Anya, it is particularly apt that you bring up dreams and dreaming as part of a discussion about what is “true”. All dreams are “true” as a subjective experience of the dreamer, yet every dreamer knows that the content of their dreams frequently represent events which sometimes never happened or could never happen “in reality”. If the manifest content is untrue, then what “objective” truth is represented? There have been vastly different approaches to answering that question throughout human history.
Freuds approach to understanding dreams was perhaps the most methodologically rigorous. Simply put, he saw dreams as examples of unconscious thinking which were cryptic due to their representation in images, their hyper condensed meaning, and their (possibly) defensive disguise to allow unconscious thinking to ponder emotionally distressing material without waking the dreamer (see chapter 4 in “Interpretation of Dreams” for discussion of both distortion in dreams and distortion in dreams of loosing teeth). His method was to encourage the dreamer to provide all their associated thoughts to each of the dreams components so he could see what networks of underlying thoughts were connected to the dreams. He noticed there was frequently little surface relationship between the manifest dream and the underlying thought networks with which they were associated. He attributed these underlying thoughts as the “truer” meaning of the dream. It’s not possible to describe the meaning of any dream without these underlying associations in a given individual. Dreams were highly personal and idiosyncratic in expressing the dreamers “truth”, yet there were certain dreams which were common across individuals. Dreams of loosing teeth were one such dream.
BTW, tooth grinding as a stimulus for such dreams was discussed by Freud as one of the bodily sensations which can give form to a dream during sleep. Those feelings and other bodily sensations are woven into the stream of unconscious thinking when the dream constructs its manifest narrative.
Dreams and myth are like peas in a pod. Both bridge the subconscious and conscious, bringing archetypes and symbolism from the dark depths of the mind to the surface.
I tend to think there is much of importance and value that can be gleaned via dreams and contending with the subconscious. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing supernatural to dreams, and they can’t read the future or yield info on, say, a missing dog. But they can reveal aspects of oneself and how one relates to the world that are helpful for growth. Often this sheds some light something that had previously been repressed or hidden from oneself.
When troubles or conflicts are brought to the surface, they change from subconscious to conscious understanding. Subconsciously, there may be an unprocessed feeling or conflict that gnaws and has all sorts of subconscious consequences, particularly because the subconscious is not always rational.
But when realized consciously, one often can rationally contend with the issue, seek advice, experiment with different strategies and so forth. Grow.
This is the process of how we all expand our consciousness, our understanding of ourselves and the world around. And dreams can be a tool to help enable the process
Occams Razor and the principle of parsimony definitely favor your approach of seeing the meaning of dreams at a personal level first before resorting to universal Key Code approaches, to spiritual divination, or even to the interpretation of universal archetypes. “Where ID (aka It) was EGO (aka I) shall be” involves the most direct and verifiable evidence based approach to interpretation.
In my conception, there is something fundamentally important to archetypes, critical in structuring thought for the conscious mind to make sense of things. But I think archetypes are less universal absolutes … and more overlaps and commonalities in thought structure as a result of a convergence of development.
.And so while usually very similar, these are not identical and sometimes some archetypes are not really applicable to the way some people think.
I completely agree with your distinction between universal archetypes and the “commonalities in thought structure as a result of a convergence of development”. Put another way: The former is a universal symbolically represented structural inheritance of our neurological hardware and the latter is a condensed representation of a personal lived experience which is developmentally invariant (like losing one’s baby teeth) across people.
How to tell the difference? Freuds methodology (unlike Jung’s) encourages the complete exploration of the personal associations to a dreams content prior to interpreting a manifest element of a dream as a symbol. When a recurrent dream element (across or within people) elicited few personal associations Freud would then place its meaning within the dream thoughts as a kind of pre-made element of meaning akin to interpreting a rebus in the middle of a written text. Jung - on the other hand - was quicker to assign invariant symbolic meaning to the appearance of certain dream elements. They both often arrive at a similar place, but IMHO, Freuds approach is more systematic and less likely to attribute universal meaning to the personal unconscious especially when it relates to shared human developmental experiences.
Imho, archetypes are observations of the overlap of the most basic reference points that emerge from the most primitive forms of thought. These are like the mind’s alphabet or numeric system, the basic building blocks that sit at the transition from primitive impulses to higher thought. These reference points emerge independently in early development from the chaos. These first forms can then be used to consciously compare to observations, to model interactions and make actionable predictions etc.
