of being realised in dreams. Furthermore, to children, he argues, 'dead' means little more than 'gone' so
is not such an evil wish.
Dreams of death of a parent, often apply to the parent who is of the same sex
as they dreamer, and in the context of infantile sexuality their same sex parent is therefore a rival in
love, whose elimination could not fail to be to their advantage. This is immortalised in Oedipus rex and
Freud's identification of this phenomenon as the "Oedipus Complex".
(c) Other Typical Dreams
For example
the dreamer finds himself flying through the air to the accompaniment of agreeable feelings or falling
with feelings of anxiety. Freud concludes that these dreams too, reproduce impressions of childhood,
i.e. relating to games of movement, which are extraordinarily attractive to children.
He rejects the theory
that these dreams are provoked by our tactile feelings during sleep or sensations of the movement of
our lungs and so on. Conversely Freud argues that these sensations themselves are produced as part
of the memory to which the dream goes back, i.e. they are part of the content of the dream rather than
its source.
(d) Examination Dreams
Most people have at some stage, had anxiety-dreams of failing an
exam or being obliged to take an exam again, turning up late, missing the day etc. Freud proposes that
these represent intensifications of the same childhood fears that we recall for punishments suffered for
our evil deeds in childhood. So, once out of the discipline of parents, or teachers, we feel the burden
of responsibility ourselves so whenever we have done something poorly, or insufficiently, we expect to
be punished by the event. Furthermore, Freud found, interestingly that we only dream of failing exams
which we have successfully passed, and never ones which we have failed. Freud also suggests that the
dreams' latent content could be of self-criticism and consolation, and returning to a psychosexual view,
Freud points out that the has a lot of material conforming the view of Wilhelm Stekel who suggested that
examination dreams relate to sexual tests and sexual maturity.
VI. THE DREAM-WORK
Freud, individual,
in distinguishing between the dream as we experience it – the 'manifest dream contents' - and the stimuli
which act together to produce the dream, the 'latent dream thoughts'. The process by which the latent
thoughts are transformed into to manifest dream content is known as the 'dream-work'. Freud found
that there were four dream-work processes : Condensation, displacement, representation by symbols
and reversal. Therefore this chapter is best summarised accordingly.
(1)The work of Condensation
This
is the process by which two or more associations to the latent dream thought are compressed into one
image. An example from his own dreams:
The Botanical Monograph dream
I had written a monograph on
an (unspecified genus of plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded
coloured plate. Bound up in the copy there was a dried specimen of the plant.
The botanical monograph,
related to the work upon cocaine that Freud had once written. The coloured plate led to a new topic –
Freud's fascination, especially as a medical student with the coloured plates in journals, and also to
an occasion when as a child he had pulled to pieces a book with coloured plates. The dried specimen
of the plant touched upon an episode of the herbarium as Freud's secondary school. Thus dreams, in
their manifest content condense several latent (indifferent, but recent and/or infantile impressions) into a
single dream.
(2)The Work of Displacement
Freud saw this as a process of censorship, that is we don't
want to admit to the real object of the latent thought and so the desire is displaced onto another object
which alludes to it. Freud saw this process also working in the waking life of neurotics with perversions
whi displace their object of sexual desire onto something else that alludes to it, such as cross- dressing
or ejaculating while kissing. These sort of displacements can also occur in dreams.
(3)Representation by
Symbols
This occurs when complex or abstract thoughts are converted into an image. Freud cites the
examples of the concept of `possession' (in German `besitzen') being represented by sitting (`sitzen') on
the object, or of the concept of `adultery' (`ehenbruch') being represented by a broken leg (`beinbruch').
So in trying to interpret a rather vague concept into an image the mind can often use a linguistically
similar word that is more concrete and readily converted into images as a symbol for the desired concept.
(4)Reversal
Freud
held that the mind often treats opposites as the same thing and will often replace one for the other in a
dream, for example `weakness' can become `strength' or `small' `large' in dreams. To support this belief he
uses examples of this occurring in language. In ancient Egyptian for example `ken' meant both `strong' and
`weak'. The two meanings were only differentiated by inflection in speech and in writing by the addition
of a pictograph of a man either standing or squatting. It was only later that the two distinct words `ken' (`strong')
and `kan' (`weak') were developed. Or, to take an example from English, the word `with' once had meanings
of both `combining' and `separating' which can still be seen in words such as `withdraw' and `withhold'.
The mind then has no problem with using interchangeably opposites such as `strong-weak', `light-dark' or