Recently I am reading "The Interpretation of Dreams" by the great Sigmund Freud, one of his brilliant writings. So far I have ended one-quarter of the book, which is mostly about the brief introduction of the existing dream theories at that time.
While reading it, of late I have become conscious of my own dreams and trying to relate with the theories that I have come across so far. One of which put forward by Hildebrandt; says that the dream state is nothing but the continuation of the waking state. Those thoughts that got suppressed while in the waking state find their way to flourish through dreams. Not only that, dreams work through symbolic images. That means one who dreams about something doesn't dream exactly like the way you see the real world while being awake, instead dreams about it through images that represent that particular idea. For example and I quote from the book about various dreams that typically occurs with almost the same content, 'Among these are well-known dreams of falling from a height, of the dropping out of teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because one is naked or scantily clad. This last type of dream is said to be caused simply by the dreamer's perception, felt in his sleep, that he has thrown off the bedclothes and is uncovered'.
Here I want to talk about my own dream which exactly resonates with the above description. So, today I woke up after a nap at noon. And I started crying !! It happened to me a couple of times before it too. And I remember now, when I thought hard about it, as a child sometimes I used to see dreams that make me angry at my parents for no reason. Those were like they refused to buy me my favorite chocolate and I am crying near the store but they didn't bother about it and took me away. And its effects were still strong when I woke up. I got angry but didn't know why? I think I know the answer now. Maybe, there was something I was upset with them but I suppressed those feelings in my waking state they got manifested in my dreams, and if you are still thinking what about the chocolates that came up in the dream; The refusal of it represented all the reasons for which I was upset with my parents, the so-called 'symbolic image' that I mentioned earlier.
Back to my original query. So, the dream was like I was in the middle of a class and suddenly the teacher(I also vividly remember the name of the teacher whom I don't want to name here for obvious reasons) asked me to come in front of the board to write something. Then he started to scold me as if I wrote it wrong. I went closer to him and discovered that he has an acute fever; I told him to sit and take rest but he didn't listen and the next thing I remember he was on the death bed. All of a sudden there were too many emotions that embodied me and I woke up feeling dismal.
Naturally, I was curious about the dream. I thought hard and here's what I interpret. Basically for the last 8 months, I was home only once due to my busy academic schedule but frankly, I wasn't feeling any strong emotions for not being at home for that long. But I remember before going to sleep, I saw a post of someone showing immense affection for her father and it was really heart-touching. It's these 'external sensory stimuli', as described by Freud in the book, that evokes the thought of feeling homesick. The teacher in the dream was representing my father. The professor was strict, disciplined, and caretaking at the same time; which perfectly describes my father. He called me to solve a problem on the board which portrays brilliantly how he always wanted me to face my problems up front and to become the very best in whatever I do by doing the things that needed to be done. And the last part of 'dying' was summoning the fact that I was missing him.
Now, the question can arise, like, why should we even bother to interpret our dreams in the first place? I think I have an answer to it. You see, just like in my case dreams are not always useless. It can be used to underlie the unconscious feeling that we can't solve in the waking state. Like sometimes when we feel to be bothered about something that we don't know the real reason for, dreams can help us to mitigate those in some manner if we paid enough attention to them; that's my understanding. Also as Robert (1886), a physician from Hamburg points out, dreams can also be caused by the incomplete activities that are needed to be done in the waking state but it's not. Maybe that can help us to navigate through the unwelcome consequences that we don't want to feel in real life and be better prepared for it.
Man, this is fun!!!!
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