Road to the unconscious

“Royal road leading to the unconscious”

Sigmund Freud called dreams “the royal road leading to the unconscious.” It is dreams that are able to draw our attention to what we are not aware of, do not accept in ourselves, do not want and cannot see.

The unconscious is so named because we are not aware of it. Any of our strong-willed efforts here are futile. Unconscious desires, fantasies, conflicts give our conscious “I” only hints of their existence (reservations, erroneous actions), which we usually tend to ignore.

A dream is also such a hint – emotionally charged and at the same time expanded, accessible to reflection. If we are inquisitive and honest enough with ourselves, dreams allow us to reconstruct our unconscious desire, impulse, fantasy, and the conflict associated with them. Precisely to reconstruct, to create a conjecture about what Freud called the “thought of the dream” – because the dream very rarely speaks directly.

He, like a film or text in the strict hands of the editor, is subject to censorship. What is incompatible with our conscience, what gives rise to spiritual conflicts, is erased or distorted. However, even this strict censor naps in sleep, and therefore the dream is able to reveal more to the interested researcher than the reasoning of the sleepless “I”.

Psychoanalysis attaches such importance to the interpretation of dreams, because in many ways it has evolved from this analysis, which has become its “royal road”. It is important to understand here that the interpretation of dreams in psychoanalysis has very little to do with their interpretation of the type of dream book: if you saw a snake in a dream, this is for sex.

What is of paramount importance here is not the dream symbols themselves, but the associative context given by the patient and sometimes supplemented by the analyst’s associations based on his knowledge and understanding of the patient.

Why do most people not remember their dreams?

The reasons may be different. For example, censorship is so severe that the border between sleep and wakefulness is impenetrable. However, there are many examples when the same person can become an active dreamer for periods, while not remembering dreams at all for periods. This changes the level of his resistance to understanding his own problems.

Another reason: dreams help us process information. When we are emotionally overwhelmed, intellectually puzzled, dreams can come to our aid. In this case, they help to “think” about what our soul is working on.

An example of this are the dreams of children, designed to “explain” the frightening and intriguing questions of sexuality and death, the dreams of adolescents, frightened by their own growing up and dreaming of the embodiment of their conflicting desires for freedom and security.

In this series, and “serial” dreams, terrible dreams – like a cry for help. Or, on the contrary, dreams, after which we wake up with relief, and sometimes with a ready solution. So, Mendeleev saw his table in a dream, and Paul McCartney “heard” Yesterday.

When such processes are not so intense, dreams do not need to break into consciousness. Sometimes a person needs to see many dreams “in the dark” before one of them, as if final, is released “into the light”.

One elderly man told me that he hardly dreamed all his life, and quite a long time after the death of his wife he began to regularly see her in a dream – young, cheerful. This active, active person managed to live “without dreams”, until the task that could not be solved by consciousness appeared – to return the lost, to revive the memory. His unconscious must have been working on these dreams for a long time, because it had to process powerlessness, despair and anger before providing comfort.

prophetic dreams

Such dreams can “come true” in the sense that, retrospectively, we fit the real incident to a rather vague prediction that would be forgotten if it did not come true. For example, dreams about the death of a loved one are very common, but we will consider such a dream as prophetic only if this person really gets sick or dies.

There is also the phenomenon of so-called self-fulfilling prophecies. Having a certain attitude, we unconsciously begin to see what is determined by it, and ignore what contradicts it. We can begin to behave in accordance with this installation – and the prophecy is being realized. If Oedipus did not believe the oracle’s prediction and did not run away from home, would he have had to kill his father and marry his mother?

Finally, there are phenomena of the “shared unconscious” – when close people at the unconscious level feel in each other that which eludes consciousness. This is akin to the instinct of an animal, sometimes knowing the state and mood of the owner even before he himself can clearly feel them.

And true prophecies – when the dreamer, like biblical characters, is a specially chosen receiver of some higher knowledge – if they exist, they are outside the scope of psychoanalytic research.

Can we interpret our own dreams

Yes, of course, and a classic example is Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. However, one should be aware that “we are not in power in ourselves”, that we will not be able to understand the true content of a dream when it is too conflicting, emotionally charged. What circle would Dante have reached if Virgil had not been with him? A fellow traveler is needed not because he knows more, but because he is able to walk alongside.

What are the benefits of working with dreams?

Expansion of the interior space. The discovery of the “world inside”, an additional dimension. The ability to connect the internal and external, your fantasies and reality, feelings and thoughts – that is, to become more holistic. Finally, enjoy the game. And if you’re lucky, then the periodic table!