Psychoanalysis of Dreaming
The dream that I have recently experienced and have a few memories about was about a choir lesson that I took up at college for some reason by a trainer who was very strict about attendance. The fact is that there are no choir lessons conducted at my college and I have a very bad voice too. I along with my fellow classmates was singing the song ‘I want it that way’ and I also remember that trainer was not at all satisfied with our notes and declared all of us the worst singers of the world. She also called our singing monotonous and gave us a punishment that I don’t remember much. I believe, interpreting dreams is a technique used in psychotherapy. According to the evolutionary theory of dreaming, events that threaten us are stimulated by our biological functioning for us to rehearse about the perception of those threats and prepares us to avoid them. Hence, this gives us a chance to prepare ourselves and enhance our mental as well as physical skills to survive in the world (Grünbaum, 1994).
I can relate it to my dream in such a way that perhaps my dream made learn about the hardships and criticism of the world and how to combat and avoid that to produce a fruitful result. Another theory that I have faith on tells that dreams work as psychotherapy for us as it works on our emotional learning phase that occurs while dreaming (Sommantico, 2016). In our dreams, we usually experience our tough emotional setbacks at a very safe place, which helps in establishing connections that would otherwise not happen if our critical brain works at it. When we are dreaming, we are less rational and have less defensive mind frame, rather, we think through our emotional setups. I can relate it to my dream as well because usually I am very impatient and aggressive but I was trying to calm myself down by singing the song no matter how bad was my singing to avoid the angry trainer.
I personally think that that we dream for living out our fantasies and fulfilling our repressed wishes in an incredibly disguised manner. I believe that fact that dreams are our unconscious desires or thoughts or they may also represent some expression of our unresolved business. According to Jung’s theory of dreaming, the sole idea behind dreams is make us understand which side of our psyche or instinct is imbalanced and via dreams we can help working towards the development and integration of our psychology (Meghnagi, 2011).
When I go back to my dream, I feel a spirit of free association as I think of each symbol and instrument back from my dream and these associations have a potential meaning as it represents an unconscious conflict that I am experiencing with my parents in choosing the right career option for myself. My parents want me to opt for medicine but I want to play Guitar in a band and study music. Taking a choir lesson at college was indicating the path towards my future goals and the angry trainer represent my parent’s disappointment and rejection towards my career desire. Hence, this interpretation fits well with my dream (Sejnowski, 2017).
References:
Meghnagi, D. (2011). From the dreams of a generation to the theory of dreams: Freud’s Roman dreams. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 92(3), pp.675-694.
Grünbaum, A. (1994). A brief appraisal of Freud’s dream theory. Dreaming, 4(1), 80-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0094401
Sommantico, M. (2016). A Couple’s Unconscious Communication: Dreams. British Journal Of Psychotherapy, 32(4), 456-474. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12251
Sejnowski, T. (2017). 1. How Are Memories Consolidated During Sleep and Why Do We Dream?. Biological Psychiatry, 81(10), S1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.02.012