On the Nature of Dreams
The nature of dreams has always eluded psychologists ever since the human
psyche and all its manifestations were subject to the scrutiny of scientific thinking.
In the past, the application of empirical methods in the appraisal of mental
phenomena seemed obsolete given the prevalent notion that there was nothing
novel to be discovered in the frontier of the human mind since the contents of
the former were supposedly identical with the materials of consciousness. The
existence of a terra incognita within the domain of psychological processes was
neither speculated nor ascribed much credence for men were too fond of the idea
that they were ‘masters of their own houses’. But in light of the discovery of
the unconscious as an elementary factor of the human psyche and its supreme
significance in the determination of the true meaning of psychic phenomena, this
ill conceived notion that all mental processes were encapsulated by the horizon of
consciousness was soon to be shown as utterly insufficient in accounting for the
facts unearthed in the investigation of neurotic disorders and as a consequence
evinced the presence of influences which escaped the narrow scope of conscious
ideation.
Nonetheless the concept of the unconscious is still greeted with ridicule and
mockery in circles that are inclined to reduce all forms of psychological suffering
to physiological processes whose subtle nature is held responsible for obscuring
our assumption of an organic cause to these afflictions. It went against all medical
convention to even entertain an assumption to the contrary since what else could
possibly give rise to such strange illnesses? Surely all of these forms of mental
afflictions one way or another must emanate from a deformity of the brain or
some other biological predicate whose seemingly absent nature doesn’t necessarily
entail its non existence. To attribute the cause of such maladies to something as
nebulous as the human psyche and its strange inner mechanisms strikes us as
odd for it appears to depart from the sober tradition of empiricism with which
the scientific community and all of its factions are intimately acquainted with.
Nonetheless the consistent failure to demonstrate that all forms of psychological
afflictions can exclusively be reduced to a somatic origin leads one to suggest
that either our understanding of brain physiology is woefully limited or perhaps
the content of our own minds are not as transparent as we assume them to be.
This decision to ascribe an equal significance to mental processes as relatively
independent from its physiological underpinnings, in my opinion, marked a
decisive moment in the history of empirical thought. Although it seems pseudoscientific to outline the nature of processes whose essence can only be inferred
indirectly, the hypothesis generated from such inferences are still bound by the
same pragmatic demarcations as any other. In such instances, the scientific
method evolves into a form of instrumentalism where the utility of an idea in the
domain of its appropriate application is found to be the only viable measure of its
truth. Not only does this lend credibility to attempts of analyzing psychological
processes but also dispenses with accusations of any unbounded capriciousness
on the part of the investigators who undertake such an enterprise. But what
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precisely gives rise to the overwhelming reluctance we often encounter against
the existence of unconscious trains of thought which is stipulated to influence
our mode of conduct. Is it merely a reaction against the overtly unscientific
demeanour of such an idea or does it perhaps ironically indicate the manifestation
of a prejudice which owes its potency for being of the very nature it seeks to
dismiss?
Partly the reason why the entire concept of the unconscious as being an indispensable part of our mental apparatus is met with much resistance is because it
seems to undermine the amount of control we often assume to exercise over our
choices. In the past and perhaps even now, the decisions we make which finds
it consequent expression in our actions is generally held to be the inexorable
product of one’s volition. As a result, any mode of conduct which infringed upon
the status quo was perceived as a direct consequence of thoughtful deliberation
or in the least was regarded to be influenced by some amount of premeditation.
Naturally, any framework which ,wittingly or unwittingly, cast these ideals under
a questionable light was dismissed from the very outset under the pretext of
ascribing its origins to fringe intellectuals whose postulations must have been
nothing but a desperate coup to secure attention and respectability. To surmise
that these unconscious influences profoundly shaped the way we act and perceived each other threatened some of the fundamental assumptions of our social
institutions that relied on concepts of accountability and justice for its proper
functioning. All of these misgivings appears to have reinforced the prejudice
against the utility of any subjective phenomena, such as dreams which happens
to be object of our inquiry, and has for long obstructed our forays in discovering
the true nature of the human mind. If however, we cast aside any such ill
informed preconceptions for the sake of a dispassionate inquiry the importance
of the unconscious and the unique relationship it shares with the phenomena of
dreams soon begins to crystallize.
The idea of supposing the existence of independent mental agencies within the
confines of the human mind is quite strange in its insistence that the individual
is not an integrated whole but an amalgamation of warring sub personalities
each pursuing their own ends. And the fact that most of these agencies remain
unconscious and influence our mode of conduct, although widely recognized these
days, still paradoxically fails to revise our views on the inordinate confidence we
possess on having an accurate knowledge of ourselves. A confidence which has
both contributed to the ignorance of other’s experience and our own. But if we
accept the existence of a mental landscape, termed the unconscious, unmarked
by the treads of human thought , what kind of implications does such a notion
entail and how can we possibly hope to shed light on something which by its
very definition is unconscious? Although the contents of this dark frontier for
the most part lies beyond human perception, one could still infer the nature
of its processes and the general characteristics which permeate them through
the investigation of phenomena that has become conscious but whose origin
evidently lies in its obscure counterpart. And the most accessible means we
have at our disposal of such a nature happens to be the perplexing occurrence
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of dreams.
