Why Do We Believe in Our Dreams?

Lucid dreams can happen spontaneously and naturally, or we can mentally train ourselves to intentionally induce lucid dreams. But lucid dreaming is not the default - the majority of dreams, even for 'natural lucid dreamers' are those of the normal, non-lucid variety. This leads us to question why this is so - why aren't all of our dreams lucid? Why do we accept the bizarre, extraordinary and impossible nature of our dreams and question them? There are many theories as to why we don't question the reality of our dreams, which will be explored in this article. 

Depth Psychology is the study of unconscious processes and motives, typically from the perspective of psychoanalytical theory. The term 'Depth Psychology' was coined by Psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857 - 1939). The theory here suggests that in order for our subconscious minds to perform the psychological therapy which takes place in dreams, we must be unconscious and passive participants. 

Dreaming provides a form of psychological healing as well as contributing to memory and learning consolidation, personality integration and catharsis. Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) propounded the theory that dreams are a way of satisfying primal urges and desires which are unacceptable in civilised society, thereby characterising dreams as a form of wish fulfilment. According to Freud, while we are dreaming, our subconscious represses doubt and critically-thinking because the healing nature of dreaming requires us to believe in what we experience. Note that other dream researchers, such as Psychiatrist Allan Hobson, argue against the idea that dreams have any particular meaning or purpose, concentrating on biological explanations (i.e. dreams as makeshift narratives which arise from random brain activity).

However, these theories, stemming from Depth Psychology and Psychoanalysis, do not provide ground for claiming that the psychological therapy offered by dreams acts as a mechanism for non-lucidity, they simply provide a explanations of the psychological purpose of dreaming. If these theories did explain the psychological therapy of dreaming as a mechanism for non-lucidity, this would suggest that it would be impossible for anyone with unreconciled psychological or emotional conflict to experience lucidity in a dream, which we know is not true. 

Developmental Psychology suggests that the brain is pre-programmed to dream - even foetuses in the womb experience the phenomenon of dreaming, before they have any grasp on their own existence or the world they will be born into, with its laws of physics. This means that the dream world and it's bizarre and fluid imaginative constructs left impressions on the subconscious brain before waking reality. It may be that these 'foundational memories' left such as imprint on the subconscious, they they still guide subconscious expectations, which offers an explanation for why we do not challenge the 'reality' we experience in our dreams - it was the first 'reality' we experienced as foetuses in the womb. Newborn babies spend an average of 8 hours in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep each day, again, reinforcing the fact that our first experience of reality takes place in the world of dreams, with the rules of waking reality coming later.

Psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) studied children's dreams and found that children's acceptance of dreams gradually changes from a belief in the reality of the dream to understanding that dreams are a 'story' inside their heads. 

We have different expectations in the real world and the dream world. Obviously, rules (laws of physics as well as social norms) are much stricter in the real world than in the dream world, suggesting that our brains are hardwired to recognise the boundary between the real world and the dream world and the respective rules which exist in each - the boundary between these worlds is 'waking up' - which the brain accepts, enabling it to adapt to the different sets of rules without question. 

An example of this mechanism failing is when we experience a false awakening. This phenomenon occurs when the dreamer finds themselves on the boundary between wake and sleep. The waking self (the waking 'I') is activated, while still within the hallucinatory nature of the dream world, which in itself is an effective gateway to lucid dreaming. 

Our brains process and interpret sensory data from our environment, which is received via the 5 senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. However, it is possible to trick your brain into receiving and interpreting other forms of data or information too - via the imagination, hallucinations or dreaming. The key here is perception - the brain does not necessary question the input it receives nor discriminate between different types of input. This provides an explanation for why the brain does not alert you to the fact you are awake or asleep and dreaming. 

Conscious awareness is a function of the conscious mind, which is deactivated during sleep, and therefore we accept our dreams as reality, without questioning them. Furthermore, the hallucinatory dream imagery which is triggered in the brainstem can be perceived by the brain as being as realistic as waking stimulus and perception. This profound and extraordinary effect is why our dreaming brain invents false memories and often complex narratives to explain what you are experiencing in the dream. A sudden snap to consciousness in the dream provides sufficient insight triggering lucidity. 

Professor Mark Blagrove, a sleep scientist, states that dreams - and nightmares - are a form of simulation which have an evolutionary purpose. Our dreams feel so real to us because in the dream itself, we have no other form of reality to compare - unless we are lucid, our waking reality does not exist. Blagrove states that the inability to become consciously aware we are dreaming is an evolutionary selection, as dreaming has evolved as a form of 'threat simulation' so that we can practice our survival techniques while asleep - in order for this to be effective, we must believe in the reality of the dream.

As you can see, there are a number of theories as to why we believe in our dreams, and why not all of our dreams are lucid dreams. Just like the majority of dream science, much of this is theory and guesswork and much remains to be discovered through dream science, studies of consciousness and neuroscientific research. 

New Youtube Video on Day Residue & Dream Residue

Here is my latest video which is on Day Residue & Dream Residue. You can find my accompanying article on this topic by clicking on this link: 'Day Residue & Dream Residue'.

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Day Residue & Dream Residue

Day residue is a concept which featured in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theory of dreaming, outlined in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). 

To read my previous articles on Freudian dream interpretation, please click here and here.

Freud initially argued that the interpretation of almost every dream was based on the idea of 'wish fulfilment' and the content of dreams is influenced by 'day residue' - the events of the previous day ('the dream day'). These events may be trivial - ordinary everyday events or trains of thought which stimulate preconscious associations to various themes and issues, leading to the arousal of repressed, subconscious wishes and desires.

In young children, dreams appear to be straightforward wish fulfilments aroused by the 'dream day', but in adults, the situation is more complex, as the symbolism of the dream is significantly distorted. The 'manifest content' of the dream is a heavily censored (by the ego as a form of 'defence') and symbolised derivative of latent dream-thoughts which exist in the subconscious mind of the dreamer. This distortion and censoring conceals the true meaning and nature of the dream, making it unrecognisable. These resistances prevent the repressed wishes of the subconscious from entering the conscious, and it is only through dreams which they find their expression, albeit under a 'veil of disguise'. 

According to Freud, the elements of dream-work include the following processes:

• Condensation – Two or more latent thoughts are combined/spliced into one manifest dream character/scene/situation
• Displacement – Instead of the directing the emotional response – i.e. fear/desire onto towards the intended person/object, it is transferred onto meaningless/unrelated persons/objects
• Symbolism – Complex or vague concepts are converted into a symbolic dream image. The concept may be converted semantically (similar sounding words) or less intrusive/intimidating visual images. Freud viewed most dream symbols as having a latent sexual meaning – elongated, erect, inflated objects were thought to symbolise the male penis, whilst concave or vessel-like objects represented the female. Castration was also another theme used by Freud – represented by symbols such as amputation, hair/tooth loss etc.
• Secondary revision – this is the stage during which Freud stated that the dream would lose ‘the appearance of absurdity or incoherence’ – by reconciling contradictions and attempting to re-organise the dream into a pattern consistent with the subject’s experience of life.

