7 Key Points to Remember about Dream Interpretation by Sigmund Freud
If Psychoanalysis was a company, Freud would've been its Promoter.
Anybody who has dared to walk into the psychoanalytic garden of psychology is well-acquainted with the Austrian physician, Sigmund Freud.
He is remembered for his work in psychology, especially for dream interpretation.
Freud didn’t start the research in dream interpretation but was definitely the one that made it a little more mainstream for the laymen.
Even if Freud’s work in psychoanalysis and dream interpretation is criticized by neo Freudian psychologists, we ought to give him enough credit for at least popularizing it.
We may not completely agree with Freudian theories but it doesn’t hurt to at least have a glimpse of his work.
With dream interpretation being one of his most remarkable works, here are 7 key points to remember about the same.
1. Dreams as wish-fulfillment
In his entire thesis about dreams and their interpretation, Freud maintains that dreaming is after all a wish-fulfillment technique.
Okay, let’s understand this with an overly simplified example.
Just consider you wish to eat candy today but you couldn’t for any reason in the universe.
Now according to Freud, there is a possibility that would dream of eating candies.
Now it is not as simple as this.
We know that dreams are complicated, chaotic, and obscure. They don't deliver the message straightforwardly.
Take the same candy example now for the sake of understanding the intention of the dream.
Practically what happens is maybe you would dream of your favorite uncle visiting you after days who always used to bring you candies.
The uncle might not bring you candies in the dream but his arrival at your place would make sure that candies are coming your way.
Ughh, too much candies!
We have to understand that dreams are symbolic and this too is an overly simplified explanation of actual interpretation.
Basically Freud is trying to say that all dreams are in some or the other way trying to fulfil the unfulfilled wish.
The wishes could range from materialistic things to seeking revenge to gathering experiences and whatnot.
2. Dreams are not trivial. They have something important to tell
One of the most catchy lines from the book The Interpretation of Dreams reads,
“We would never allow trivial things to disturb our sleep.”
Freud rejects the idea that dreams are just ways of disposing of unnecessary psychic material.
Or they don't mean anything.
Or they are just trivial expressions of conscious life.
Or they do not have anything to do with reality (conscious life).
The content and story in dreams might appear trivial in some cases but the intent they carry is not ignorable.
Freud explains how he once considered his dream trivial only to find out that he was just lazy to investigate.
He says that one who thinks dreams are trivial is either naïve or unwilling to address the bitterness of the cause of dreams.
Dreams plot stories in a haphazard fashion, they don’t make any sense uf they’re interpreted literally.
However, they still have the potential to unravel some of our deepest wishes and suppressed emotions.
3. Dreams formulate themselves using the material triggered by recent events of conscious life
You may dream of a place that you never visited but the reason why you dreamed about it can be sourced to your recent waking life.
Let’s again take a simplified example —
You might dream of living in Austria but only because you read about Freud in this article. The expression of Austria is triggered by you coming across Freud who belonged to that country.
This was an explanation of just one single causality.
Likewise, dreams can form a train of connections and you might dream of something completely out of your conceptualization.
Our unconscious just enjoys forming a chain of causations that just pick us and abandon us in a foreign place.
It is rare for a layman to be able to track these causations.
It’s on the interpreter’s part to find the connection and surprise you with the discovery.
4. Sentences narrated by characters in your dreams are of the utmost significance
Freud suggests to stick by the dialogues or monologues uttered in the dream.
The emotions that the dream sentences carry, resemble exactly the ones your wishes inhibit.
Sometimes it isn't even necessary to step down on the emotional level; words in the dreams might literally say what we wish in the waking life.
Let’s say you long wish for buying a car.
Now in your dream, you might find yourself asking someone else to buy it.
The phrase “buy a car” is replicated in both, the waking life and dream life.
Therefore it is necessary to observe and collect words in the dream interpretation process.
5. Dreams take two or more materials and blend them into one expression
If you try to break down a single dream expression, you are likely to find multiple contents from your waking life.
A dream is like the collage of a number of items that it borrows from reality.
Although, it is difficult to segregate them since they overlap each other.
Again, let's visit Austria in our dreams as an example.
This expression of visiting the particular country might have been constructed by the dream on the basis of two things.
First, because you are reading this piece about Freud who belonged to Austria.
Second, you might read about Auschwitz concentration camps today or maybe you just happen to go through an Instagram post of a travel vlogger filming himself in the country.
Or let's say you just had a word with your cousin who once went on her holiday trip to Austria which you envied (a little).
Like this, there could be direct and/or indirect references used by the dreams to build one single expression.
6. Do this to not forget your dreams
It is a common experience for people to forget the dream or to remember it in lost pieces.
Freud has a remedy to this —
If you know you dreamt, try to recollect it first thing after waking up.
Only if you don't do this meditative activity, you’re likely to forget the dream.
We are naturally tended to forget dreams, thanks to their bizarre sequence of events.
Yet another reason why we forget them is that we’re not conscious when we dream.
We are living the dream while dreaming and unaware of the fact that we’re into psychic stimulation only.
So to bring the dream closest to consciousness is by remembering this prescription by Dr. Freud.
7. Difference between reflecting and observing
When we’re trying to make sense of dreams, we should take care that we’re not censoring anything.
Reflecting, is choosing consciously what message you want to derive from the dream whereas observing, is objectively understanding what message the dream wants to deliver.
Reflecting might pollute the dream’s purpose and contaminate its meaning. Either intentionally or unintentionally.
The thing is —
When you know you wished for something that you think is immoral or unethical, it takes brutal honesty to admit it.
