More On Dreams
About a week after I published my essay ‘On Dreams’ on the internet platform Medium, I received a most unexpected email in my inbox. Several people had left comments stating that they’d found the essay interesting, and one guy had even rung me up to talk about, stating that he’d hoped I would reach some grand conclusion as to the meaning of it all at the end, and was rather disappointed that I hadn’t. This message, however, went further. It was from M, a guy I know from the synagogue whom I’ve previously had a lengthy discussion with about North Korea. He’d chanced upon the essay, found it interesting and stated that my discussion about the recurrence of themes perhaps pointing towards something more meaningful fits in well with Freud’s analysis of dreams. It turns out that he’d studied Freud extensively as a young man and so I seized upon the opportunity to learn more and several days later we were chatting on Zoom.
The thing was, psychological dream analysis was something that I’d wanted to learn more about and, during my recording of my dreams, I’d searched several times on the internet for some decent information and guidance in this field, but, alas, all I had found were numerous sites offering “dream interpretation” — you know the sort of thing, like “If you see a pig in your dream it means that someone around you is stubborn and you need to be careful of this” or “The dragon in your dream represents your inner demons”. I’ve always been sceptical of this kind of stuff since I cannot see how meanings such as these can be anything but culture specific and one’s dreams should really have a meaning (if they have one at all) unique to oneself. That is to say, when I see a dragon in my dream (I’m still waiting for that one) it could have a completely different meaning than if my ex-wife (who is from a different culture and has different thoughts and interests than I do) sees one. “Freud would agree,” said M, “and he would class that sort of dream interpretation that you discuss as nonsense, more like mysticism or fortune telling. According to Freud, there is no dream dictionary.” Straightaway, I knew that I wanted to learn more.
M, it transpired, had read Psychology at university, and become particularly intrigued by the subject of dreams and Freud’s take on them. “The thing is,” he told me, “according to Freud, dreams should not be seen as random elements; each element is meaningful and represents a hidden process.” That was hard for me to accept though, particularly since some of my dreams were extremely random and nonsensical. I thought of the one where my son put his baby cousin in a mayonnaise jar and then put her in the fridge, killing her by accident.” What sort of meaning could that have? “I don’t know,” said M, “because it was your dream and not mine, but Freud would say that the dream does have a hidden meaning specific to you.”
As an example, he shared a dream that Freud had dreamt involving a monograph of a flower. Freud’s summary of the dream was several lines long, similar in length to my own summaries. His analysis stretched to several pages and broke down the dream into individual elements, looking at each in turn. He explored themes of guilt, ingratitude and forgetfulness amongst others. It was fascinating.[1]
A lot was about the manifest versus latent content of dreams. Manifest means, ‘Evident to the senses, especially to the sight; apparent; distinctly perceived’ whilst latent refers to what is ‘Existing or present but concealed or inactive.’ So, in the dream that I had (#10 in my essay) about E, an old amour, the manifest would be that which involves her, someone I once loved and miss in some way, but the latent might be some of the other elements such as the running white horses that just seemed random to me but actually have a meaning even though it’s not obvious.
I think.
“Dreams are always the fulfilment of a wish, although this can be a hidden or evil wish,” continued M, who really seemed to know his stuff. Again, with the E dream, I get that. I mean, I wish we’d stayed together and got married and stuff and there she is, popping up in a dream still in love with me whereas in real life she most likely does not regret her decision and rarely gives me a thought (although in her dreamworld, is it the same…?). But some of the others don’t seem to be fulfilling wishes at all. I mean, like the putting of my niece into a mayonnaise jar and killing her accidentally by placing her in the fridge; what kind of sick wish fulfilment could that be? “You need to break it down element by element,” M reminded me, “and the random elements may reveal themselves to have purpose.”
Maybe.
“What you also need to remember,” he continued, is that many dreams are over-determined.” Not wishing to admit that I wasn’t sure what he was on about, I later consulted Prof. Wikipedia on over-determinism, and this was what he told me:
“Freud wrote in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ that many features of dreams were usually ‘overdetermined,’ in that they were caused by multiple factors in the life of the dreamer, from the ‘residue of the day’ (superficial memories of recent life) to deeply repressed traumas and unconscious wishes, these being ‘potent thoughts’. Freud favoured interpretations which accounted for such features not only once, but many times, in the context of various levels and complexes of the dreamer’s psyche.”[2]
Ok, then, so, if one is to put all that into layman’s language, what Freud is saying is that dreams often over-egg the pudding by stressing the same theme multiple times and mixing “deeply repressed traumas and unconscious wishes” (such as the failed relationship with E) with superficial memories of recent life (like, I had recently bought a picture of running white horses for my ex). So maybe the death of my niece in a mayonnaise jar was like, images of my brother’s house where we visit regularly and his huge fridge, coupled with a deeper fear that my son, who can be a bit dopey, may do something without thinking it through and this could have serious unforeseen consequences (such as killing his cousin).
