Psychical Processes at Work in Dreams
The dream world is given a description where there is the expression of the pictorial views in the interpretation of the emotional conflicts. Dreams are physical phenomena complete by a sense of validity. In order to understand aptly how the dream works, it is important to have knowledge of the dream work process which entails the idea of how the mind interprets thoughts and manifest the interpretations. The psychoanalytic interpretation does not come as a result of isolation or coincidence but on the basis of formulation and design (Baranger, 2018). It means that the point of interpretation is linked to the arrangement and pattern which should be followed.
Dreamwork is channeled into various forms which entail a well-understood process of interpretations of the latent contents. The process which entails four aspects is giving out how wishes and thoughts are arranged and organized unconsciously. There are many collections of dreams in the book by Freud Sigmund but the most important to analyze is one of the boys driving a chariot with Achilles with the Diomede being his charioteer. This followed an excitement the boy had after having the book about the legends of Greece. As noted, some of the interpretations were marked by complex and acute descriptions of the realms of waking and sleeping foreshadowed in the neuroscience aspects (Brophy, 2014). In the above sample of a dream, there are aspects of the dream interpretation process. Starting with condensation, which is the inception stage in the dream, there is a combination of daily operations of different thoughts into one. This makes it easier for the mind to interpret them and present them as one in a dream. As seen from the dream sample given above, there is a combination of what the boy found in the book and what he dreamt. The story about the Greek and the chariot of Achilles. There is the point of condensation with the filtering of information to include the only point which was of interest to the boy.
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After the condensation, the process proceeds to displacement. It is at the displacement stage where a dream is likely to direct desires and feelings to a totally unrelated object. It should be remembered that the dream is a connection and a conflict of the worlds of reality and illusion (Milohnić, 2016). At the stage of displacement, there is the similarity to the practice of traverse which is a renowned technique used in the psychoanalysis process. It is required that in the analysis and interpretation of the dreams, there should be the point of working on the reverse where the dream workers are expected to move from the point of consciousness to unconsciousness. This follows the fact that dream workers are not the actual people who saw the dream rather are just analyzing the dreaming story they heard. In regard to the dream sample given above, the boy is driving the chariot after reading the legends of Greece. It is seen that the dream is directing desires and feelings to an unrelated object in which the boy is seen as driving the chariot an unrelated object.
The process moves to symbolism formation where the objects in a given dream may mean a different thing from what it is perceived to mean. Symbolism in a dream is an intriguing subject which has led to speculations. The Freud thought of symbolism has given more fascinating ideas even though they are not holding bare to interpretations (Robbins, 2018). It is known that the situations and objects in a given dream may mean different things as they are informed by unconscious thoughts. Like in the case of the above-mentioned dream sample, the chariot may mean something else. On the lighter side, it may be taken to connote the aspect of the boy driving the chariot while on its interpretation it may mean a different thing in regard to the psychoanalysis approach it is given.
The last stage of the process is concerned with putting all the points together and making them coherent. Known as secondary revision, is meant to give relations between the dream and the dreamer. Daydreamers and the people involved in fantasies share a lot in common in that their wishful thinking is based on childhood desires (de Bianchedi, 2018). Looking at the dream sample given above, it is clear that the child is related to the kind of activity he had with the dream which actualized at night. As stated from the point it is giving an impression of the boy fantasies which came to him on the dream
Unconscious and the Mechanisms of the Unconscious
Metaphor can be simply defined as a figure of speech in the literary work which contains an implied point of comparison. In most instances the meaning of the actual point is hidden. In metaphor, there are the characteristics of pairing words and phrases one would not expect it to be paired with. It is learned that metaphor and interpretation shares a lot of similar characteristics as far as structure is concerned (Guldin, 2014). This shows the importance of metaphor in the interpretation of dreams. An example of a metaphor is a phrase like the curtain of the night was falling upon us. In literally meaning one may take this to mean a velvet curtain was developed from an evening moment. These words are used to spice up the speech and the discussion. It is clear from the phase that it was night time but the metaphor has been used in this case to allude at how faster the darkness came and night fell into the room.
