes to light that dreams are organized in terms of relationships between
events and emotions concerning these events. The dream also clearly makes sense in the
context of the dreamer's current waking preoccupations and activities. The dream-thoughts
appear absorbed in characteristically mundane themes, yet, considering what initially
appears to be incidental elements in this dream, Freud is compelled to recall events from
a more remote past. Thus, distant events are connected with incidents from the previous
day through an unpredictable series of links. The dream-thoughts are consistent and
logical, it is only the complexity of the allusions through which they are expressed that
give rise to the appearance of over-complication and arbitrariness. So-called
'indifferent material' in the dream can serve as a useful bridge between two sets of
events on the day previous to a dream. It is also characteristic, Freud claims, for each
element of the dream's content to be 'overdetermined', i.e., to be over-represented in
the dream-thoughts. Though Freud occasionally refers to the 'ultimate meaning' of a
dream, the meaning of a dream consists simply in the dreamer's articulation of
associations to its images. A problem here is that this process of anatomizing and
connecting the elements of the dream with memories of both significant and indifferent
events might be continued indefinitely, with no certainty of reaching a definite
interpretation.
What can be difficult for the reader to understand, is the manner of representation that
characterizes the process of dreaming. Freud uses an example of a botanical monograph
dream to explicate a few general features of dreams, through which dream-content is
related to underlying dream-thoughts. He discusses the problem of connecting the two in
terms of a translation:
The dream thought and the dream-content are presented
to us like two versions of the same subject matter in two
different languages. Or, more properly, the dream-
content seems like a transcript of the dream thoughts in
another mode of expression, whose characters and
syntactic laws it is our business to discover by comparing
the original and the translation. The dream-thoughts are
immediately comprehensible, as soon as we have learnt 
them. The dream content, on the other hand, is expressed
as it were a pictographic script, the characters of which
have to be transposed individually into the language of 
the dream-thoughts. If we attempted to read these
characters according to their pictorial value instead of
according to their symbolic relation, we should clearly 
be led into error (S. Freud, 1971, Vol. 4, p.277).
There is a diversity and richness to the meaningful associations that emerge from what is
dreamt as a simple image. Processes of condensation and displacement of meaning are key
elements to the understanding these associations.
The most significant relations of associations to emerge in dreams, however, are
expressed through variations in sensory intensities among different dream-images, or even
entire dreams. While Freud admits that physiological or waking concerns can penetrate the
dream state on occasion (such as dreaming of drinking a cool glass of water when you go
to bed thirsty), he denies any special prominence to these causes. Nor is the vividness
or clarity of dream-images indicative of psychical value between the dream-images and
their meanings. 
All dreams serve the purpose of fulfilling a wish. Often (but not always) these dreams
can trace back to sexual or aggressive motives. For example, the specimen dream of Irma's
Injection is not only interpreted in terms of its associations to which it gives rise,
but is analyzed as a wish fulfilment; the dream satisfies a desire on the part of Freud's
to be highly regarded by his colleagues, as well as one to absolve himself of
responsibility of misdiagnosis while assigning blame on his physician-friend. Throughout
the course of the text, the idea of wishing becomes gradually transformed; it is not
simply that more 'dangerous' wishes come to emerge in the interpreted meaning, but that
these wishes, with respect to their associations, refer to events (again, often sexual or
aggressive) of earlier, especially childhood, events in the life of the dreamer. Events
that are normally forgotten and inaccessible to the waking mind.
Freud's method of interpretation through spontaneous association, and analysis of the
mechanism of content representation through a desire for wish fulfilment, is formulated
in distinction to what he took to be the commonly-held historical tradition of symbolic
understanding. Freud rejects a universal key for symbols in dream interpretation. His own
method of interpretation, founded on contextualization of each dream element, cannot
support an array of fixed symbolic meanings. However, by the end of the text, Freud finds
symbolism to be important because it permits him to translate psychoanalysis into a
general cultural science, a manoeuvre he requires in order to have his "new science of
the mind" accepted on a broad level. He maintains that symbols are subject to elements
peculiar to the dreamer. "They [dream symbols] frequently have more than one or even
several meanings, and, as with Chinese script, the correct interpretation can only be
arrived at one each occasion from the context" (S. Freud, 1968, Vol.5, p.353).