Freud believed that dreams are compromises which ensure that sleep is not interrupted - if presented in their true form, the subconscious wishes would be too arousing or disturbing to the dreamer and would wake him up. Freud also described 'screen memories' - memories which function to hide - and derivatively express - other subconscious mental material. Freud described 3 kinds of 'screen memory':

• A childhood memory 'screens' or conceals another childhood event which is contemporary to it
• A later memory which represents a 'screened' childhood event
• A childhood memory represents a later event

Freud termed the latter type, a 'retrogressive screen memory'. Academics often suggest that day residue and screen memories are linked - they are closely related elements of the dreamer's past and present experiences which are displaced from his more central instinctual concerns.

The 'first dream' of Freud's psychoanalytical theory of dream interpretation - which inspired his sub-theory of wish fulfilment was that of 'Irma's Injection' (click on the red link to be taken to my article on this dream). Freud used the dream as a template to show how he used the manifest content of the dream to trigger associations (thoughts, memories, emotions etc) to decode the latent content. He used this dream to explain how day residue operates in relation to his theory of wish fulfilment. Freud stated:

You entirely disregard the apparent connections between the elements in the manifest dream and collect the ideas that occur to you in connection with each separate element of the dream by free association according to the psychoanalytic rule of procedure. From this material you arrive at the latent dream-thoughts, just as you arrived at the patient's hidden complexes from his associations to his symptoms and memories... The true meaning of the dream, which has now replaced the manifest content, is always clearly intelligible. 

[Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1909), Lecture Three]

Dreams are therefore full of 'day residue' which are the leftover thoughts and feelings from the 'dream day', and conversely, we often experience 'dream residue' when we wake up. Dream residue is the leftover thoughts and emotions from our dreams, even if we fail to remember exactly what we experienced. Dream residue often feels like a 'dream hangover'. 

Esoteric thinkers often refer to this as 'astral repercussion', but this idea falls within the more spiritualist theories of dreaming and has no place in my own dream practices. 

The 'Vigilance Theory' of dreaming, forwarded by Antti Revonsuo, states that in dreams, the brain rehearses patterns of challenge and opportunity, preparing the dreamer to act and think more effectively when certain real-life situations arise in the future. This is a biologically and psychologically important function, regardless of whether we remember our dreams or not. 

Dream residue is responsible for the phenomenon of 'dream deja-vu' - although we often fail to comprehend this is taking place and may interpret it as being some form of extra-sensory perception or psychic ability. In fact, it is likely that we have experienced something similar to a waking event in an earlier dream.

Day residue is often overlooked or ignored - dreamers may notice scenes or associations to their waking lives and consider them to be a less interesting aspect of dreaming than more fantastical dream content or themes. Many dreamers who are interested in analysing and interpreting their own dreams discard the day residue elements of their dreams because they seem unimportant, uninteresting and easy to recognise as relating to waking life events. Instead, focus is placed on the more bizarre or obscure elements of the dream. 

In fact, Freud would argue that almost all of our dreams are composed almost entirely of day residue - if we define day residue as being the accumulation of our waking experiences and memories. It is debated as to whether you can ever dream anything completely original which has not been influenced by a waking memory or event. Day residue is endlessly interesting - especially the way our dreams weave together sensory snapshots of our waking lives into new, complex and highly symbolic patterns and plots. 

Domhoff (2000) suggests that many dreams contain no dream residue at all - but it could be countered that the day residue may be present, but not properly identified by the dreamer (due to it being altered in the dream presentation). It may also be that there is a longer temporal duration between the waking events and the incorporation of the memory fragments into the dream (see below).

Hartmann (2010) also disputes the prevalence of day residue in dream content. He argues that dreams are always a new, unique creation, not a replay of the day's waking events. Each dream contains a new set of connections. He states that the dream will change the day residue and embroider it into a new plot with new associations. This does not rule out the presence of day residue however; it just means that instead of replaying waking events, the dreamer re-imagines them in a new storyline which means they might not be easily identifiable on reflection. However, it has been found that dreams very rarely contain an exact repeat of a waking memory ('episodic memory') in which a real-life event is re-enacted in detail. Episodic memories are thought to occur in less than 2% of dreams.

Freud also believed that all 'dream speech' is a reflection of memories of speech which have actually been heard/read by the dreamer in their waking life, although scholars such as Meier (1993) have argued against this, stating that many dreams contain entirely unique and new constructions of dream speech which are directly related to the content or theme of the dream, not a reproduction of speech from memory. 

Patrick McNamara refers to 'the dream lag effect' which is where the dreamer experiences residue from a week or so ago, as opposed to the preceding 'dream day'. He suggests that this occurs because sometimes it may take up to a week for certain material to be encoded into the long-term memory. Some of the imagery/material (of the memory) which is being consolidated then appears in the dream - the dream is the process of memory consolidation. The dream lag effect was originally suggested by Nielsen & Powell (1989) and the effect was subsequently replicated in later studies (Nielsen et al, 2004; Blagrove et al, 2010).

Some research - cited in Nielsen & Powell (1992) - suggest that the temporal delay between the event of the 'dream day' and the appearance of the memory as day residue within the dream is at least 24 hours. The evidence comes from anecdotal studies of dreaming and the day residue effect. I can accurately state - and provide ample evidence from my own dream journal - that this is not true for me. I often experience incredibly obvious day residue relating to events which happened only hours before the dream. This has also been confirmed by Hartmann (2010).

A number of single and multiple participant studies into dreaming and day residue have supported the hypothesis that dreamers are twice as likely to experience dreams which incorporate day residue from 1 day before the dream (65 - 70% of recorded dreams) than day residue from 2 days before the dream (30 - 35% of recorded dreams). These studies tend to prove Freudian theory to be largely correct, although not every dream contains day residue as defined by events from the 'dream day' (i.e. the preceding day only), but sometimes, material from longer ago (i.e. this is the dream lag effect in operation). A study by JA Henley-Einion & MT Blagrove (2014) found that there is a high incorporation of events from the 'dream day' on the first night then a decrease for the subsequent 2 - 4 nights which is followed by a resurgence in incorporation of events 5 - 7 days after they took place (the dream lag effect).

This basically means that dreams seem to favour material from the previous day, or material from 5 - 7 days preceding the dream.

