My latest dream...

I wasn't in class on Monday, so I don't really know what's going on, but as far as the instructions go, all I have to do is write about a dream I've had. Unlike Kasey, my dreams are super short and I barely remember anything in the morning, so this will be really undescriptive and lack lots of detail. Here goes.

I actually dreamt this last night (or this morning rather) and this is what happened: My boyfriend and I were in his parking garage and I was driving his car, which is brand new and he seems to love more than me. It's a stick shift, so I was practicing how to park it into his spot, #23 to be exact. I remember that he was in the back seat, someone else (no clue who) was in the passenger seat, and we were all listening to music while I ATTEMPTED to park the vehicle. I do remember that it took me a really long time to park it but I finally did it successfully, and surprisingly, no one was impatient and anxious for it to get done, we were all just happy and singing along to the tunes.

That's really it...hope you enjoy.

I dont really have long dreams. My dreams are very short. Even my nightmares, i only wake up if i get stabbed or something. Then i eventually force my self to sleep, and i am aware that my mind has created this nightmare, and i resolve the problem by going to sleep by pretending to dream in a non-REM sleep environment. But this time i have weapons of mass destruction, or become NEO from Matrix and kill all the bad guys while some hot chick is watching. I the end she end up sleeping with me....

I had a dream recently. I looked a little older, maybe 24 or something. I was playing Poker in some place i cant recall, and i was playing with these Rich folks who had a lot of money. I felt
honored at first, but then realized that they couldnt play. They sucked. I remember betting 45,000 $ pre-flop and some famous basketball player called me all in with 2,6, off suit. He took me out of the game in two hands. Then got up and made a scene of it "Yeah, Thats whats up, who's getting out next". At this point i remember saying to myself who calls 45,000 $ on a 2,6, off suit. For christ sake he won with a pair of 2's. Then i couldnt sleep for hours.


-
This was the shortest dream ever.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Since you've all already heard about my morning "false starts", so to speak, I'm going just a bit further back in my search more the most bizarre dream I have in recent memory, and here it is. Good luck going Freud on this monster.

There is a massive yellow water slide stretching comically into a cel-shaded sky (like from The Legend of Zelda : Windwaker). I'm sliding down this massive water slide at a breakneck pace. I know this because the pattern on the slide is going by very quickly. I hear somebody say something behind me and I turn around to look. Perryn (a friend of mine) is sliding down right behind me. She keeps on asking me questions but I cannot hear her so I keep screaming "WHAT?". We get to the bottom of the slide and land with an epic splash in the middle of a very large lake. I lose track of her during the splash. I start swimming towards the end of the lake opposite the water slide, which fades from view (I glance over my shoulder) as I swim. I eventually reach the wooded shoreline and climb out of the water. I am dry instantly. Also, I'm on a dirt road in the middle of the woods, without having taken a step. I am accompanied by several people, of whom I am the leader. We reach an old style roofed, wooden bridge and pause. There is another group of people, in an almost mirror-image arrangement from my own group. They are led by a man in black armour wielding a glowing translucent red sword. My group and his group start to fight using medieval style weapons. He and I walk towards each other in the middle of the fray. I am armed with naught but a plastic knife, like from the Student Union Cafe. I duck under the first swing of his sword and plunge the knife deep into his face. While he reels back I pick up a rock off the ground and smash it full force into the side of his head. It squishes like an over-ripe tomato. My group seems the have either finished off or chased away his, as they aren't fighting anymore. I pick up his sword and it glows a fierce blue as soon as my fingers touch the hilt. My group cheers. They break into groups and start talking with one another. I walk amongst the groups, speaking to each one in turn. I look up the path and Matt (another... I don't want to say friend, but somebody I know) is walking towards me. He is dressed in black goth pants and a fishnet shirt (which he actually owns so that's not my idea) and has a pair of nun-chucks hanging off either hip. He talks to me about how he has spend the last 16 years in training to be worthy of wielding the crystal-sword that I got from the bad guy. I ask him if he's ready. He says yes. I hand him the sword and it's colour changes. It is now a pale blue with a some red at the bottom. I tell him that he was not mastered his emotions yet, which is indicated by the red on the blade. It glows fiercer as I tell him this, as if proving my point. He says, in a very low voice, that the Crystal-sword WILL be his and that he will not rest until he possesses it. I tell him, in a light joking voice, "better luck next time, kid." He stalks off down the path from whence he came. The dream ends.

