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 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 premeate 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 occurence 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 unecessary 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, 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 zeitgiest 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 concieved 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.