So looking at large groups, like art between cultures or common dream elements, we see archetypes in the convergences and similarities of those reference points that underlie higher reasoning.
But the dreamworld is entirely personal and internal. And an individual’s mental reference points don’t line up *exactly* with the averages over the ages, just tend to be very similar at the most basic level. So analyzing dreams should start first looking at personal and internal associations first and foremost. The “universal” archetypes is just a typical framework and so may not be so applicable.
I love many of Jung’s ideas. But he definitely mixed the spiritual into his study. Given the subject, that seems is appropriate on some level, I think. It is somewhat unavoidable to get a wholistic conception of the mind and soul. But on another, particularly to develop deeper understanding over generations, the spiritual part is not so helpful.
I've been recording my dreams for over 50 years, I think it is fundamental to our conscious lives and aids in attaining higher states of consciousness with profound effects in our day to day existence. The merging of unconscious and conscious produces an awareness like no other...
It's amazing how a dream journal can help increase your ability to remember them as well. I suppose if people don't pay attention to them (or don't think they are important) they won't remember them as well...
True that. Not noticing dreams or remembering them is especially true for the motivated form of not paying attention (aka repression) which is the avoidance of those thoughts, feelings, wishes and memories that arouse displeasure.
Interesting and common dream with the teeth. As a commentary, the symbol of teeth in paleo hebrew is shin, meaning to chew on and digest, as in discernment of wisdom (good and evil). In modern Hebrew the shape changed and looks more like a crown or a "W" usually with a nikodot placed on either the right side or left. The left side in Latin is sinister, in Hebrew it is called sin, meaning to miss the mark, or be wrong. The dot on the right side is called shin, or in Latin; dexter.
With this being said, your dream/vision of loosing teeth could have represented a phase you were going through, discerning wisdom. As in anxieties and digesting how to find truth. Perhaps beginning your "Classical Wisdom" community? I belive dreams to be a form of communication of symbolism from our personal daimon. Just as mentioned by Socrates.
The true symbolism of our dreams is something we can all chew on.
Anya, it is particularly apt that you bring up dreams and dreaming as part of a discussion about what is “true”. All dreams are “true” as a subjective experience of the dreamer, yet every dreamer knows that the content of their dreams frequently represent events which sometimes never happened or could never happen “in reality”. If the manifest content is untrue, then what “objective” truth is represented? There have been vastly different approaches to answering that question throughout human history.
Freuds approach to understanding dreams was perhaps the most methodologically rigorous. Simply put, he saw dreams as examples of unconscious thinking which were cryptic due to their representation in images, their hyper condensed meaning, and their (possibly) defensive disguise to allow unconscious thinking to ponder emotionally distressing material without waking the dreamer (see chapter 4 in “Interpretation of Dreams” for discussion of both distortion in dreams and distortion in dreams of loosing teeth). His method was to encourage the dreamer to provide all their associated thoughts to each of the dreams components so he could see what networks of underlying thoughts were connected to the dreams. He noticed there was frequently little surface relationship between the manifest dream and the underlying thought networks with which they were associated. He attributed these underlying thoughts as the “truer” meaning of the dream. It’s not possible to describe the meaning of any dream without these underlying associations in a given individual. Dreams were highly personal and idiosyncratic in expressing the dreamers “truth”, yet there were certain dreams which were common across individuals. Dreams of loosing teeth were one such dream.
BTW, tooth grinding as a stimulus for such dreams was discussed by Freud as one of the bodily sensations which can give form to a dream during sleep. Those feelings and other bodily sensations are woven into the stream of unconscious thinking when the dream constructs its manifest narrative.
Great topic.
Dreams and myth are like peas in a pod. Both bridge the subconscious and conscious, bringing archetypes and symbolism from the dark depths of the mind to the surface.
I tend to think there is much of importance and value that can be gleaned via dreams and contending with the subconscious. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing supernatural to dreams, and they can’t read the future or yield info on, say, a missing dog. But they can reveal aspects of oneself and how one relates to the world that are helpful for growth. Often this sheds some light something that had previously been repressed or hidden from oneself.
When troubles or conflicts are brought to the surface, they change from subconscious to conscious understanding. Subconsciously, there may be an unprocessed feeling or conflict that gnaws and has all sorts of subconscious consequences, particularly because the subconscious is not always rational.