*let it be noted that my perceptions during this dream change from first person to third person from scene to scene, I would indicate the changes here if I remembered them*
*please also note that this dream was had on a saturday night after much activity, so to speak, so that may account for some of it's... interesting themes*

Freud in dreams and literature (better late than ever)

I've been having connection issues back home which is why I'm posting monday's post today.

When it compared to literature, Sigmund Freud's analysis on dreams, specifically his theories on "transforming thoughts into visual images", is very much appropriately relevant. When writing a story, we usually tend to picture it in our heads as it unfolds. We then process these mental images into writing in order to transmit the thoughts to others. Dreams are technically subconscious thoughts, those driven by suppressed desires, as Freud would probably put it. So, of course, the story that they unfold to us is displayed with vivid images.

"But your difficulties will begin when you come to the representation of abstract words and all those parts of speech which indicate relations between words- such as particles, conjunctions and so on." This means that one will not be able to translate the least tangible objects into visual imagery without having to put up with some struggling. And even with there stands certain impossibility. Writers face the reverse to this problem. They often find it a challenge to have their thoughts understood while trying to come up with the words that might best do the job. It's all about details really. The deeper dreams get, the more detailed they become. In the same way, the further we get to writing a tale, the more we feel we need to enhance it with vivid descriptions which, more often then not, forces us to face a sort of obstacle trying to determine how to achieve this.

11/26

For Wednesday, read the Jacques Lacan excerpt 'The Mirror Stage...' an unbelievably influential concept and text in critical theory. Think, as with the Freud (with whom we aren't finished, as you probably can guess), how it might fit into the study of literature.

But for Wednesday, let's try something else for a response--simply transcribe a dream that you've had. We'll let someone else play Freud for you over the weekend.

Freud and literature

When trying to figure out the revelance to Freud and Literature, I first thought about his whole theory about dreams and the idea of dream-works, and interpretating what is not relality and wanting it to be real. Now when trying to relate this idea to Literature I looked at how fiction can be seen as somewhat as a dream, in that it is a made up idea or story from many ideas. We know fictions is not true an not reality, same thing dreams. But when putting the two together they both send messages about ourselves personally. When an author writes fictionI believe in his mind he is writing about a dream or fantasy he might have, or a nightmare. Now relating this to Shakespere, he has written many fiction plays containing nightmares, and personal fantasy's becoming true, individuals doing anything by all means to fulfull their enjoyment which happens in dreams. Using literature he turns his plays into amazing stories containing dream like attributes that we can all relate too. When taking a look at the story of Oedipus you recongnize right away that this was a fantasy gone wrong, and this literature can be seen as a dream that one may have if one son feels for his mother the way he did. And using literature the dream is expressed. Literature allows you to play with words however you would like, and create anything thing out of it, and an author can use it to express a dream or fantasy he might have using fiction and a character that might not be him but have characteristics of the author. An author is able to live it without really living it, like a dream.

Freud and Literature

Freud's theories on dreams and their meanings definitely correlate to our study of literature.
"We laid down four main relations of the kind: the relation of a part to the whole, approximation
or allusion, the symbolic relation and the plastic representation of words." When I read this quote of Freud's, it is very clear to me that this can not only deal with the interpretation of dreams, but also literature, and how we write it, read it and understand it as well. A writer, uses words to symbolize things and meanings, and writer's also try to create allusions in their story.
This idea is especially true when reading Shakespeare because most all of his plays, are filled with allusions and dreams themselves, where the character's spend most of their tormented time trying to figure out exaclty what they mean. Shakespeare is also a genius when it comes to "play" on words and their symbolic meanings. One can clearly see the correlation here between Freud and literature because of this example.

Imitation

There are many ideas that can be derive to what a dream is, but the result is that the dream is a mental picture waiting to be turned real. Although, many times is made into a fictional memory, where the mind plays a kind of 'invention' to what a dream is seen, and what will really happen. All will be left with is a illusion to what a dream is in real life. In the end, a dream is like a scene in a fiction movie hoped to be turned into a scene in ones life.

