The Interpretation of Dreams written in 1899 marks the beginning of the establishment of Freud's psychoanalytic theoretical system. The book was reprinted eight times and translated into many languages. Until today, this book is still a must-read for psychological counselors and therapists, and it is also deeply concerned by psychology lovers.
The first revelation: dreams are not supernatural manifestations, but a psychological activity.
Aristotle was the first person to bring dreams into psychological research. In his view, dreams are not the will of God, but the psychological activities of sleepers during their sleep. Aristotle believes that dreams can transform the slight stimulation that people feel directly during sleep into strong feelings. He concluded that dreams are likely to reveal changes in the patient's body to doctors, and these changes are difficult to detect when awake.
Obviously, Freud supported Aristotle. He believes that dreams are a kind of "psychological activity", not a manifestation of supernatural forces.
The second inspiration: dreams come from people's real experiences.
Some ancient scholars have long suggested that dreams come from personal memory: no matter how bizarre the results of dreams are, they are never really divorced from the real world. In addition, what people dream will not come from any major exciting moment, nor is it the most urgent problem to be solved the day before, but accidental details and trivial fragments.
Based on this, Freud intends to find a topic in his own research: where does the material of dreams come from?
The third inspiration: Why are dreams full of mystery?
For dreamers, sometimes dreams seem strange. We can't figure out why we have such dreams. In addition, the dream package contains some inconsistencies or absurdities.
Freud hoped to find reasonable logic from this absurdity of dreams. He can't agree with this description: "In our sleep, we return to the old way of looking at and feeling things, and to the activities that dominated our impulses long ago."
The fourth inspiration: What role does rationality play in dreams?
The average person's rational power is powerful, and he will not have hallucinations or dreams when he is awake. But when we fell asleep, the power of reason relaxed our vigilance and we began to dream. But there will be a janitor at this time, which is the checking power of dreams, and those things that are particularly instinctive will still be suppressed.
The fifth inspiration: the relationship between dreams and insanity.
Kant said, "A madman is a lucid dreamer." Schopenhauer also famously said, "Dreams are short-lived madness, while madness is a long-term dream." It seems that dreams and insanity have similar properties.
Freud firmly believes that through the study of dreams, we will certainly improve our understanding of mental illness. Unveiling dreams also means that we can have a more intuitive understanding of mental illness and neurosis. Interpretation of dreams naturally became an effective way for Freud to understand patients in psychoanalysis.
1895 In the summer, Freud had a very important dream. This dream is related to a female patient named irma, who is a friend of Freud and suffers from hysteria anxiety, which is a neurosis. The patient doesn't realize that he has emotional problems, but his body will have some symptoms. Freud tried to help her with psychoanalysis, but the result was not very successful. Irma soon finished her treatment.
In Freud's dream, Freud volunteered to check irma's lesion, that is, the diseased part of his body. Their friend Dr. Otto and Otto's competitors also joined in to examine the patients. Opponents and Otto came to the opposite conclusion. In addition, some personal characteristics of a good friend of Irma are also shown in Irma, and these details appear in Freud's dreams.
After waking up, Freud analyzed the dream. He realized that dreams are the realization of wishes.
First of all, this dream helped Freud realize his desire for revenge. In the dream, Freud exchanged the identities of Irma and her good friend, and he also thought it would be great if Irma became that more obedient friend. This is his revenge on Irma, because Irma may think that psychoanalysis is invalid, so she stopped treatment. Freud also compared Otto with his competitors, because Otto didn't agree with his plan. He wanted to say to Otto, "You are not as good as your friend."
Second, this is Freud's self-defense. This dream always emphasizes that irma's body has more serious symptoms than before. This is to prove that the patient did not recover after leaving Freud, so Irma's illness was not good, not Freud's responsibility, but Irma herself was the culprit.
From this dream, Freud began to establish the theoretical framework of "dream interpretation", which also put forward his core theory: dreams begin with desire and dreams are the realization of desire.
Freud also found that children haven't had time to understand sex, but those disappointments will still stimulate them to dream, so dreams help them realize their unfulfilled wishes.
Obviously, no one yearns for pain and anxiety, but scientific research has found that 57.2% of dreams are unpleasant. Freud said that those revealed pains and anxieties were just appearances. Our real desires are hidden under the surface of pain and anxiety.
Freud had a female patient who questioned his theory. This female patient actually dreamed that her 15-year-old daughter died. In my dream, my daughter's body was put in a wooden box. But in reality, no mother would want to see this scene.
It turned out that this female patient was not ready to be a mother when she was pregnant with her daughter. She even punched herself in the stomach, obviously not welcoming children at all. So dreaming of her daughter's death actually fulfilled her wish many years ago.
Freud found that real desires sometimes make it difficult for us to accept or face, so we choose to suppress them. And these repressed desires, in dreams, will be presented after camouflage.
Page 24 "Is this the only way in my life? Reading Notes PPT: 15 Rules for Overcoming Inertia Obstacles