ESSAY CEMETERY

The intense concentration and effort to analyze dreams is a great example of the humanistic paradigm of man in the middle. The individual is so important that a single dream begs a ten-page treatise. There is a meta-narrative to the life of every one of us – anxiety whose origin can be uncovered by intense exploration of the history of the individual and the realm of thoughts and ideas of the individual. Psychology became a science around the 1880s. The centrality of man became fact and the understanding of the individual became a main undertaking of science, which means it became a key part of the greatest western metanarrative (science).  In his dream interpretation, Freud maps his mind, pretty much. This betrays a desire to leave behind a mark, to be known and understood, a desire which presupposes a system by which understanding and immortalization are possible. This essay has two aspects: a proposal of a theory that explains dreams, and as such proposes a meta-narrative, and s...

II. The method of dream interpretation The analysis of a specimen dream Freud thinks dreams are a psychic activity, and that they are important and meaningful in the context of the rest of psychic activities. Scientific theories disagree, but lay opinion agrees that dreams have meanings, albeit hidden ones. Until today there have been two methods of dream interpretation. In one, images in dreams are seen as symbols for other things, depending on the context of the life of the dreamer. This method calls for intuition and ingenuity. This method fails when dreams have a confusing narrative. The other method also calls for symbolic replacement of dream images, but in this case, dream images have a fixed meaning. This makes it easier to decipher jumbled dreams. These methods are both worthless. Freud proposes a scientific method of dream interpretation, despite the resistance of science. Freud relates how he arrived at his method. In his therapies, he worked to eradicate pathological ideas ...