THE DREAM-WORKThe Structure of Dreams as posed

by Freud

Who was Sigmund Freud? Sigmund Freud was…

An Austrian neurologist who became the father of psychoanlysis

Some may argue that he is the father of modern psychology (as nearly EVERY branch of psychology arose as an attack on his theories)

An avid consumer of cigars and cocaine

Freud’s Influence That being said… His influence cannot be quantified, as his

introduction of the “unconscious” into the world changed the way that people viewed humanity.

Side-Bar: Derrida So let’s set aside our reservations,

suspend disbelief, and see what this guy has got to offer…

Freud—The Basics The Unconscious

The unconscious is where we store our repressed memories and desires—memories so hurtful that we banish them from our memory, and desires so dark and twisted that we suppress them so we are not tempted to act on them.

Everything we forget is as a result of our unconscious suppressing something dark tied to that memory.

Freud—The Basics Example: “I forgot to do my homework.”

Freud—The Basics So, how do we access this inaccessible part of

our being? Dreams! According to Freud, dreams are fueled by our

desire to get at what we truly desire—the dark dream-wishes that our unconscious has hidden away.

Dreams, however, are designed to hide the truth, which they do through condensation and displacement.

All of this contributes to the structure of the dream-work.

What is the Dream-Work As described by Freud: “All other previous attempts to solve the

problems of dreams have concerned themselves directly with the manifest dream-content as it is retained in the memory…for us a new psychic material interposes itself between the dream-content and the results of your investigations: the latent dream-content, or dream-thoughts…We develop the solution of the dream from this latent content, and not from the manifest content.”

And this means…? Manifest content

What we remember from our dreams

i.e. I dream that there is a chicken running through my house. The manifest content is that there is a chicken in my house.

Latent content What the symbolic, hidden (or

“latent”) meaning is of our dreams.

i.e. I dream that there is a chicken running through my house. The latent content is that the idiot my brother is letting stay with us for 3 days is loose in my house…

How about you? Take out the dream that you wrote about

yesterday: Pair Up (2 minutes each):

Describe the manifest content Start guessing at what the latent content

might be

More from the Mouth of Freud

“We develop the solution of the dream from this latent content, and not from the manifest content.”

“The dream-content appears to us as a translation of the dream-thoughts into another mode of expression, whose symbols and laws of composition we must learn by comparing the origin with the translation.”

Translation…? We can only understand what a

dream means through the latent-content, NOT the manifest-content.

The manifest-content is the translation of the latent content into a form we can understand. Think a Navajo-English

dictionary: It takes the language we do not

understand (Navajo) and provides us with the English word for the Navajo one so the word is comprehensible to us.

What is the Dream-Work Translating?

Condensation: Compacting the manifest content

According to Freud, the manifest content of a dream may fill half a page, while the latent content could fill half a dozen times that.

In math terms:X = (y² - 45z ± 4/3 ÷

7762.9)^ ∞ⁿ

Displacement: Relocating the manifest content

Attributing a manifest symbol to latent meaning meant to confuse what the true meaning is.

In math terms:Given the same formula as

in “Condensation,” only now you’re told “X” actually equals “3Q”

Huh? Essentially… Freudian dreams SCREW WITH YOUR

HEAD Condense the meaning from long to short… Then displace the meaning to something

(possibly) entirely unrelated!! So by the time we get our manifest content,

the unconscious has basically transformed it into something that is so obscurely related that the meaning is totally distorted.

What do we do with this? Our job, then, is to do

the opposite of what our dreams have done.

Instead of sculpting the latent-content into manifest-content (as our dreams do)…

We dig out the latent-content from the manifest content. (And dig DEEP)

What does this Accomplish?

From the latent-content, we can find our “dream-wish.” Basically our dark suppressed desires. (The

unconscious is always dark) These desires are distorted through the way

they are represented in the manifest-content via condesation and displacement.

Our job to pull the latent-content out of the manifest-content and discover the dream-wish.

What is at the center of the dream? The Desire that fuels the Fantasy of the

Dream

Formula Manifest = what we are presented with Latent =All of the possible hidden

meanings of what we are presented with (obscured through condensation and displacement)

Dream-Wish =underlying dark desire fueling the latent content

More Clarity? Image = Babushka Doll

Taking Apart the Dreamwork Practice time!!

Look back at the dream you were working with beforehand

Identify: The Manifest Content At least 2 layers of latent content

Identify at least 1 way in which each of these layers have been displaced and condensed.

And the dream-wish—then DEFEND it!