Nevertheless, he ultimately creates a variety of common examples of fixed symbolic
meaning in dreams, usually sexual in nature. This type of universal symbolism is what has
become popularly called the typical 'Freudian' method of dream interpretation.
A difficulty with the dream theory is that the dreamer must remember the dream in full
detail. And since dreams occur in the unconscious, it is likely that at least some
aspects of a dream will be either forgotten, erroneous, or both. Freud also notes that
the dreamer may unconsciously invent aspects of missing portions of a dream. Addressing
these problems, Freud states that the dream must be acceptable as total fact if it is to
be interpreted; this seems contrary to his usual tendency to continuously question the
validity of patients' statements.
Another difficulty with the theory, more with respect to its reliability, is that there
is no standardized diagnoses available for dream analysis. That is, universal key symbols
are mentioned, but it is also stated that what an object symbolizes varies for each
individual. Also, the analyst must be in possession of significant background information
on the dreamer in order to make a genuine and accurate interpretation with respect to
symbols. Inaccuracies can again occur because the dreamer is repressing certain
events/emotions, rendering them totally inaccessible as the root meanings of certain
symbols.
The point I am trying to make is that no dream is utterly, truly, objectively, and
replicably interpretable. Freud himself admits that many obstacles stand in the way of a
correct interpretation, though he still proceeds as though his interpretations are true,
objective, and replicable. He cites case after case of 'successful' dream interpretation.
In many of these examples, his attempt to shock and dismay his readers, and the medical
community alike, is patent in his use of symbolic sexual imagery within the dreams he
discusses. This desire to shock, was also part of Freud's subversion of psychology; he
sought to shock his readers with blatant sexual references because he wanted an emotional
reaction from them, not simply a passive assimilation of his theory. By doing this, he
hoped to change the way people thought, causing them to use their emotions, their
passions, and not simply their analytic minds. Thus, I propose that the hidden meaning of
Freud's theory itself is likely a critique of the scientific method, a negative view of
Positivism, if you will. He offers a methodology, states that it may not be objective,
based on certain faulty criteria, then concludes with a valid outcome that is proclaimed
scientific and successful. Freud is both appeasing and satirizing his predecessors from
the scientific community while remaining loyal to his ideals of romanticism.
Freud's theory of dream interpretation is both simple and comprehensive. His typical
method of interpretation is one in which the motive and dream are introduced, and their
contents assigned, by previously accepted criteria. The wish, in contrast, is introduced
by hypothesis, or inference to the best explanation. There are several reasons why dream
analysis cannot constitute a natural science. Freud himself was well aware of these
barriers, yet he nevertheless proceeded with his theory in spite of his acknowledgement
of its flaws. Therefore, on a greater level, we the readers are left to interpret this as
Freud's parody of natural science itself, of an inability to obtain truly objective,
utter replicable result, under any condition. Freud sets out to show us that if a
painstakingly laid out scientific method, such as his for dream interpretation, can
contain contradictions with respect to reliability and objectivity, so can any scientific
method concerning any type of material. The biggest implication for Positivism then is
one of doubt, because once doubt sets in, confidence is lost. Nevertheless, The
Interpretation of Dreams has made a major contribution to psychology by its introduction
of certain concepts, such as depth of mind, latent meanings, wish-fulfilments, etc.,--all
of which remain valuable in themselves, in spite of Freud's parallel objective of
crushing positivistic natural science. Freud's work has provided a paradigm through
historical findings and future investigations, leaving him as pioneer of the unconscious
through his unmasking of dreams. And lastly, in spite of science and philosophy's
tendencies to exploit the theory's weaknesses instead of strengths, the deeper aim of the
text, as unmasker of Positivism's weaknesses, can no longer be ignored in its hermeneutic
exploration.
Bibliography
Reference List
Freud, Sigmund. (1971). The Interpretation of Dreams, Volume IV,1900.
London: The Hogarth Press.
Freud, Sigmund. (1968). The Interpretation of Dreams, Volume V. 
1900-01. London: The Hogarth Press.