Modern humanities: key concepts and disciplines

¶ … dreams as they relate to Sigmund Freud's theories about their manifestation and origin. The writer uses a personal dream and first narrates it, then explores various parts of the psyche that contributed to it, using Freud's standards, and finally explains how the ego transformed drives and wishes into the narrative of the dream by means of distortion or dream work.

THE DREAM

The dream I have chosen to use for this project is one that I have had several times over the past few years.

It begins with me in the kitchen. I am preparing foods for dinner and looking out the window. The backyard is filled with flowers and grass but there is a clearing in which I can see for a long ways. Through that clearing, far away, I see several tornadoes that seem to be coming straight for the house.

A become instantly panicked and my stomach goes into knots. I watch them for several seconds trying to determine which way they are headed. There are four of them in a line and they are getting closer.

I begin racing through the house trying to locate my loved ones. I find them and begin to order them around to safety, however, the problem becomes that I am petrified I will choose the wrong place to tell them to go. SO we all race around the house. First I open a closet and we all push into the closet. We can hear the wind outside getting stronger but I am afraid the closet won't be sturdy enough to handle it. So instead we all race out of the closet and everyone is looking for a place that we can all hide together. I look out the window and see that the tornadoes are scarily close. They are bearing down on our back yard.

We spot what appears to be a basement even though part of it is above ground. Once inside that area we cannot decide where to hide there. Do we go up under the stair case that is there and made of wood? Do we kide against the tall brick wall that makes up the garage area? They all as me what to do and I tell them to go various places but keep changing my mind out of fear that I am choosing the wrong place and those I love will die when the twisters hit.

Suddenly it is upon us. I throw myself over my loved ones and somehow I fit over them all and still have arm span enough to grab the carpet that is beneath us all. I am holding onto the carpet and the tornado is trying to rip us up off the floor and take us away. I hold on with everything I have and cannot let go. To tornadoes pass and we all jump up. I am so relieved. I am crying with relief that somehow I managed to save them. We look outside and we can see the same four tornadoes coming back again. And the whole process starts over. I wake up just as we are again panicking about where to hide.

Interesting points to note include the fact that every time I have this dream the house is completely decorated in cedar wood, tongue and groove paneling and I have never lived in a wood paneled house.

In addition I am always cutting up carrots at the time I look out the window and see the tornadoes coming.

Also, in the dream the windows under the house that are the last area we run to are damaged with condensation and have that fog that you cannot see through but the light gets through.

There are several factors in the dream that I believe are sources to various parts of my psyche. The most obvious one of course is the use of tornadoes. The tornadoes are actually representative of the fear that I have in my psyche. The fear grows bigger as is noted by the tornadoes drawing more near.

While the tornadoes are obvious sources to my psyche there are others as well. The space that I see when I look out the window is evidently a source to my psyche as is the basement area that we try to fit into. According to Freud's theory the closet that I try to get everyone to enter would also be an example of a source to my psyche as things like closets can actually be images in my psyche of female genitalia.

This leads me to another source to my psyche that I believe is in the dream and that is the carrots that I am cutting up. Freud believed strongly that almost every emotion and thought actually traced back to repressed sexual desire. I believe the carrots, according to Freud were representative of my ID desire for sexual relations.

The deep features that are desired by the ID include not only the carrots and the closets but also the powerful wind that roars through the house as I try and hold my loved ones under me to keep them safe in the dream.

The tornado I believe represents my ID desire as well, but for freedom from the obligations of my life, not the actual urge to protect them.

One way these urges and impulses are released is through our dreams. Freud understood the symbolic nature of dreams and believed they were a direct connection to our unconscious, what Freud refers to as the id. The id is centered around pleasure, desire, unchecked urges and wish fulfillment. During our waking hours, the desires of the id are suppressed by the superego, which acts as a censor for the id. The superego enforces the moral codes for the ego and blocks unacceptable impulses of the id. Because your guard is down during the dream state, your unconscious has the opportunity to act out and express the hidden desires of the id.

The Ego is also an element that contributed to the dream. I have always feared losing my family and being alone in the world. When I was a small child I became lost for several hours in the woods. I remember being petrified and feeling like I would never see any of my family members again. That fear has been within me since the incident. I was located by my father who took me into his arms and carried me all the way back to our family camp that I had wandered away from. I remember my mother crying and hugging me and a family style bear hug happening. I also remember the police officer talking to me about how brave I had been to wait for them to find me. For many years I desired that my family be together every minute of every day so I would not chance losing them again.

The dream used several manifest ideas to bring forth latent ideas in my opinion. Freud uses the term displacement, which is the desire for one thing or a person being symbolized with another.

I believe there are several instances in my dream that can be attributed to the theory of displacement as discussed by Sigmund Freud. The first indicator of displacement is when I am cutting up carrots in the kitchen. The carrots are actually phallic symbols. I don't think this means I have an unconscious desire to have a penis or to have sex however, I think it means something even more complicated than that. I believe the use of the carrots and the tornadoes shapes as a phallic symbol has to do with the representation of the penis and the fact that society places more trust in males than females when it comes to the protection and logical ability of people.

In crisis, such as a storm coming to hurt my family I believe that the symbols that are representative of a penis are indicators that I believe it takes a man to protect loved ones and to choose the right pathways to lead to that protection and success. And I don't like that belief so I cut the carrots up with a sharp knife which is demonstrative of the anger I feel at my own belief that men are better at protecting families than women are.

A also believe that there is some projection in the dream. Projection, by Freud's standard, means to propel my desires onto another. I think that the fact the entire family is underneath me and I am working to hold them there and not let the storm take them away represents my wish that my family stay with me and maintain the closeness that we currently have.

My grabbing onto the carpet and refusing to let go is my ID projecting the need I have for family to be near by but because I don't consciously face that need my ID and my dreams provide it with projection by having the entire family listen to me as we seek shelter and get underneath me to be protected from the storm (world).