Perhaps.
To really understand it all, I realised that I needed to properly put all of this into practice. We decided to have a go at giving one of the dreams outlined in my essay a Freudian analysis. M stressed that he is no dream interpreter but would offer suggestions and guidance. I decided to choose the E dream, since that was the one that, at the time, I suspected held some deeper meaning due to the prevailing nature of its content:
#10: E (former amour) was there. We went for a walk into the fields, towards the Sinking Pond, to talk. As we walked, she laid her head on my breast. She had not aged and wore the same shirt that she has on in the picture with G that we took when we first met. She said that we had lost a lifetime. She said that she wished we had been together, and that her husband would not be happy if he knew she was here with me. She said that her marriage had not been successful, that he left her sometimes to sleep elsewhere. I asked if he hit her, and she said that he sometimes did. Wild white horses ran across the field below the Half Moon Tree. She said that she wanted us to be together. Then we were disturbed by dogs and there was a fox sheltering at my feet. I distracted the dogs so that the fox could escape. Two teenage fox hunters came and threw manure at me. I threw some back. Then I saw their mother and asked her to control them. She admitted that they were a problem and I said that I understood. Went back to E and then woke up.
M told me to break the dream down and take it element by element, so we started off with E. She was a girl that I had been very much in love with when younger, she’d left me, and it had sort-of ended badly. We hadn’t seen one another since, a period of over two decades, M asked if she regularly appeared in my dreams (she does) and asked what I thought that might mean. I told him that I believed that the issue was the unfinished business of it all; our relationship had been sliced off in the middle of things and that bothered me. This was partially my fault (I was advised by my uncle at the time to make a clean break rather than trying to stay friends — I now regret this), but partially due to the circumstances. I told him that the opposite was true with my ex-wife. When we split up, I had both learnt from the first experience but also due to necessity as we had a child together, so I had maintained a platonic relationship and we are today still good friends. Therefore, there is a sense of completion (the intimate relationship had run its course anyway) and closure; with E there was neither.
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Next, he asked me about the setting — the fields, the Sinking Pond, the Half-Moon Tree. These were the fields that I used to explore and play in as a child, thus tallying well with what he said about childhood experiences playing such a large part in our dreams. M asked what those fields meant to me, and I said they were a happy place, but they also represented freedom, independence and a time before life was complicated. So far, so obvious.
As we walked, she laid her head on my breast. She had not aged and wore the same shirt that she has on in the picture with G that we took when we first met.
M asked if she had often laid her head on my breast. I told him that she had, and I suppose this represented the intimacy that I wanted and perhaps missed. The fact that she had not aged and was wearing the same shirt that she’d worn in a photo of her taken when we first met, I believe indicated that I wanted to return back to the beginning, to before all the nastiness happened, when everything was new and exciting. Interestingly, M asked what age I was in the dream. In all honesty, I couldn’t say. I certainly wasn’t a child despite the location but was I the me of when I met E or the me of today? I think it was the former, but I can’t say for sure. “I was just me!” I told him, knowing that the answer was inadequate, for I had been born and had died thousands of times since then.
She said that we had lost a lifetime. She said that she wished we had been together, and that her husband would not be happy if he knew she was here with me. She said that her marriage had not been successful, that he left her sometimes to sleep elsewhere. I asked if he hit her, and she said that he sometimes did.
We then explored her words. To me, the wish fulfilment that M had spoken of earlier was clearest here. The feeling that we had lost a lifetime was mine and I wished/hoped that she felt the same (in all honesty, in real-life she probably does not, but that is by the by). She says that she wishes we’d been together; again, my wish was in her mouth, but, crucially, the reason for that lack of a life together was a good justification for her actions: fear. She had made the wrong choice and married a bully whom she was scared of, who had not made her happy, who was adulterous and who was violent towards her.
Again, separating reality from dreamworld out here, I have no evidence that she ever was scared of her husband, that he was violent and that she was unhappy, but this is the realm of dreams. If all that were true, it provides a valid justification for us not being together and for my original belief that we should have been together. It fulfils my wishes to have been right all along and to have her yearning to come back to me.
