Writing about Freud’s oddities and unusual approach to psychology would take up several articles and investigation not only on his own line of thinking, but the social response to him. So let us suspend any previously held beliefs about this character to see how he paved “the royal road to the understanding of unconscious mental processes,” which is how he described his ground breaking book on dream analysis.
Freudian Facts
Freud was among the first classically-trained psychologists to explore what we call the “unconscious”. He understood something that a lot of people hadn’t come to accept yet: as humans, there are parts of our beings that elude us. These parts not only hold a wealth of information about our psychological make up and why we do the things we do, but also is a key participant in the creation of our dreams. To understand basic Freudian theory on dreams, one must understand the backbone of his theories: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the child who wants another piece of cake, the superego is the mother who says, “You don’t want to ruin your dinner” and the ego is the meeting between those two things. The ego is the part of a person who does the decision making and is in most control. One idea is that while awake, the id can not be expressed because the superego keeps it at bay so dreams represent the motives behind the id, the true wants and desires. However, given that the ego is a meeting place between these two planes of thought and can communicate with each plane, it isn’t as simple as that. Actually, it’s much simpler. Freud proposes that during dream time, neither the id or superego are monitored by the ego and thus can run wild with desires or inhibitions.
The second Freudian fact to use while approaching your dreams with Freudian theory is the understanding of Defense Mechanisms. A defense mechanism is created so that a person can function in a high-anxiety environment (ie: the world). For the most part, defense mechanisms are involuntary. And, a bout of anxiety is often brought on my one or more of these mechanisms failing to do their job. Here are the most common defense mechanisms found in dreams and a brief explanation of them:
- Acting out: Doing something that a person knows intellectually is wrong without knowing what the emotional intentions are.
- Anticipation: Planning for the future with the focus being on the anxiety that the future brings.
- Denial: Inability to accept and live with the reality of a situation.
- Distortion: Rewriting the world to fit needs and desires.
- Displacement: A feeling is redirected to another person or object (punching a pillow, yelling at the dog when mad at the roommate).
- Humor: The truth of how a person thinks or feels is camouflaged by a joke, or uncomfortable issues are distracted by joking to change the subject.
- Hypochondriasis: Confusing negative thoughts and feelings about others with ones’ self, usually resulting in negative feelings or illness (or feeling responsible for other’s shortcomings).
- Idealization: Putting someone on a pedestal or in a place of power without that person having done anything to earn this placement.
- Identification: Adopting the behavior of someone else so that it becomes part of the personality. (while Introjection is a form of identification with ideas or objects)
- Intellectualization: Only looking at a situation from a thinking-oriented mindset (or, its opposite, looking at a situation from a feeling-oriented mindset).
- Passive aggression: Indirect expression of irritation, anger, disagreement.
- Projection: the paranoia that others feel about us what we feel about them (can be negative or positive) or ascribing one’s own feelings to others.
- Reaction Formation: Having an unhealthy desire and trying to “atone” for it by outwardly expressing the opposite of that desire.
- Regression: Looking at a situation in a child-like way.
While it is true that a lot of the dream symbology according to Freud did lead back to nothing but a bunch of symbols representing sex and penises, the bottom line of Freudian Theory looks at literal opposites of the dream symbol for the purpose of analysis. If a person is afraid of choking, then they may dream of fasting or starvation. If a person has constantly avoided speaking up about something that would be life altering, they may have a dream where they are mute.
Using Freud to understand your dreams
Breaking things down to be used for personal dream analysis is very simple. During the awake state, a person has to balance their needs with desires, their thoughts and feelings with the social norm (defense mechanisms) and often do things to avoid negativity. These behaviors are healthy and things that every person should be doing. Understanding that the “real world” even has these rules that a person needs to abide by brings understanding to the “dream world” where rules do not apply.
Use Freud to understand your dreams by becoming more aware of the decisions you make during awake time: were they out of obligation? Bullying? Habit?. Behavior in the dream world according to Freud may not only show what the true desire is, but might also show an alternate, even better way of dealing with the anxiety of the real world. Second, upon waking, the dreamer can explore which defense mechanisms broke down during the dream (which they will because what’s the use of a defense mechanism in a dream world without rules?). If one can pinpoint a defense mechanism and start to accept that defense mechanism might and most probably is in play during wake-time, one can use that knowledge for self-growth and understanding of how experiences have shaped their personality and the messages of their dreams.
Tips for exercises in self analysis:
Look to a recent dream in your dream diary or journal or simply just recall one from your experiences. Use Freud to understand the dream. 1, ask yourself if anything that happened in the dream is something you wished for before, but couldn’t get because of social norms or rules (these types of dreams are called “wish-fulfillment” dreams). 2, ask yourself if anything that happened in the dream shed light into various defense mechanisms. 3, practice using the literal opposite of dream symbols to explain their symbology. Some will resonate, some will not. (Examples: water may represent thirst or drought. Ice might represent warmth or heat. Black might represent white).
For further reading, The Ego and the Id (The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud), or for a more in-depth look at Freud’s theories on dream analysis, The Interpretation Of Dreams by Sigmund Freud was his first publication addressing dream analysis or for a more concise and accessible version, check out On Dreams also written by Sigmund Freud himself.
- K. Kennedy
