Whenever I’ve had a free moment lately I’ve been studying various psychological approaches to dream interpretations. Specifically speaking, the work of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Gayle Delaney, and others. I’m no stranger to the realms of psychology; I’ve been studying it off and on for the past nine years or so. Jung and I, we go way back. But that Frued fellow, every time I come across his theories I’m forced to laugh. Sure, we have to give him his props (that doesn’t sound right coming out of me.) He is pretty much the Father of modern psychoanalysis, which is good. But there’s one thing about his general theory that cracks me up. It’s fascinating to me how he thought everything – absolutely everything – was always linked back to sex. Even babies, their actions were predominantly linked to sex. Those phases, yup, all about sex.
Freud and his preoccupations are hilarious, especially when he projects them upon everyone else but himself. That whole pen dream? He’s the one doing the stabbing, and yet he glances right over the obvious violent and sexual implications against his own psyche. But when it comes to everything and everyone else, they’re all hopeless slaves to their sexual desires, physically starving for lack of satisfaction, straining under the guilt their subconscious imposes upon them. Give me a break.
What brought this up? In this textbook I have, they’re covering various common themes in dreams. It seems that with every common theme, this little factoid keeps appearing where Freud adds his two cents. Without fail, it’s always linked back to sex. Falling dreams? They’re about a woman’s unfilled and guilty desires. Being chased by a monster or dangerous animal? The dreamer (conveniently referred to as a woman) is wishing for a sexual encounter but can’t bring herself to confront it. If a man dreams that his washing machine is broken, that washing machine is really a phallic symbol, and – you guessed it – the man is experiencing a feeling of sexual impotence.
If you ask me, I think Freud had significant issues himself. His very reasoning gives him away. It seems so very convenient for the ego of man to believe that women are as preoccupied with sex as they are. Perhaps it is difficult for some to realize this, but there’s so much more to a well-rounded psyche than sex. Give it up, Sigmund, sometimes a washing machine is just a washing machine.
BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!
I couldn’t have thought it or said it better… There is SO MUCH to life and to live in the little box of HIS interpretation is just plain ignorant. For HIM, it may have all been about the sex… but some are enlightened enough to KNOW it’s about SO MUCH MORE!
I agree with Shakespeare’s view of dreams…
Romeo.
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
Thou talk’st of nothing.
Mercutio.
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind.
I’m rather fond of “the smeller is the fellar”.
Freud at least got it right with men; most of us tend to get pretty preoccupied with the whole sex thing more often than not, not that we really want to! But of course there’s so much more to life… sigh. If only girls weren’t so dang cute! Reminds me of a joke:
Q: Why do babies prefer mother’s milk?
A: Because it comes in such cute bottles!
A few Freud factoids for your perusal.
He did a lot of cocaine.
If he were alive today, he would probably like David Hasselhoff.
His mother was much younger than his father and by all accounts a very attractive woman.
Most of his theories and extrapolations were based on individual case studies, all of individuals from the upper or upper middle class.
Studies using the reactions of the iris to evocative stimuli universally failed to confirm that young boys want their mothers or even females outside of 3-4 years of their own age (bad news for fans of the Oedipus Complex).
Freud’s genius concerning dream interpretation is his providing a method for doing justice to the complexity of ordering each individual’s chaos in inner space. In addition to sex {libido}as a basic instinct Freud also highlighted aggression. Whereas he made many generalizations he also insisted that the most accurate dream interpretations must begin with the individual’s free associations to their dream content. For Frued, dreams were best considered to be a derivitive of a person’s individual creative process – theatrical productions made each night – for the purpose of preserving sleep. THe best way to interpret a dream is to consider that the dreamer is like a full production team making a movie. Thus the dreamer authors the script, directs,produces, plays all the parts etc. It is helpful to take each line of a dream and add the words I arrange the following to happen thus converting passive into active. {Try it – you’ll like it.}