Again, so far, nothing too complicated, but now the dream gets weird, and I begin to wonder if it is all just a meaningless bag of random thoughts, which is not what Freud believes.
Wild white horses ran across the field below the Half Moon Tree. She said that she wanted us to be together.
So, what do the horses mean, if anything? White horses are one of those symbols that dream interpreters believe mean something. A quick search on the internet informed me that white horses “The white horse is a symbol of hope and good things to come. The horse in general symbolises hope, courage, strength, and good things coming your way.” Very nice, but according to M, Freud discounted all such interpretations as mysticism and thus nonsense and, to be honest, I’m inclined to agree. What it may mean for one person, might be completely different for another.
So, what about me?
My belief is that the white horses in that dream are connected to a painting that Tom and I bought for my ex (his mum) sometime earlier. It was one of those standard images of running white horses that you find in Chinese restaurants and other businesses. That is because in Far Eastern cultures (she is Vietnamese) they represent success, peace, and progress. However, I believe that the painting was on my mind more because she had not put it up yet even though it was a gift off her son which I thought was a tad ungrateful and unfair as some considerable thought and effort had been put into buying the picture.
“But is that everything that the running horses might mean?” M asked me. To be honest, I wasn’t sure. The running could be an indication of freedom and perhaps even sexual energy (considering the general theme of the dream, both were appropriate) but I wasn’t sure. And that’s the weakness with the Freudian approach: there are so many possible meanings that maybe one can read anything into something. “The key is that it should resonate with you,” said M, “as it is your subconscious that has produced it.” Definitely, I thought the connection with the painting was real, and the sense of ingratitude that that had created in my mind. And perhaps that ingratitude was the thing: with E I had always felt that she had not shown gratitude for things that I’d done for her and that she’d treated me selfishly and callously when she left me. Could the two be connected? M suggested maybe a feeling of guilt on my part that I had loved E despite being married to someone later on, the person whom the horse painting had been bought for. What did I think of this? Perhaps, though I’m not sure.
Then we were disturbed by dogs and there was a fox sheltering at my feet. I distracted the dogs so that the fox could escape. Two teenage foxhunters came and threw manure at me. I threw some back. Then I saw their mother and asked her to control them. She admitted that they were a problem and I said that I understood. Went back to E and then woke up.
And then we finish with the bizarre foxhunting episode. Now, I have never been pro-foxhunting, although, conversely, I’ve never been anti it enough to join a march or something of the like. So, what does this episode mean to me? Well, I am sure that the fox sheltering at my feet represented a desire to protect the vulnerable from attacks and threats (the dogs). Was this me wanting to protect E from her abusive husband or something broader? What is interesting is that I have always viewed foxhunters as being emblematic of the upper classes, the entitled elite who ride roughshod (literally) over working people. The way I see this episode is relating to my political beliefs: I want to protect the weak and vulnerable from the powerful forces of oppression and to do that, maybe one must be prepared to get one’s hands dirty (the manure).
But what of the fact that the foxhunters were teenagers? Well, that could partially be because I was back in the fields of my childhood where the teenagers were the powerful threat to be feared, or it could be that I subconsciously recognise that even oppressors are children inside. Certainly, the latter fits with me talking to their mum and understanding the issue, as I’ve always tried to empathise with those who hold a different view to myself. Even Tories can be loved… though it is hard sometimes.
And so there ends my first attempt at Freudian dream analysis. I’m sure that someone more experienced will tell me that I did it wrong and that I’m missing something crucial, but whether that is the case or not, the exercise was a fun one to undertake, and it’s something that I’d like to have another go at — after all, I’ve got eighteen months’ worth of dreams to go at. What is more, it has opened up so many more questions, like how much of the dream am I actually recalling and how much am I remembering as I wish it had been, or is there a subconscious link between separate dreams in a single night or are they to be taken each in isolation? Such ponderings though, can wait for later.
And so that is it, I now know how to interpret dreams psychologically. I thanked M for the chat and the support, but he stopped me dead in my tracks. “That is only Freudian interpretation,” he said, “now we need to look at what Jung had to say on the matter…”
11–12/04/22, Smallthorne, UK
[1] This is ‘The Dream of the Botanical Monograph’ and here is the summary: “I had written a monograph on a certain plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded coloured plate. Bound up in each copy there was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from a herbarium.” For the analysis, check out http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis/dream_example.pdf
[2] E.g. chapter 6, “The Dream-Work”, section b., “The work of displacement” read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermination
