On Dreams

Freud asserts that there are three classes of dreams. The first consists of small, seemingly unimportant dreams that lack anything remarkable. The second class of dreams are those that feel disconnected from reality. In these dreams, events occur that appear to have no basis in experience. While the first class of dreams have both meaning and intelligibility, the second class has meaning but no intelligibility. The third class of dreams, which has no meaning or intelligibility, causes many to doubt the legitimacy of dream analysis. However, Freud suggests that the last two categories of dreams are ripe for psychoanalysis. It is only through dream-work that the individual can distinguish the latent content.

Children’s dreams are mostly of the first class. Their content and meaning are unified and easily readable. The first category of dreams can provide important insight for the analyst and establish a foundation for the interpretation of the second and third categories of dreams. Freud shares several common dreams of children and reveals how each dream is centered on the satisfaction of a wish. Children’s dreams emphasize the wishes and desires of the previous day; they are intrinsically linked with the physical world. Adult humans have many dreams of this type, which focus on manifest content. For example, an adult may dream about getting a drink of water before waking up thirsty. Sometimes these dreams may require an interpretative approach, but they always speak to base desires and wishes. Adults’ desires are more complex than the desires of children, and the desire can be difficult to determine, especially in the second and third class of dreams.

Freud’s discussion of children’s dreams aligns with the theme Dreams as Expressions of Desire. Children’s dreams are preoccupied with external desires that are simple to determine. As children grow older, their dreams and desires become more complicated. The unconscious mind works harder to convolute taboo desires that the conscious mind may find threatening. The second and third class of dreams are less intelligible, which reveals that the desires may be more problematic than those expressed in the first class.

Analysis is an imperative component of interpreting dreams. In Freud’s own dream, a female acquaintance pays him undivided attention. By spending time with the dream and analyzing his symbols, he realizes that this is the exact scene he experienced early in his marriage with his young wife during which he worried that she was paying him no attention. In the dream version of events, the wish is inverted; it is only through analysis that Freud can determine and unlock the hidden desire. This correlates with the theme Making Meaning Through Analysis. Freud returns to this dream throughout the work, diving deeper into the manifest content each time. He follows the threads of the various symbols and finds that—what at first seems to be a meaningless and insignificant narrative—the dream expresses a deeper wish that was previously unavailable to his conscious mind.

Dreams are unique in their ability to compact information, thoughts, and desires into succinct packages. Freud calls this “condensation” (39). Condensation compresses everything, allowing many different ideas to be presented in a short reel. Freud also accredits condensation for the way the dream mixes concepts; a person in a dream, for example, can be made up of many parts of other people. Each dream is made of myriad components, which can be traced in multiple directions. The psychologist shares a dream about swimming; this simple dream conjures many different memories, including another episode with his wife. The dream itself takes the layers of thoughts and finds a way to connect them into a narrative sequence; Freud compares this process to that of creating a rhyme. Sometimes the expression of an idea is changed to fit into the sequence. For this reason, Freud warns against trying to interpret dreams only through the context of waking experiences. It is imperative to approach dreams as a collection of symbols that may not represent perfect embodiments of thoughts and ideas. Multiple elements can make up a “dream thought,” and the translation of these thoughts into condensed narrative is referred to as “dramatisation” (44).

The warning here represents a vital component of Repression and the Unconscious. Dreams undergo a process of condensation and convolution that hide repressed desires from the conscious mind. Because dreams form desires into narratives, certain shifts and changes must be made to create a more fluid storyline. For this reason, Freud suggests that analysts must be on guard against taking the narrative for its face value or relying upon normal story conventions to determine meaning. Dreams do not subscribe to the rules of plot, conflict, and setting. Instead, they present information in disjointed and confusing ways. Major desires may be downplayed through minute symbolism, and small everyday occurrences may be expanded into major plot points. The analyst must be prepared to follow every thread, every symbol, before determining the meaning.