Revolution according to Freud

The main road to the unconscious

Freud called dreams «the royal road leading to the unconscious» and believed that they allow us to get closer to understanding the most secret desires and fantasies that are inaccessible to consciousness. He compared the dream to a puzzle that we must solve. This means that the dream images must be considered sequentially, one after the other, in order to understand what content they hide.

A woman who was worried about her magnificent forms sees in a dream a full basket, which she has nowhere to put. Here the «completeness» of the basket should be understood as the «completeness» of its figure. What desire is hidden in this dream? A woman really wants to get rid of excess weight — this is just one of the desires reflected in the dream. And behind him lies one more thing — she, on the contrary, wants to become «full», that is, to become pregnant. It would seem that a legitimate desire — why is it suppressed? Behind him lies another, less acceptable: at the age of five, she dreamed of having a child from her father.

Fulfillment of desires

What desires do we strive to fulfill in a dream? First of all, these are any needs caused by «somatic arousal» (hunger, thirst). In children, desires that remain unfulfilled during the day are often realized in a dream. Such dreams Freud called «immediate», in contrast to «distorted», hiding our «reprehensible» desires (for example, those associated with incest, the murder of a rival parent, adultery …), which we refuse to acknowledge and repress into the unconscious.

The obvious meaning is just a façade

“When falling asleep, unwanted ideas emerge as the critical process weakens,” wrote Freud**. But still, they are quite camouflaged, so the main rule is not to be confused by the explicit images of a dream, which can be neutral or absurd. After all, the conscious «I» even in a dream exercises its «censorship» and does not allow unconscious images to manifest themselves in a dream with all clarity. When such elements cross the border of consciousness, anxiety arises and we wake up. Only work on the analysis of dreams with the help of free associations in relation to the individual elements of the «manifest» dream helps to make them accessible to consciousness.

Displacement and Condensation

In order to prevent the conscious «I» from deciphering our forbidden desires, the unconscious goes to tricks and distorts them beyond recognition. For example, it shifts the emphasis from an emotionally charged element to another, less significant one, and therefore the events that occur in a dream seem neutral to us. The father, whom we unconsciously wish for death because the mother «belongs» only to him, may appear in the guise of a judge or other servant of the law. This tactic of distorting one’s true desires is called «shifting.» Another way — «condensation» — combines several people or a number of objects with similar characteristics into one that does not cause anxiety in the conscious «I».

Dreams are selfish

Despite the abundance of themes and characters, «a dream is certainly selfish.» “My method does not provide a universal key for deciphering dreams,” Freud explained. “I am sure that the same dream in different persons and under different circumstances can hide different thoughts.”*** In other words, each of us creates our own dreams with the help of a personal “code”, weaving our own meanings and memories into them. When Freud dreamed that he «wrote a monograph on a plant,» only he could associate it with the cyclamen flower, which, in turn, was a reminder of his wife Martha. No one else would have thought of building just such connections.

* Z. Freud «The Interpretation of Dreams.» Eksmo, 2005.** Ibid. *** Z. Freud “Introduction to psychoanalysis. Lectures. Science, 1995.