(as Gabrielle sang in 1993 and that was 30 years ago, kids!)
Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud said of dreams that events which had occurred during the day always appeared in dreams that night. He went on to hypothesise that dreams are wish fulfilments. The notion of wish fulfilment was one of Freud’s most well-known theories; the idea that when wishes can’t or won’t be fulfilled in our waking lives, they are carried out in dreams.
Hmm. If wishes were horses (etc).
Half a step away from dreams, Freud said of nightmares that they are dreams with a sexual content whose libido is transformed into anxiety. So, essentially, and to keep this in context, Freud’s hypothesis was that the driving power – the energy, if you will – behind a nightmare is libido, which is an interesting theory by itself.
We know that nightmares are essentially, unpleasant or anxiety provoking dreams which, depending on their intensity, can awaken the sleeper. We also know that Freud first referred to nightmares in his work The Interpretation of Dreams. There, he attempts to show (not very well, in my opinion, and I’ve read that work four times) how nightmares are not an exception to dream theory and, more specifically, that they are consistent with the theory that dreams are the fulfilment of a wish.
Hmm.
Freud also went on to hypothesise that the anxiety experienced during the nightmare could only be explained by its content. This is a solid statement as any schoolchild who has ever had nightmares can testify. However Freud went on to make his second misstep regarding dreams/nightmares when he stated that the anxiety of the dream is identical to the anxiety experienced during neurosis. Without physical evidence, without a definable scientific metric, this is clearly nonsense.
Anyway.
I’m not going to spend much time arguing with a man who left this mortal coil almost ninety years ago (because what would be the point?), but on the subject of nightmares being an extension of wish fulfilments Freud couldn’t be more wrong. As to whether nightmares are powered by an engine of libidinous energy, I’ll leave that open to question.
Last night’s nightmare (and that statement makes it sound as though I have nightmares regularly which, to be completely open, I don’t) was truly horrific. It was far, far worse than the nastiest, goriest most bloodthirsty book/film/TV programme/real-life scene I have ever encountered. The nightmare included the detailed, brutal, most bestial killing of a household pet, a friend even, a furry four-legged creature I regard as a member of this family. It was terrible. I can still hear her heart-rending cries as she was torn apart yet that nightmare ended when I woke from it, tears on my face, at 04.30 (it’s now 13.10).
I’d question Freud’s belief that nightmares are fuelled by the libido. Yes, they obviously need an engine of some description, but to bring it down to sexual desire is risible nonsense and displays a shallowness, a laziness of thinking or, perhaps, an obsessive disorder of the theorist.
But his assertion that nightmares are part of the general traffic of wish fulfilment is staggeringly incomprehensible. On what possible basis can any violent act (and nightmares generally do contain acts of great violence) be held as a component of wish fulfilment?
Arch-Freudian Ernest Jones (no relation) in his book On the Nightmare, interpreted anxiety dreams (nightmares to you and me) as the fulfilment of a repressed wish associated with infantile sexuality. This theory makes me want to put Mr Jones on the psychiatrists couch because, frankly, the basis for this theory (whatever his basis is because his workings-out are largely unpublished) is impossible to substantiate.
There are now, in the psychoanalytical and psychological professions, a growing collective of anti-Freudsters. These are critical thinkers who accept some portions of Freud’s doctrine, but who hold up his weakest theories as examples of a flawed mind. These days the critical thinkers are winning out. Nightmares And The Brain (pub: Harvard) briefly describes their rationale for nightmares, as arising for a number of reasons (or combination thereof), being stress, anxiety, irregular sleep, medications, mental health disorders and the most recently understood condition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Last night’s nightmare could give the average person PTSD, but as for the Harvard checklist, I don’t believe I am suffering from/encountering any of those conditions. Who knows, in another hundred years we might actually have some scientific evidence of why nightmares occur. But for now I’ll just accept that we don’t know why we get nightmares, and that Freud was wrong, and that no, I didn’t eat any cheese last night.
I don’t think there is any point into trying to read stuff into – or analyse – dreams/nightmares.
Isn’t it just the way the brain clears all its shit out?
Nightmares can be traumatic though. Similar to yourself, I had one a couple of months back – the graphic imagery of which is still with me even now – involving a family pet. For whatever reason (in this dream), I purposely decapitated our dog. In my mind, I can still see her head laying on the floor, her eyes open and looking at me, questioning why? And I don’t know why. I love that dog immensely and would never dream (pun intended) of harming her in any way, never mind cutting her bloody head off!
Brain fart.
I think you’re on the money with clearing shit out; a kind of reset occurring (for whatever reason). Traumatic stuff your nightmare. You have my sympathies for the distress it probably caused you.