But when realized consciously, one often can rationally contend with the issue, seek advice, experiment with different strategies and so forth. Grow.
This is the process of how we all expand our consciousness, our understanding of ourselves and the world around. And dreams can be a tool to help enable the process
Occams Razor and the principle of parsimony definitely favor your approach of seeing the meaning of dreams at a personal level first before resorting to universal Key Code approaches, to spiritual divination, or even to the interpretation of universal archetypes. “Where ID (aka It) was EGO (aka I) shall be” involves the most direct and verifiable evidence based approach to interpretation.
Fascinating and yes, I agree.
In my conception, there is something fundamentally important to archetypes, critical in structuring thought for the conscious mind to make sense of things. But I think archetypes are less universal absolutes … and more overlaps and commonalities in thought structure as a result of a convergence of development.
.And so while usually very similar, these are not identical and sometimes some archetypes are not really applicable to the way some people think.
I completely agree with your distinction between universal archetypes and the “commonalities in thought structure as a result of a convergence of development”. Put another way: The former is a universal symbolically represented structural inheritance of our neurological hardware and the latter is a condensed representation of a personal lived experience which is developmentally invariant (like losing one’s baby teeth) across people.
How to tell the difference? Freuds methodology (unlike Jung’s) encourages the complete exploration of the personal associations to a dreams content prior to interpreting a manifest element of a dream as a symbol. When a recurrent dream element (across or within people) elicited few personal associations Freud would then place its meaning within the dream thoughts as a kind of pre-made element of meaning akin to interpreting a rebus in the middle of a written text. Jung - on the other hand - was quicker to assign invariant symbolic meaning to the appearance of certain dream elements. They both often arrive at a similar place, but IMHO, Freuds approach is more systematic and less likely to attribute universal meaning to the personal unconscious especially when it relates to shared human developmental experiences.
Well put!
Imho, archetypes are observations of the overlap of the most basic reference points that emerge from the most primitive forms of thought. These are like the mind’s alphabet or numeric system, the basic building blocks that sit at the transition from primitive impulses to higher thought. These reference points emerge independently in early development from the chaos. These first forms can then be used to consciously compare to observations, to model interactions and make actionable predictions etc.
So looking at large groups, like art between cultures or common dream elements, we see archetypes in the convergences and similarities of those reference points that underlie higher reasoning.
But the dreamworld is entirely personal and internal. And an individual’s mental reference points don’t line up *exactly* with the averages over the ages, just tend to be very similar at the most basic level. So analyzing dreams should start first looking at personal and internal associations first and foremost. The “universal” archetypes is just a typical framework and so may not be so applicable.
I love many of Jung’s ideas. But he definitely mixed the spiritual into his study. Given the subject, that seems is appropriate on some level, I think. It is somewhat unavoidable to get a wholistic conception of the mind and soul. But on another, particularly to develop deeper understanding over generations, the spiritual part is not so helpful.
I've been recording my dreams for over 50 years, I think it is fundamental to our conscious lives and aids in attaining higher states of consciousness with profound effects in our day to day existence. The merging of unconscious and conscious produces an awareness like no other...
It's amazing how a dream journal can help increase your ability to remember them as well. I suppose if people don't pay attention to them (or don't think they are important) they won't remember them as well...
True that. Not noticing dreams or remembering them is especially true for the motivated form of not paying attention (aka repression) which is the avoidance of those thoughts, feelings, wishes and memories that arouse displeasure.
Interesting and common dream with the teeth. As a commentary, the symbol of teeth in paleo hebrew is shin, meaning to chew on and digest, as in discernment of wisdom (good and evil). In modern Hebrew the shape changed and looks more like a crown or a "W" usually with a nikodot placed on either the right side or left. The left side in Latin is sinister, in Hebrew it is called sin, meaning to miss the mark, or be wrong. The dot on the right side is called shin, or in Latin; dexter.
With this being said, your dream/vision of loosing teeth could have represented a phase you were going through, discerning wisdom. As in anxieties and digesting how to find truth. Perhaps beginning your "Classical Wisdom" community? I belive dreams to be a form of communication of symbolism from our personal daimon. Just as mentioned by Socrates.
The true symbolism of our dreams is something we can all chew on.