I think the quote that best represents the whole theme of this reading is,"The 'creative' imamgination, indeed, is quite incapable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another." Therefore, this means that the sense of creativity plays a major role in what to see in a work of literature, or in a dream. In a work of literature the best example can be fiction stories, that are based on made believed stories of mythological creatures, or worlds. In the other hand there are dreams that can be seen as moments in life that are made up to what one wishes or really wants to what can really happen and is going on. In this writing 'The Dream Work' by Sigmund Freud, talk about all the different ways a dream can be interpreted from the illusions to what really happens. Although, the main problem is 'Imitation', which plays and will continue to be a problem in trying to develope new ideas. The problem is that stories that where popular in the past, written by great minds, start to be developed into new versions of the same or simular story but with different time settings. As a result, history is repeating itself by learning things that where already taught in the past, and will not give way to new ideas and new minds to write new stories. If by any means new stories come to be seen, they must be interpreted wth a great amout of intelligence, that in a way attracts people's interests. In the end, in order to for each dream to be turned from the creative-illusion, to the real life, the mind needs to focuse on real memories that are alive in present times, in order to have a dream be a memory of what might happen or what did happen in real life. The dream should be like an experience that has happen recently or will happen, to the extent that one is aware of what is true in real life and what is just an illusion.

Freud

I think the parallel that is trying to be drawn here is that literature and dream-work as Freud puts it are two things that are a lot alike. He writes “It is possible, naturally, to make a composite structure out of things and places in the same way as out of people, provided that the various things or places have in common something which is emphasized by the latent dream.” Here I think it refers to what writers use as symbols. Freud here basically tells you how to make a character in a story. You take a bunch of things you want the character to be and put them together. This character then takes on those qualities. Then you get to the next level where the character is then equal to those attributes. For instance you could say Superman stands for justice, courage, and strength which he then becomes. He also writes that “You will only be able to form an idea of the further significance of these discoveries when you learn that the mechanisms of dream construction are the model of the manner in which neurotic symptoms arise.” I think that if you parallel dream sequencing with literature you get insight into what makes people tick. Now being that stories were around way before psychoanalysis this is saying that stories give insight into the human condition (which Freud goes into trying to explain it with the unconsciousness) and tell us about how people as a collective function (for lack of a better word).

Freud argues that the foundation of all dream content is the fullfillment of wishes, whether one is conscious or not. The unsconscious wants to show the wish fulfilled but the preconscious won't allow it which then only an understanding of the dream-work can explpain the dream.

The first few lines caught my attention after reading them a few times. "When you have thoroughly grasped the dreamcensorship and representation by symbols, you will not yet, it is true, have completely mastered the distortion in dreams, but you will nevertheless be in a position to understand most dreams". When one is reading literature, they may interpret it according to what they know. The "symbols" in the story may make sense and provide a storyline but the reader may not have grasped the entire concept of the story that the author was trying to make. In other words, the reader will interpret what they are reading according to what they know and believe and the author could be aiming for a totally different concept.

Some thoughts

The first paragraph of the passage made me think a lot especially the line that goes “In doing so you will make use of both of the two complementary techniques: calling up ideas that occur to the dreamer till you have penetrated from the substitute to the genuine thing and on the ground of your own knowledge, replacing the symbols by what they mean.” For some reason I thought about dreams being fiction writing and non fiction writing to being awake or whatever because of “dream-distortion.” Freud basically says that we have to decipher and understand our dreams. That is a lot like fiction because in fiction there is a lot of things that we have to interpret and figure out what something means. There is also the part where he says that dreams are fulfillments of wishes that haven’t been experienced. It made me think that maybe the only way that people can tell other people things is through fiction because it has to be interpreted and understood. You can’t just tell people facts like in a nonfiction book because they wouldn’t really connect with it because it is just raw information that is thrown at them. You need to get through to them by writing fiction so that readers can see things for themselves. Freud then goes and breaks down the whole idea of dreams. But that is just the gist of things on how I thought it related to literature. Most of what Freud was saying is just things related to our dreams and how they are constructed.

Freud..

After reading excerpts from Freud’s ‘The Dream Work’ of 1916, I couldn’t help to think about the relationship between the writer and its reader. The writer/artist produces a work, and the readers/audience makes sense of it. The question is: where do we fit in Freud? Does Freud allow or help us (the audience) make sense of the message put forward by the author/artist? Through interpretation, can we truly seek to translate the symbols put forward in front of out eyes, where in the end all we see is the truth about the author/artist?