Metonymy is a figure of speech where the name of a concept or an object is replaced by a different word which is closely related to the original word for example crown to connote the word, King. The metonymy helps the people, in general, to talk about abstract issues such as emotions and time (Wojciechowska & Juszczyk, 2014). These figure of speech are important in giving terms to abstract expressions which could otherwise be difficult to communicate. Metonymy has an impact of creating vivid and concrete images in a statement or a place with generalities. The example may be seen in the journalistic statements such as grave to connote death or the Whitehouse to mean the American government or the American president.
According to Lacan, the main difference between metaphor and metonymy is that with metaphor there are elements of suppressing in the functionality while the metonymy functions to combine. He goes ahead to state that it is word upon word that metonymy is based while it is one word for another in case of the metaphor. Lacan described unconscious to be structured the same way as the language in which he attributed its genesis to split within the human development subject. In relation to Freud work, Lacan is seen as having historicized the earlier work in terms of the mythical and perceptions in the universal context (MacCannell, 2016). Even though people may perceive the work of Lacan as a contradiction of Freud earlier works, it is apparent that the literature nature which he polished the work with conformed to the agreeable concepts of the modern language and aspects such as the myth and history. One of the concepts which Lacan was using in the analysis of Freud work was the differentiation of signifier and signified. The signifier is used to mean a language like a word while signified is used to connote a concept (Leader & Groves, 2013). As seen in the definition of metaphor and metonymy, the concept of the figurative speech becomes important in differentiating and emphasizing on the concepts depicted by an individual practice of the psychoanalysis.
The linguistic insights created by the signifier and signified mirrors the breach, in reality, a case which is always seen in the language. The basic repression entails the unconscious in such a way that it repels and transforms into a symbiotic relationship between a mother and her young child. The child masters the mother’s absence and development of the fact that the child can differentiate the mother from self. The later access to the language by the child is taken as a signifier. Lacan managed to juxtapose the metonymy and metaphor with the binaries which Freud termed as the basic functions of the unconscious which are displacement and repression. Through its functionality of similarity and substitution metaphor coincides with psychic trope entailing repression. Contrary, metonymy coincides with the psychic trope of the displacement. In a specific way, metonymy and metaphor functions in a way that they manifest ideas and objects in a way more pronounced and higher intensity than their original states. Within a psychic context, the metaphor and metonymy render some functions of the mind such as signifiers, feelings, and thoughts unrecognizable and unknown familiar with consciousness.
Thus, it can be argued that psyche and language have the same curious propensity towards the use of the structural conformations to present a known content within the unknown form. Lacan maintains that the fundamental psychoanalysis can be well understood when one establishes the equivalence to the contemporary language of anthropology and more precisely to the latest problems of philosophy (Boothby, 2015). This was meant to emphasize the importance of language and the philosophical importance in the understanding of the psychoanalysis factors
References
Baranger, M. (2018). The mind of the analyst: From listening to interpretation. In The Work of Confluence (pp. 89-105). Routledge.
Boothby, R. (2015). Freud as philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan . Routledge.
Brophy, K. (2014). The Poet and the criminal: Dreams, neuroscience and a peculiar way of thinking. The University of Melbourne.
de Bianchedi, E. T. (2018). Creative writers and dream-work-alpha. On Freud's" Creative Writers and Day-dreaming" (pp. 122-132). Routledge.
Guldin, R. (2014). Metaphor as a Metaphor for Translation. In Thinking through translation with metaphors (pp. 167-246). Routledge.
Leader, D., & Groves, J. (2013). Introducing Lacan: A graphic guide .
MacCannell, J. F. (2016). Figuring Lacan: Criticism and the Unconscious.
Milohnić, A. (2016). The Dream Work in Theatre. Performance Research , 21 (1), 65-71.
Robbins, P. R. (2018). The psychology of dreams . McFarland.
Wojciechowska, S., & Juszczyk, K. (2014). Metaphor metonymy and emotions. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics , 50 (1), 1.