Nielson & Powell et al (2004) also found that the dream lag effect was more prominent in dreamers who viewed their dreams as an opportunity for gaining insight and self-understanding - in the study it was discovered that such dreams often involved the resolution of a waking problem - typically linked to personal or emotional aspects of relationships - which had been troubling the dreamer. It was hypothesised that the delay between the waking event and the dream incorporation which occurs in the dream lag effect may be the mind's way of working through interpersonal difficulties and the 'reformulation' of negative memories into more positive ones. A study by Cartwright et al (1998) showed that dreams may be involved in emotional memory processing. 

Michel Jouvet (1979) claims that 2 qualitatively different memory process are involved: day residue is linked to the short-term memory functions, while the dream lag effect is linked to the long-term memory. He states that day residue contains no information about the physical features of the waking environment, while dream lag material is able to reproduce spatial dimensions of the waking environment. 

Tarnow (2003) also links dreams with the processes of the long-term memory. He suggests that dreams are excitational responses to waking perceptions and thoughts which are only apparent when the dreamer is asleep. Tarnow supports and re-interprets Freud's theory, suggesting that the dream-work described by Freud is the pre-dream 'storage transformation' of these thoughts and perceptions into the long-term memory.

A very recent study by E van Rijn et al (2015) found that the dream lag effect only occurs in dreams which take place during the REM sleep stage. 

Dreams can occur in every stage of the sleep cycle, but tend to be more fragmented when experienced in the later stages of sleep. These fragmented dreams tend to be a mishmash of prior experiences and disconnected memories which are pasted together in random ways. During NREM sleep, dreams are shorter, but more cohesive and structurally organised, relating to waking events. REM sleep is characterised by longer, more vivid, but bizarre and disjointed dreams - also incorporating waking memories and material (day residue), but in more complex ways, especially when experienced in the later REM stages of the sleep cycle. 

Considering exactly where these memory fragments are coming from and how they are connected to one another may provide an explanation for the distinction between early and late-night dreams. 

The various elements of an episode (i.e. a waking life event) are thought to be stored in the neocortex, but they are not necessarily linked together to form a complete representation of the event/memory. Each piece of sensory information involved in the waking event is represented by a different area of the neocortex and even though they combine together to make up a complete memory, the various neocortical areas may not be directly interlinked. 

Instead, the hippocampus keeps track of such connections and forms the appropriate linkages, at least during the time in which the memory is relatively fresh. However, communication between the neocortex and hippocampus is disrupted during sleep and as a result, this process is also disrupted. During REM sleep, both the hippocampus and those parts of the neocortex which are involved in a current dream are strongly active, but they don’t appear to be in communication with one another. 

Instead, responses in the neocortex occur independently, without hippocampal input, so they must relate to memory fragments rather than linked multi-sensory representations. Essentially, when memories which have been stored in the neocortex are accessed or activated during REM, they remain fragmentary instead of drawing in other aspects of the same memory to form a complete episodic replay. 

These fragments are not linked together in the way they might be if you though of the same event/memory while you were awake (or indeed in NREM sleep). For instance, cortical representations of both someone who was present during the waking event and the location of the event (from the 'dream day') may be triggered, but these will not necessarily be linked together, and they may not be linked to the actual theme of the waking event at all. Instead, seemingly unrelated characters and events may be activated in conjunction with the memory of this event. 

One possible factor is the stress hormone cortisol, which increases steadily across the night. High cortisol concentrations can block communication between the hippocampus and neocortex, and since concentrations are much higher early in the morning, this could provide a physiological reason for the disjointed properties of late-night (i.e. early morning) dreams occurring at the end of the sleep cycle.

I now always attempt to identify and explain my day residue in my dream journal. I use the term 'day residue' to cover both events from the preceding 'dream day' and also material from longer (i.e. the dream lag effect). This is for ease of reference and to simplify the process. To me, seeing my day residue appear in my dreams is exciting and insightful - since I have been practicing this method of recording and analysing my dreams, I have refrained from thinking of the seemingly innocuous occurrences of day residue as being 'banal' or insignificant and have tried to use the information to shed some light into why certain waking events have been incorporated into my dream, their subconscious associations and how they relate to my mental activity. I would urge everyone interested in dreaming and dream interpretation to do the same!

Stream of Consciousness (1) - TAT Cards

As a writer and dream analyst I was keen to undertake some stream of consciousness/free association work. This is a technique used by Sigmund Freud as part of the psychoanalytical method of dream interpretation. The concept is that the individual should facilitate a spontaneous, continuous and unadulterated stream of thoughts, ideas, emotional responses, memories and associations to flow. There should be no attempt to control or 'censor' the flow of material.

These stream of consciousness exercises were originally posted as a stand-alone page on this Blog. However, after careful consideration I decided to update the format which involved removing some content which was not in keeping with the theme of this Blog. I have decided to re-post the stream of consciousness content on the main Blog home page as it is relevant to my study of dreams and dreaming and is a particularly valuable exercise to learn when interpreting dreams.

In addition, some of my favourite artists use this technique in their writing - from the obvious examples of James Joyce and Virginia Woolfe, to hip hop MC, Ghostface Killah, whose style is said to be characterised by a stream of consciousness flow.

I was also interested in Thematic Apperception Testing, which is a psychological method of picture interpretation which is said to demonstrate the subject's inner thoughts, emotions and social relationships. This form of test was shown in my favourite film, A Clockwork Orange (1971) as a way of measuring the psychological profile of anti-hero Alex whilst he is sentenced to imprisonment for murder.  

TAT is a form of ‘projective’ psychological testing - was developed by the American psychologist Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at the Harvard Clinic at Harvard University during the 1930s. A widely held belief is that the idea for the TAT emerged from a question asked by one of Murray's undergraduate students, Cecilia Roberts.  She reported that when her son was ill, he spent the day making up stories about images in magazines and she asked Murray if pictures could be employed in a clinical setting to explore the underlying dynamics of personality. Murray wanted to use a measure that would reveal information about the whole person but found the contemporary tests of his time lacking in this regard. Therefore, he created the TAT. The rationale behind the technique is that people tend to interpret ambiguous situations in accordance with their own past experiences and current motivations, which may be conscious or unconscious. Murray reasoned that by asking people to tell a story about a picture, their defences to the examiner would be lowered as they would not realize the sensitive personal information they were divulging by creating the story.

Murray and Morgan spent the 1930s selecting pictures from illustrative magazines and developing the test. After 3 versions of the test (Series A, Series B, and Series C), Morgan and Murray decided on the final set of pictures, Series D, which remains in use today. After World War II, the TAT was adopted more broadly by psychoanalysts and clinicians to evaluate emotionally disturbed patients. 

The TAT is popularly known as the picture interpretation technique because it uses a series of provocative yet ambiguous pictures about which the subject is asked to tell a story. The subject is asked to tell as dramatic a story as they can for each picture presented, including the following:

• what has led up to the event shown
• what is happening at the moment
• what the characters are feeling and thinking
• what the outcome of the story was

If these elements are omitted, particularly for children or individuals of low cognitive abilities, the evaluator may ask the subject about them directly. Otherwise, the examiner is to avoid interjecting and should not answer questions about the content of the pictures. 

The examiner records stories verbatim for later interpretation. The complete version of the test contains 31 picture cards. Some of the cards show male figures, some female, some both male and female figures, some of ambiguous gender, some adults, some children, and some show no human figures at all. One card is completely blank and is used to elicit both a scene and a story about the given scene from the storyteller. 

Although the cards were originally designed to be matched to the subject in terms of age and gender, any card may be used with any subject. Although Murray recommended using 20 cards, most practitioners choose a set of between 8 and 12 selected cards, either using cards that they feel are generally useful, or that they believe will encourage the subject's expression of emotional conflicts relevant to their specific history and situation. However, the examiner should aim to select a variety of cards in order to get a more global perspective of the storyteller and to avoid confirmation bias (i.e. finding only what you are looking for).

When he created the TAT, Murray also developed a scoring system based on his need-press theory of personality. However, implementing this scoring system is time-consuming and was not widely used. Rather, examiners have traditionally relied on their clinical intuition to come to conclusions about storytellers.

Although not widely used in the clinical setting, several formal scoring systems have been developed for analyzing TAT stories systematically and consistently. Two common methods that are currently used in research are the:

• Defence Mechanisms Manual (DMM). This assesses three defence mechanisms: denial (least mature), projection (intermediate), and identification (most mature). A person's thoughts/feelings are projected in stories involved.

• Social Cognition and Object Relations (SCOR) scale. This assesses four different dimensions of object relations: Complexity of Representations of People, Affect-Tone of Relationship Paradigms, Capacity for Emotional Investment in Relationships and Moral Standards, and Understanding of Social Causality.

Examiners are encouraged to explore information obtained from the TAT stories as hypotheses for testing rather than concrete facts.

Like other projective techniques, the TAT has been criticized on the basis of poor psychometric properties. Criticisms include that the TAT is unscientific because it cannot be proved to be valid (that it actually measures what it claims to measure), or reliable (that it gives consistent results over time). As stories about the cards are a reflection of both the conscious and unconscious motives of the storyteller, it is difficult to disprove the conclusions of the examiner and to find appropriate behavioural measures that would represent the personality traits under examination. In addition, as the present needs of the storyteller change over time, it is not expected that later stories will produce the same results.

The lack of standardization of the cards given and scoring systems applied is problematic because it makes comparing research on the TAT very difficult. With a dearth of sound evidence and normative samples, it is tough to determine how much useful information can be gathered in this manner.

Some critics of the TAT cards have observed that the characters and environments are dated, even ‘old-fashioned,’ creating a ‘cultural or psycho-social distance’ between the patients and the stimuli that makes identifying with them less likely. Also, in researching the responses of subjects given photographs versus the TAT, researchers found that the TAT cards evoked more ‘deviant’ stories (i.e., more negative) than photographs, leading researchers to conclude that the difference was due to the differences in the characteristics of the images used as stimuli. In a 2005 dissertation, Matthew Narron, Psy.D. attempted to address these issues by reproducing a Leopold Bellak 10 card set photographically and performing an outcome study. 

The results concluded that the old TAT elicited answers that included many more specific time references than the new TAT. Despite criticisms, the TAT remains widely used as a tool for research into areas of psychology such as dreams, fantasies, mate selection and what motivates people to choose their occupation. 

Sometimes it is used in a psychiatric or psychological context to assess personality disorders, thought disorders, in forensic examinations to evaluate crime suspects, or to screen candidates for high-stress occupations. It is also commonly used in routine psychological evaluations, typically without a formal scoring system, as a way to explore emotional conflicts and object relations. TAT is widely used in France and Argentina using a psychodynamic approach. Due to the test's popularity and importance within psychology, the TAT has appeared in a wide variety of media. 

The Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon includes a scene where the imprisoned psychiatrist and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter mocks a previous attempt to administer the test to him while Michael Crichton included the TAT in the battery of tests given to the disturbed patient and main character Harry Benson in his novel, The Terminal Man. The test is also given to the main characters in two widely-differing tales about the human mind: the aforementioned cult classic, A Clockwork Orange and Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon. Italian poet Edoardo Sanguineti wrote a collection of poetry called T.A.T (1966–1968) that refers to the Test.

Therefore, I decided to find as many of the TAT images online and conduct the test myself as a stream of conscious exercise in line with guidance found on various websites and Blogs, which recommends looking at the given image and then writing (in line with the information given above on the suggested technique) in stream of consciousness mode for approximately 10 minutes, recording whatever comes to mind. I took this to mean continuous writing, although other Blog authors who have conducted the same experiment themselves seem to write very little, sometimes one or two poetic sentences. I tried to keep the idea of a ‘story’ in mind, as this is what Murray intended, and therefore my language is simply the words as they emerged in my mind – If something is written erroneously or grammatically incorrect, so be it – that is the nature of stream of consciousness writing – it is unedited in the flow of associations, thoughts and ideas on the page and not intended to be polished and ‘literary’ per se. I may be telling you this to simply excuse some terrible writing :) 

I will also add that I do not know which set of pictures I am using, as Google is not necessarily accurate in labelling and I wanted to get started with the exercise rather than spending large amounts of time searching through articles on the internet (I do enough of that for my studies/work!) to find exactly which cards were selected by which researched. Instead I will simply use whichever images seem to be popular on credible sites/Blogs when searching for TAT. I will post the image and the stream of consciousness text as soon as I complete each, but unfortunately I am not best placed to analyse my results – that is for my readers to do!!! Any feedback would be gratefully received. 

TAT IMAGE 1

The two women are in the lab, both middle-aged and living in a working-class area of England - it is not the present, but rather several decades back. Both women are married and live ordinary lives, but they are employed by a laboratory in a factory to conduct experiments into food product flavouring. The woman in the background is the supervisor of the woman in the foreground, undertaking the experiment. Their names are Maude and Judy, respectively. Maude doesn't really care for Judy, as you can see from the expression on her face. She feels that she is not serious in her work and is fickle. Judy is slightly younger than Maude and has been married for less time. She feels that her youth has slipped away from her and that she has nothing exciting or vibrant in her life. She regrets settling for married life when she could have had a career in science. On this particular day, Maude is anxious as there is a deadline to achieve - the women must complete their tests by the afternoon, but Judy is in a strange mood and can't concentrate, her mind seems to be wandering. Instead of taking her break for a cup of tea, Maude is forced to stand over Judy to ensure that Judy is getting her work done, and is constantly snapping at her and reprimanding her for her sloppy work. At one point Judy looks like she will burst into tears. She cannot tell Maude that she is worried because she found a syringe in her only son's bedroom, in a paper bag under his bed. She doesn't know how to ask him whether he is using heroin. There is a lack of communication between the women and as a result, the work assignment is not completed by the deadline and Maude is given a written warning from their employer. This makes her relationship with Judy even worse, as in her 15 years of working for the factory she has never once been disciplined for her conduct or supervision of other staff. She only tells Judy about the written warning when Judy is in the canteen, moaning about her husband Franky, who has a gambling problem and never helps around the house. Judy only married Franky because she accidently fell pregnant with her son, Roy. Maude has never understood how Judy is able to express her dissatisfaction with her marriage with such ease in front of work colleagues, some of whom are virtual strangers. Yes, she has had her fair share of problems in her own marriage - her husband Dirk is no angel, he isn't opposed to walloping her over the head with the television remote control or pushing his half full glass from the end table in frustration at her if she dare to say something 'silly'. That's just the way men are, she thinks. They hate a woman with a good career.

TAT IMAGE 2

Colin gave the regular impression of possessing more fingers than possible for the normal human hand. His mother, Norma Jeane, named after Marilyn, but born before her, by only a year, indicating that her birth certificate might have been altered some time after her previous registration by another name, wore bat sleeves to cover her bat hands, hands bad from years on the broom. Looking out at the green green avenue at low morning, the sky is a light Tuesday grey-blue, with a light cloud and maybe some rain. Long playing-fields, grass commons, sycamore trees and low walls of stone. It’s the outskirts of London, the 1970s or 1908s, both will live into the 1990s for sure, but not Colin if he goes worse wrong than now. She looks older than she really is - or maybe she doesn’t and it’s a trick of the light. Colin was a graduate from some seaside university or college or the other, a Mrs Robinson lover type, so slick and smooth as he stood there, Teddy Boy swag, passive-aggressive self scowling internally from his stomach to his cheek, as his mother curtain-twitched the neighbourhood day in day out, anxious about the jibber-jabber of the gossip-mongerers in town who might whisper dirty words about her precious son, just back from the cold grim grime of the prison yard, and standing in her 1920-style (art deco? Maybe it was, maybe it was some other historical movement or era she was recreating in the house near the corner shop and the railway line, quaint when it’s sunny out) living-room, staring black hell into the carpet, but silent forever silent. Mrs Hubbard, that was her last name and how people would talk to her, was not a popular woman, people said she was a lunatic, but she wasn’t really, she was just ‘simple’ or whatever euphemism you can use for retarded nowadays, that was what she was, not a bad, nasty woman, just had some trouble comprehending what the modern world was about. Colin didn’t live in the modern world either – the two of them would spend their days, with her looking outward at a landscape unknown to her little eye on the inside, all worry and strife about what might be said, what might be heard, and Colin on the inside too, but looking inside more, as if he was looking into his mother’s womb or her cerebral cortex or her lungs. He wasn’t interested in what went on outside the window, he was stewing a hate and repressing an eruption, so nearly an erection, one hair breadth away, besides he was on probation and couldn’t go through all that again, cell share, stench of overflow, semen in the showers, the innuendos and jibes and the revenge-eyed screws, no way, Jose, coin a phrase, write a jingle and sell it for a million quid to a record label. Ex-con. He would continue to stare in as his mother stared out and hung her head in shame, many fingered man.

TAT IMAGE 3

He was the kind of man who didn’t connect well to the living, was William Honest, a man who couldn’t live up to the name with which he was burdened. He wanted to drive a Jaguar, but he had a Fiat. He lived on a street where punks crackpiped it until dawn, with no let up. That’s why he chose to visit whore, or lady friends as he referred to them, when taking tea in the conservatory and miming over paragraphs in books he dare not lose himself because he wasn’t that type of man. He held his head in shame, oh squalid bedsit in shady part of town, why come to hell everyday just to get let out and walk back in. She looks dead, but that’s just valium, she always takes it right before and after to wash clean the membrane before dreamless sleep. He wishes he could sleep, insomniac and scared of doctors, he will go back to his two up two down and eat biscuits to make his face smile again with the evening news, oh no it’s war again, another cup of tea, almost a coup and no casualty. There are pine trees in the garden and he will never know, but that whore’s favourite song was Venus as a Boy, by Bjork, she loved that song and so did Kate Moss, I read it in an article once, Just 17. She tried to make the bedsit better with pictures on the wall and books on a bedside cabinet she never bought herself, but William knew she wasn’t an intellect, like him, as in he wasn’t either, both just average people. He would come (cum) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays and she would let him sit in the window seat and drink milk (milky) and watch sports on the small telly. Talking about what it was like in maths class once and the beach would crash in and crash out behind the window. She liked to play dead on weekdays and he was grateful not to have to small-talk her fears away once ejaculate and withdraw and outwards into rain without pay sometimes, pay double the next, he was on Job Seekers Allowance, small time theft on side, handle stolen goods, make small wage, that’s why it’s funny his name is Honest, I told you. He met her on a Bank Holiday Monday – what does that matter when both jobless and on the drink mid-morning – he was not a drunk, he was out in the City, I mean London City, financial capital, some days, all sober mind, shiny-shoe look-for-work, but now it was filth in crap-floor, carpet-grot council flat-upon-sea-cliff. Half-way home – has she got pre cons, marks on the arm – traintracks! No, trackmarks! Anything that shouts ‘disease’? Of the mind is alright, we can all handle a bit of madness if there’s some fun attached somewhere along the line. It’s a Shotter’s Nation, THAT was the album he was listening to in the disco, or parts of it, could have been a fancy house party. Yeah he doesn’t mind a tiny bit of madness if he can stick it in.

TAT IMAGE 4 

There was something off-putting about the room, the way the shadow jumped out in front of Rancid’s head, and the slimy things which slivered, slithered out from under the bed. Rancid thought there was something of the Grecian Goddess about her, she dressed that way and liked to bring on her own tragedy. Bertram thought he was an army soldier, but it was mainly just delusion, his brain had seizures since the brawl in the pub toilets. Bertram and Rancid are married, or at least they are pretending to be, now that they live in a different town. Rancid is distraught because Bertram doesn’t love her anymore. He complains about everything and likes to leave the house and eat fish without her. She never gets to leave the house anymore, unless she is taking the baby to the playground outside the flat. She cries because Bertram likes to drink and be nihilistic in all ways, but none. He watches films that she does not like and he hates the tiles she has laid down for the kitchen floor. She is crying because he is a nasty person and he likes to drink so much that he passes out and then the bad things happen in the room. The light outside the window isn’t right and the door handle elongates beyond natural proportions in Rancid’s hand. She wonders is she is a person created by Stephen King, or real flesh and blood, because sometimes in this house it is hard to tell. She is wearing the Grecian Goddess dress today, because today is the day for making or baking bread and Bertram is drunk out of head on Scotch and he is lying in his military gear, and the house is just crumbling paint and debris around the ruins. They will play Scrabble later and she has to let him win and then they might do some crafts together on the big long table or he will go out at dusk by himself to play on the arcade machines in the town centre – the town could be Cromer, that’s how it looks now, or bigger, Great Yarmouth. It is cold and grey out and it is windy. Bertram will get a chill if he doesn’t wear a jacket. It’s earlier than he thought, the shops are still open and he can go out and buy things. Rancid is still at home, she is standing by the sculpture, screaming, because they were both alone together the whole time.

TAT IMAGE 5

If you look, the latter back man, the one to the right, slightly left, he has one arm missing, it was sawn off at the elbow, he was one of these people who have a fetish about amputation, he asked for it to be done, the circus freak, the other man, little bit more to the front, is his uncle, he shares the name Nathan Barley with a telly character, but he is not the same person, instead he is a butcher. He is cutting a man up, or at least that’s what he wants amputee Richendo to think, instead he is just sticking pins like Hellraiser in him, saying it’s a treatment for whatever ailment Darian has, but it is not clear, as he did not ask for this treatment, it has been forced on him as a demonstration of some sort. Notice the window to the left back of the room, behind Machos’ head? It is very crooked, like something went wrong in there, that laboratory or wherever this crude doctory is actualising itself, it maybe some lock-up in East London. Machos is an orphan and he stumbled into this place, he used to sell matchsticks on the corner, and how his skeletal is bent out of all normalness. He looks all misplaced. His face is rather anxious about something, but he doesn’t see what is behind him. He sees that the bad man – that is Nathan Barley, has brought a gun, and leant it against the wall. Machos hates guns, he once shot some flowers in a flower patch and felt guilty about his impact on the natural world. He does not know who possesses the gun and that gives him a sense of dread. His face is twitching. He hears reggae music in the back and the screams of Darian, silenced by palm on mouth. He is dressed as a posh schoolboy, but he does not attend school and he is learning nothing from being in the presence of Nathan Barley, in fact he would be more of less inclined to commit suicide if Nathan Barley tried to take him under his wing, he has bad intentions of more or less everyone with whom he crosses paths, not that he walks on the right side of the road. He likes to minimalise or trivialise his risk upon society, but in truth he is very psychopathic, his nephew fears him greatly and can see that if Machos does not leave soon, he might well be butchered up and put away to decompose.

TAT IMAGE 6

Rebecca is a simple girl who works in the fields for a living, but she wants to improve herself. She joins a library and enrols at the community college to undertake a course in literary appreciation, but she is falling behind with the coursework as her family constantly burden her with plough work in the hot son. Rebecca is in love with her cousin Jove, who also works the fields. Jove is a pseudo intellect who preaches of his struggles in the Russian mafia, all lies, but his family allow him to live through his delusions without offering resistance or disbelief. Jove will break Rebecca - he is conducting an elicit affair with another woman in the village, a Mrs Roper, who works behind the counter in the post office. Rebecca has no indication and daydreams of running away with Jove to a land far away from their Mid Western homeland where they can start a family without the intrusion of their relatives who would surely disapprove of their alliance. Rebecca plays the flute and the accordian well - she was raised in a musical family, one where every child is expected to entertain the elders at every social gathering. The family also keep geese. Rebecca's mother, Old Aids, makes a beautiful cauliflower soup with the produce from the garden. There is no telivision or internet and no-one knows or cares for the latest fashions. Rebecca wants to visit New York and Miami. Her dreams will be made on the East Coast and there her plough experience will be obsolete and her knowledge of ee cummings praised over peanut butter sandwiches and pizza slices, with Jove by her side.

TAT IMAGE 7

Jacent was a nasty boy - he dressed as Christ in robes of ochre and deemed himself completely superior to all and sundry, including his adoptive family. The adoptive family had bought him at a child auction, back in the days of the Cold War and he had never matured beyond the age of 9 years - he was stuck, stuck, stuck in a rut and declined to climb out of his own accord. He had been made by his adoptive mother, Molly Lips, to visit various child psychiatrists in Germany (where they are allegedly more educated, according to Mrs Lips) and none of them could diagnose his disorder or even hazard a guess at what was troubling the boy. He would fly into rages and try and strangle anyone who dared to cross his path or ask him what the matter was. He would break anything in the room within his moderate reach, throwing it against the porcelain walls of the house Mr Lips had sculpted out of glass for his family - he was a glassblower by trade, but had changed career and was now an unsuccessful architect, living off benefits in the council house they had been allocated at the end of the row, when their fragile porcelain house smashed to unhelpful smithereens one Sunday morning when Jacent was riling against his late breakfast. If one of the neighbours dared to complain of Jacent's unruly antics - such as his tipping water on electrical circuits or scratching swastikas into the paintwork of cars parked on the street, he would pummel their children, urinate on their property, set fire to pets - anything to relieve the burning rage which permeated his sorry being. Mrs Lips was advised by the last psychiatrist she consulted - a Mr Hans Lieber - that she should purchase for Jacent, a toy; a life-size doll, named Veronique, which he could use as a punching bag to work out his misogynistic fury. Jacent dressed Veronique as his double and beat her savagely day and night.  

TAT IMAGE 8

Montegra was a very pernicious girl - she tried her best to capture the heart of the desirable local stud, Elmo, who was in a long-term unrequited mutual fixation with another girl - Sabbatical. At college, where they were learning the theory of the liberal arts, Montegra would lunge for Elmo, trying to kiss his dry red lips, which she thought looked like wilting red roses in the garden. Elmo would extend cruel words to burn Montegra's soul, but she would not be dissauded from her quest to marry Elmo, whose family - in the artichoke trade - was said to be one of the wealthiest in East London. The situation came to a head on 'India Day' when the students were asked to dress in national costume and perform dances for local residents. Backstage, the tension between Montegra, Elmo and Sabbatical was building. Montegra was pretending that she was totally unaware of the other two persons' feelings towards her. Sabbatical was anxious, because she was bitterly jealous of Montegra's gold sari and glass bangles. Elmo had not bothered to come in costume - he was not one for authority or abiding by rules, it was in his blood to rebel. He was desperate to consumate his lengthy admiration of Sabbatical, today - he was also not one to be patient and wait for miracles. But the presence of Montegra and her unwaning passions and desires was proving to be an obstacle to the satiation of his sexual lust for Sabbatical. When Montegra tried to grope him behind the curtain, he tried to pull away, but she caught his wrist in a death-grip, telling him she loved him and she was a better match for him than the shy and introverted Sabbatical. Sabbatical was watching from some distance away and could not hear what was being said. She thought she might stop breathing or brain hemorrhage if this didn't stop.  

Dream Interpretation - Freudian Theory

In this House on 24 July 1895

the Secret of Dreams was Revealed 

to Dr Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud's great theory of dreaming was that the dream represented the fulfilment of a wish. Freud developed his theories of dreaming and neurosis in conjunction, claiming that they parallel one another. He depicted the child as seeking gratification of instinctual urges which are organised around the pleasure zones and bodily functions. Adults tame the child by instilling fear, shame and guilt over it's wishes, which become repressed into the subconscious. These unconscious wishes are not resolved and therefore continue to persist in their original childish form. The psyche of the socialised, civilised child (and adult) unwittingly contributes to the repression of wishes and primal urges and the instinctive drives become clogged and seek release. If these energies are not diverted into wholesome relationships and activities - or constructive substitutes - they will emerge as neurotic symptoms. As a symptom, the original wish-energy is discharged in a disguised form, which is admissible to the conscious mind. 

Freud then realised that he could make a comparison between this conceptualisation of neurosis and the compromise between the instinctual drives and censorship functions in dream formation. His theory is a form of 'excretion theory' whereby excess violent or sexual excitation from the subconscious is excreted through dreaming. The wishes need to be disguised from the dreamer, because if they were to surface in their true form they would shock the dreamer awake and damage their psyche. Dreaming acts as the 'guardian of sleep'. A censor transfers the wishes over to the dream-work, which can be defined as a set of functions which disguise the wish, rendering them unrecognisable to the dreamer. This allows the wishes to play out in a dream hallucination, enabling devious fulfilment - when we are asleep, we are all neurotic.

Freud described the dream form in considerable detail. 

Representation

Dreaming is predominantly visual and sensory. However, beneath the surface of the dream, in the 'latent content', exist explicit logical linguistic operations. Dream thoughts have to be represented as a sequence or juxtaposition of images, but these are not as obvious as language. This means we often dismiss the dream thoughts which underlie the pictorial content of the dream, which was termed as 'manifest content'.

Condensation

Freud believed that no dream image represented a single meaning and there was no universal dream symbolism. When an image enters a dream more than one meaning converges in and complexify it. Every dream image is 'over-determined' and condensation is responsible for the hybrid imagery of dreams. Condensation also serves to obfuscate the meaning of the dream imagery.

Associative Paths

Freud did not give a specific term to this process, but he described how latent content goes along 'associative paths' to find representation in more than one single dream image. The opposite of condensation is 'splitting'. Therefore, over-determination refers to two contrasting ideas: that multiple meanings converge in a single dream symbol and that multiple dream symbols may repeat of reinforce a single meaning. 

Displacement

The energy behind the dream is transferred from what it actually relates to, to a relatively neutral place, where it's true nature will not be recognised by the dreamer. 

Reversal

Freud also believed that something can be represented by its complete opposite. A disowned characteristic or aspect of the dreamer's self may be projected onto a dream character. Freudian theory has often been criticised because all dream interpretation appears arbitrary and it is possible to interpret any dream in whatever way.

Symbolisation
Condensation and displacement generate the majority of the dream symbolism - those which are idiosyncratic and are derived from the dreamer's personal history and subjective associations. Freud also propounded a more universal set of dream symbols which are derived from humanity's collective experience. These represent big themes such as birth, death, family relations, sex and the body.

Secondary Revision (Secondary Elaboration)
This is the theory that the dream as it is experienced by the dreamer is a form of para-art which arises from the same place as other forms of creativity. However, this is a theory which has emerged post-Freud. For Freud, art had integrity, whereas the dream did not,

Freud rejected the idea of symbolic dream interpretation whereby the entire meaning of the dream can be in the structure or narrative of the manifest content. He thought that each symbol is significant and comes from its own psychic sources, undergoing distortion by the censor, referring to the individual aspects of the dream as 'breccia'. Each symbol is a separate fragment held together by the cement of the dream. The cement of the dream - it's binding medium - is a superficial form which is created from the outset of the dream by the simple fact that it is a representation. Then, secondary revision, the series of discrete, disguised images are rendered into a sequence - the text of the dream which is intelligible to the waking, conscious ego.

Allan Hobson and David Foulkes both state that dreams are the result of random activations or memories which are cobbled together to form a dream narrative. Daniel Deslauriers claims that the dream narrative is scripted from the very start of the dream and contextual deviations only appear as a form of symbolic exploration of new psychological territory. 

Secondary revision is a process similar to those which are utilised to give coherence to waking experiences. Within the dream, Freud identified different ways in which this finishing work takes place:

(1) At the beginning, in conjunction with other dream-work
(2) Occurring after the dream breccia consolidates
(3) Continuing into waking recall and narration

Secondary revision has three functional aspects - critic, editor and plagiarist. The critic evaluates the dream, despite defensive resistance by the dreamer ('it was only a dream'); the editor renders the dream coherent and puts it into a verbal form and repairs gaps in recollection; and the plagiarist imposes forms of previous conscious or subconscious fantasies, including cultural forms. The secondary revision draws attention towards the dream's aesthetic surface, which always seems to maintain some form of minimal stylistic cohesion. Attention is drawn away from the latent content which is coded in the dream imagery. The manifest or surface content of the dream is therefore an inessential illusion which detracts from the true meaning of the dream. The dreamer should pay careful attention to each individual constituent part of the dream and trace its origins. A dream is a conglomerate which must be broken down into fragments to be understood. The manifest content is no more than a sham - a facade to shield the latent content from the dreamer.

In order to trace and decipher each element of the dream, Freud used free association - a form of stream of consciousness exercise, by which the dreamer lets his imagination and thoughts flow freely and uncensored. Psychological determinism means that the dream-making process becomes untangled in reverse, by the chain of free associations. The dreamer will eventually arrive at the original, subconscious, latent content.  Freud held that a 'far-fetched' associative chain would not emerge unless it had already been constructed by the dream-work.

Each dream has latent content and every dream is the veiled expression of a subconscious infantile wish or desire, but not all latent content are infantile wishes. This is a common misconception in popular understanding of Freudian theory. For Freud, some latent content is merely daily residue - waking thoughts which are comprehensible to the dreamer on reflection. Freud differentiates infantile wishes from latent content. Within the manifest content of the dream imagery, it is always possible to to discover material related to waking processes - whether concerns of which the dreamer is consciously aware, or preconscious ones which are retained below the surface. The ;concern' is withdrawn from the consciousness until it emerges in a distorted form in the manifest imagery of the dream. This brings forth the question as to why it is necessary for latent content to be coded and inadmissible to the dreamer's conscious - why are they not presented wholly to the dreamer in a comprehensible form? Freud claimed that censorship occurs because before the dream is dreamt, the latent content is connected with the unconscious infantile wishes. Freud explained the cause of dreaming in terms of a somewhat anachronistic mechanistic energy model based on psycho-physiology. The infantile wish is the energy source which cannot be admitted to the conscious and gradually builds up pressure, like steam. This excitation requires conduits or valves through which to discharge. During the waking day, neurotic or sublimated behaviour are ways for this discharge to take place and during sleep, dreaming is the process by which discharge occurs. Dream thoughts are drawn into the conscious where they are loaded with energy which empowers them to force their way into the dream consciousness, bearing with them the infantile wish. They are disguised by the dream-work before they emerge in the manifest content of the dream.

Freud had a penchant for reductive analysis and provided two authentic lower layers of dream meaning: latent content related to daily concerns and the repressed infantile wish. There is always some form of kinship between these two layers of dream meaning, because the infantile wish requires some form of 'hook' in the latent dream content by which to attach itself. Freudian dream interpretation seeks to both identify the repressed infantile wish and the present adult concerns of the dreamer. Throughout The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud neglects to locate the infantile dimension of many adult dreams and does not trace the genesis of the repressed infantile wish. This was a criticism raised by Jung and an aspect of his theory which Freud intended to revise. Indeed, in his own dream of Irma's Injection, Freud does not even address the issue of a repressed infantile wish, instead incorporating manifest content into his interpretation of the dream which inspired his theory.

In 1920, Freud addressed the kinds of recurrent dreams which occur in the dreamer following a severe trauma, much like a repetitive neurotic pattern. This led Freud to suggest that dreams may also be an attempt at mastering control over events which the dreamer could not deal with originally, in their waking life. This is in line with modern research into nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder. This change came about because Freud modified his model of the mind. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud presents a topographical model - a spatial projection of psychic stratiography in which there are layers of consciousness. In his later structural model, he develops a dynamic organisation of autonomous formations - the ego, superego and id.

This adaptation of his theory resulted from Freud's clinical observations of complex ego-related activity in the subconscious and un-wishlike anxiety and superego activity in dreams. This shift meant that something other than the primitive drives and infantile wishes may be responsible for the generation of dreams and implicitly suggested that manifest content should be paid more heed. Ego functions operate independently from primitive drives - the ego adapts to the outside world and generates personality patterns, and patterns of defence (denial, projection etc).

Freud referred to 'dreams from above' and 'dreams from below'. A 'dream from below' is an unconscious wish which has attached itself to dream residue (the repressed wish). A 'dream from above' is a dream which repeats waking thoughts and intentions of the dreamer which have found reinforcement in the repressed material censored from the ego (dream-thoughts). Freud seems to be saying that sometimes it is more useful to analyse dreams in relation to the dreamer's waking life rather than looking for infantile meaning. However, in making these assertions, Freud seems to undermine his own theory of dreaming which states that only an infantile wish is powerful enough to initiate a dream - dream-thoughts alone, and adult wishes are not strong enough to do so. 

Freud also claimed that the dreaming mind was unable to think of anything original. Therefore, Freud was dismissive of the cognitive aspect  of dreaming. He saw the judgment of the dreamer as nothing more than his waking mind. He believed that actual language which appears in dreams must be lifted from day residue as language production requires original thought and cannot be generated within the dream itself. Freud's notion of dreaming is therefore fairly restrictive and he claimed that the only contribution a dream makes is by enabling waking interpretation.  Hobson criticises Freud for ignoring the physical condition of the dreaming brain - but when Freud developed his theory of dreaming, it was impossible for him to analyse the brain of dreamers. This is something which has only recently been investigated by neuroscientists and is still an area which requires further study before we can begin to understand the complexities of the dreaming brain.

Freudian dream interpretation can be seen as reductionist in nature. He focused on the psychosexual nature of dreams and the central Oedipal (or Electra) Complex. Successors such as Geza Roheim (1891 - 1953) would later argue that all dreams represent a symbolic return to the womb. For Freud, deja-vu was always about the mother's genitals. Freudian dream interpretation relies on reducing the nature of dreams to infantile sexual wishes, the genitals, erogenous zones, masturbation and conflict.

These ideas led some critics to suggest that Freudian theory was essentially fatalist - man is nothing more than an multiplication of his parents' flaws and an accumulation of his own earlier selves. Roheim believed that in dreams we communicate with our own soul - the 'Great Man', which is a 'mandala' - symbolic of the uterus. Freudian theory has also focused on the idea that only the manifest content of a dream is happy or joyful; the latent content is always painful meaning that all dreams have the potential to be nightmares. 

Freud thought that dreams were neurotic symptoms and he relied heavily on the idea of abnormal psychic phenomena and dysfunction. In concentrating exclusively on mental illness, he failed to consider mental health. 

Freud claimed that the rational waking mind of man is no more genuine than the manifest content of his dreams - the social, logical, benevolent and constructive impulses in man are not primary, but instead secondary, arising from a need to repress his primal instincts. The purpose of the facade created in waking life is because man wants to be part of a civilised society and his primal (violent and sexual urges) are detrimental to that society. Love and creativity were thus sublimated forms of libidinal drives. He did not see these concepts as evolutionary constructive forces which urge a man to realise his potential and stated that '[t[]he idea condition of things would be...a community of men who had subordinated their instinctual life to the dictatorship of reason'. 

Critics of Freud have pointed to his 'spiritual poverty' - indeed Freud's own relationship with spirituality was a confused and conflicted one. Freud was an Austrian Jew, living in the polite, bourgeois society of Vienna - his personal circumstances would have greatly influenced his views on spirituality.  

Nevertheless, Freud had been responsible for highlighting the significance of childhood experiences on adult life and brought dream psychology within the remit of general psychology, giving it an academic basis. His theories relaxed the boundaries between the normal and abnormal and sought to connect the phenomenon of dreaming with waking reality in meaningful ways. Further, he developed the method of free association, which has proved to be an important tool in dream analysis. Freud saw life as a form of 'disease process'  and was the prime advocate of our (modern) idea of self-healing and recovery.

Richard Grossinger states: '[Freud] suggests that the dream is a kind of mirage in our desert. The purpose of interpretation from that perspective is to challenge our illusions and eradicate them'.