The aforementioned discussion of the unconscious and the tenability of psychological investigations might seem irrelevant in our attempt to understand dreams but
in my opinion, it puts things in their proper context so that one can fully realize
the foundations from which this seemingly inexplicable phenomena becomes a bit
more intelligible. At first glance, a dream strikes us as nothing more than a series
of nonsensical fragments whose utterly incoherent nature prompts us to speculate
that it must be a product of mere happenstance. Consequently, any meaning
which it might seem to impart on the observer must also be of an accidental
nature, requiring an incalculable amount of effort to piece together its arcane
subtexts. This sharp contrast between the logical coherence of normal ideational
processes and the incomprehensibility of dreams construed in that light is what
primarily contributes to our repudiation of them as unnecessary by products of
some physiological process. But underneath this casual dismissal lies the tacit
assumption that any meaningful product of human thought must also necessarily
bear the crest of reason and intelligbility. It is quite inconceivable that how an
idea which is divested of these qualities can produce something that one could
deem even remotely meaningful and owing to our rational turn of the mind, even
remotely comprehensible. If we are to grant these obscure representations the
benefit of the doubt and assume that it conceals some coherent train of thought,
where would we begin?
A renowned psychologist named Sigmund Freud directed most his attention to the
very same questions that we are now beginning to unravel. Prior to his publication
of The Interpretation of Dreams, no serious consideration had been given to these
nocturnal instantiations or to its peculiar relationship with psycho-pathological
disorders. Freud however, saw in them something that no one had ever seen
before. An expression of a mode of thinking which betrayed its archaic character
and as a consequence presented an avenue through which the fundamental
determinants of psychic life could be properly investigated. Early on, Freud was
convinced that due to its archaic nature, dreams could not be understood in the
sense that any normal idea could and required a method of explication which
accounted for the esoteric language that it spoke. Gathering knowledge from his
various empirical researches, he eventually concluded that a dream in spite of its
ostensibly ridiculous facade was underpinned by a series of unconscious ideas
that underwent a dramatic change in the course of it being rendered conscious.
Freud, for the most part, attributed the dream’s lack of coherence to psychic
mechanisms which were responsible for converting these ideas to its pictorial
representation and also to distort them in order to pass a moral censor which
actively resisted the illumination of dreams in its unadulterated form. Through
the application of a method which he termed psychoanalysis, Freud was able to
imbue meaning and coherence into a phenomena that for most people was too
recondite to be taken seriously. But the more salient aspect of this discovery
however still remained far from obvious.
Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil wrote that “What we experience in a dream,
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provided we experience it frequently, finally is as much a part of the collective
household of our souls as anything truly experienced”. At first, reading these
lines instilled a queer sense of skepticism for how was I to believe that a dream,
clearly distinguished by its unreality and ephemeral nature, could exert as much
influence in me as events which transpired in waking life. It struck me as absurd
to hold in equal footing subjective events such as dreams which most individuals
regard to be fleeting moments in their nocturnal life with objective events that
had a seemingly real impact in the course of our lives. I presumed that the
acceptance of such an idea ran the risk of loosing a firm foundation which
markedly separated the sane individual from the mentally depraved. However
the implications of a Freudian understanding of dreams coupled with Nietzsche’s
aphorism suggests that such a notion may perhaps reveal some fundamental
truths about the riddle of human experience.
Both Nietzsche and Freud in their attempts to understand dreams has managed
to articulate certain fundamental truths about the nature of the human mind
which the zeitgeist of our time has left unheeded. The primary reason why
Freud’s ideas on human psychology which centered around the unconscious
aroused such distaste in his time is because it sought to paint a picture of inner
experience that mirrored the objective world. For most of human history, men
have always taken it for granted that the knowledge they possessed of themselves
was self evident because of the assumption that our thoughts and feelings were
entirely transparent to the subject that conceived it. Although a few sagacious
men had come to recognize the imprudence of such a presumption, they had
no means at their disposal to demonstrate why it was incorrect. Freud, who
endeavoured to explain the discrepancies of mental life through the postulation
of the unconscious, not only showed the world that both the scope and the depth
of inner experience was equally as vast as objective reality and but also that
dreams where the primary means through which one could comprehend this
reality. What is even more astounding is the fact that the insights one could glean
from these phantasms, although belonging to a world markedly different from
that of waking life could still reveal fundamental truths about human experience
that can be of invaluable importance even outside the fantastical landscape from
which it originated. It seemed to me that this intimate relationship between
the macrocosmic order of the universe and microcosm of the human psyche is
what Nietzsche had alluded to. And dreams placed within this context appear
to us as heralds of a world within us that the critical mind has begun to seldom
understand.
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