Dreams... Psych 101

DREAMS

What goes on when the lights are off

In psychology, dreams are defined as any thoughts, images, or emotions that person experiences while asleep. Psychologists have yet to agree on why we dream and what these dreams mean, but there are several significant theories. 

The "Science" of Sleep
Believe it or not, scientists still don't know the reason or purpose for sleeping in the first case!

FRAUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF DREAMS

Sigmund Freud believed that the contents of our dreams were associated with wish fulfillment and that our dreams represented the thoughts, motivations, and desires of our unconscious. Furthermore, Freud believed that the sexual instincts that the conscious represses appear in our dreams. In Freud's book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud broke dreams down into two components: 

• Manifest content - The actual thoughts, content, and images in the dream.
• Latent content - The psychological meaning in the dreams that is hidden. 

To understand the meaning being dreams, Freud broke dreams down into five distinct parts:

• Displacement: When a desire for something is represented by something or someone else. 
• Projection: When the wants and desires of the dreamer are pushed onto another person in the dream. 
• Symbolization: When the urges and desire that are suppressed are metaphorically acted out in the dream.
• Condensation: When a lot of information is compressed into one image or thought, making difficult to decipher. 
• Secondary Revision: The final stage of dreaming, where the incoherent elements become reorganized into a comprehensible dream.

While research has refuted Freud's theory of the latent content being disguised by the manifest content, the work of Sigmund Freud contributed greatly to interest in the field of dream interpretation.

CARL JUNG'S THEORY ON DREAMS

While Jung believed in much of what Freud did when it came to dreams, Jung thought dreams were not just an expression of repressed desires, but that they also compensated for those parts of the psyche that were undeveloped during waking life. Jung also believed dreams revealed the collective unconscious and personal unconscious and featured archetypes that were representative of unconscious thoughts. 

COMMON THEMES FOUND IN DREAMS

The following are ten of the most common themes people experience while dreaming, as well as the possible meanings of these themes according to Freudian theory.

1. Taking a test that you are not prepared for: This type of dream does not only pertain to an academic test, and will usually be specific to the dreamer. For example, an actor might dream about not remembering their audition or not being able to recognize the words on a script. This type of dream deals with the feeling of being exposed, and the test might symbolize being judged or evaluated by someone else. 
2. Being naked or inappropriately dressed in public: This type of dream relates to feelings of shame or vulnerability.
3. Being chased or attacked: This type of dream is much more common in children, whose dreams tend to focus on more physical rather than social fear. Additionally, their size can often make them feel as though they are more physically vulnerable. In adults, this type of dream can be a sign of being under stress.
4. Falling: Falling can represent feelings of being extremely overwhelmed with your current situation and having a loss of control. 
5. Being lost in transit: This often represents feeling lost or trying to get something or find your path and being unsure of how to do it. 
6. Losing a tooth: This can represent feeling unheard or unseen in a personal relationship, or feelings of aggression. 
7. Natural disasters: This can signify feeling so overwhelmed by personal problems that it seems they are raging out of control. 
8. Flying:  This can represent a desire to escape or be free from a situation.
9. Dying or being injured: This can represent something in the dreamer's everyday life that no longer thrives or is wilting away, like a personal relationship or personal attribute, and does not necessarily mean or imply true thoughts of death. 
10. Losing control of a car: This type of dream can result from feelings of stress and fear, and of not feeling in control of everyday life. 

While Psychologists still do not fully understand dreams, their interpretation plays a key role in modern psychology. From Freud's prominently used interpretation of dream analysis, which suggests dreams are connected to our unconscious and represent repressed desires, to the work of G. William Domhoff, who believed dreams were merely a result of neurological processes, understanding why dreams occurs and the various details and possible meanings behind them remains a very important part of psychology. 

"I am a daydreamer and night thinker." 

~Bella

The Book of Symbols 5...

Kiss

Over the doorjamb of the womb-chamber of the Konārak temple in Southern India, and among the images in niches on its facade, are small, erotic sculptures of ardent couples, or mithuni. Their flowing bodies melt together in a passionate embrace, evoking the sexual play of both gods and mortals, and, paradoxically, the release from it in the union of the self and Supreme Self within a single being. Rapturously, the figures kiss. And here, under the arched brows and interlocked noses of two who are one, the lips merge in a state of bliss that knows nothing of a within or without, and in which there is no longer separation, desire or grief (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad IV:3:21; ARAS, 7Ao.044). 

A kiss of passionate longing may be shunned on the 

chaste movie screens of contemporary India, but it is

openly depicted in the sacred temple sculpture of the 

13th century. Sandstone, Surya Temple, Konārak, 

Orissa, India. 

Behind sealed lips, we protect one of the most personal spaces of the body; we part our lips to draw in the breath of inspiration or to speak intimate feelings into the beloved's ear, finally surrendering the private self in the loving convergence of one's own lips with the lips of the other. Even when not romantic, the kiss implies affection, blessing, recognition and reconciliation. Thus the psalmist intones, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm 85:10). The comparable climax of the Muslim hajj to the Grand Mosque in Mecca is the pilgrim's kiss upon the Black Stone of the Kaaba, an act of reverence first performed by Muhammad. In these religious traditions, kissing is a ceremonial act, a sign of the bond between kin, or respect to holy relics, prayer shawls or altars or homage to one's ruler (kissing his feet) or to one's conqueror (licking the dust beneath his feet). With the bridal kiss, Western culture bridged the sacred and the romantic, although such European fairy tales as "Sleeping Beauty" or "Snow White" mark the approach of true love by a kiss that awakens the soul, rather than kindles sexual libido. 

Through the identity and meaning of many of the 

characters in Bronzino's mannerist allegory are still

debated, this detail is unequivocally of Venus and her 

adolescent son Cupid engaged in an amorous, 

incestuous kiss. Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, detail, 

oil on panel, 1544-5, Italy.

However, the sensuous, unseemly kiss between Bronzino's Cupid and Venus, his mother-  slipping the tip of the tongue into her son's lips- portrays a sly, incestuous carnality. To some cultures, the public display of kissing is considered scandalous, for its signals the opening act of coitus, and casual, devouring tongue-kissing has even suggested cannibalism. Jung, in fact, disagreeing with Freud that all libido was sexual, noted the pleasure infants take in sucking and observed that "kissing derives much more from nutrition than from sexuality" (CW 5:652). The empty "air-kisses" of celebrities or the shallow "spit-swapping" of teenagers can seem to cancel out any encounter between two halves of a single soul that we can still feel in the secular sculpture of Rodin's The Kiss. The songbirds whose crossed wings surrounded Aengus, the Celtic god of love, deteriorated into the banal "x's" that close sentimental love letters. Modern Valentines- whose puckering smooches even use kisses to veil hostility- anticipate the chilling intentions of such phrases as "kiss off" (to dismiss a stale lover), "kiss up" (to display shameless obsequiousness) and "kiss and tell" (to betray matters shared in confidence). More stunning is the submissive "kiss of shame" upon the devil's anus (or that of his masked proxy). Here, the disciple kisses the "nether-lips" at the opposite end of the body than the mouth, a practice of medieval Satanists at their black Sabbaths, which often inverted conventional ritual. Similarly, the "kiss of death," such as Judas kissing Jesus, reverses, in the perfidious intimacy of betrayal, all that is signified by the kiss of love. The kiss can also convey a different kind of reversal. Francis of Assisi placed squarely on the lips of a fearsome leper the "kiss of peace," communicating a spiritual love that drew the most reviled being of the age into the saint's most personal interior. 

~Bella