In any case Freud has a lot to do with literature and literary theory. For the most part, whenever anyone thinks of the word psychology, they begin to ponder about Freud. A great example that demonstrates the significance of Freud (psychology) in literary theory is our own very class and assignments. The professor asks us to do a Marxist reading of a short story, or a novel. ‘Read A, and B like a Feminist would’. It is a great task, and it encourages an individual to really get into the psyche of that person. How are we supposed to do that? What is really left of that person(s) (Marx, Cixous…)? Oh yeah, it makes great sense now. We should study the work they left behind. The solution to the assignment would entail a heavy reading of all the works produced by some famous author/artist, and only then can we truly read another work from a different perspective. – (one can write a dissertation about this…).

Freud and literature

From the reading, I've learned that the latent dream reflects our wish and desire, and they're projected onto manifest dream. Therefore, trying to make a connect manifest dream to latent dream would be interpreting the dream. Freud notes that most of the time, what's manifested in dreams may not seem related to the latent dream thoughts at all:
"just so does the dream-work succeed in expressing some of the contect of the latent dream-thoughts by peculiarities in the form of the manifest dream - by its clarity or obscurity, by its division into several pieces, and so on" (I think he calls this "dream distortion")
Also, Freud defines the work of interpretation as follows:
"The work which proceeds in the contrary direction, which endeavours to arrive at the latent dream from the manifest one"
To me, this really sounds like what we did in class when we were reading Waiting, (or when we read novels in general) like why did magistrate do this and do that? Trying to find out the motive of a character's actions, I find it very similar to dream interpretation. It is so in the sense that sometimes the motive is very clear, and sometimes it's not, so we need to investigate.

Freudian Concepts? In My Literature?

There is one excerpt from the Sigmund Freud reading that provided some food for thought: "The achievements of condensation can be quite extraordinary. It is sometimes possible by its help to combine two different latent trains of thought into one manifest dream, so that one can arrive at what appears to be a sufficient interpretation of a dream and yet doing so can fail to notice a possible 'over-interpretation'." With this in mind, I think of several works of literature that fall in perfectly with this notion that Freud presents in this passage; the notion that literary characters can create two different images of themselves and portray them accordingly throughout the story, creating the ultimate reality of that one character within the story.
I feel that this idea of "two trains of thought arriving at one manifest dream" is prevalent not only to the relationship between fictional characters within a story, but to the relationship between the reader and the writer that is developed through the power of imagery. The writer develops an image of their very own, based upon their own reality even if that particular story to be is a complete fantasy piece. The writer then takes these images and transcribes them to the written word, which is then read by another party and said party develops their own image of the vision that the writer initially had. This image could be completely different amongst the writer and the reader.
This seems like the idea that Freud tried to express in his work. Two ideas, no matter how similar or different they could be, could combine to create a reality.

Freud

“The material offered to the dream-work consists of thoughts- a few of which may be objectionable and unacceptable, but which are correctly constructed and expressed. The dream-work puts these thoughts into another form, and it is a strange and incomprehensible fact that in making this translation (this rendering, as it were, into another script or language) these methods of merging or combining are brought into use. After all, a translation normally endeavors to preserve the distinctions made in the text and particularly to keep things that are similar separate. The dream-work, quite the contrary, tries to condense two different thoughts by seeking out (like a joke) an ambiguous word in which the two thoughts may come together” (pg 26).

Freud, in general, was more interested in the sub-conscious and unconscious state of mind. He attempted to search for the true meaning that lies behind an individual’s deepest thoughts and beliefs. Dreams occur in our unconscious state of mind, hence there must be a deeper interpretation to them. An individual can interpret a dream in numerous ways and yet all of them can be “correctly constructed and expressed”. An individual is granted the right to interpret a dream according to their wishes and beliefs. They can also relate their dreams to other unrelated aspects.

In reading literature, although in a conscious state of mind, we are granted the same rights. We, as readers, can interpret most literary works according to our beliefs and ideologies. We are also granted the privilege to combine and condense “two different thoughts”. This task has been accomplished through out the course of our class. For example, we have related Marx’s readings and “Sara Cole” to feminist writers. At first glance, these literary works did not illustrate similarity but once dwelled into they demonstrated common thoughts and ideas. Additionally, we used ambiguous terms, such as feminism and Marxism, to draw correlations between them.

Watch your language

I too, found Freud's statement about the mind being unable to create anything on its own very compelling. He states "The 'creative' imagination, indeed, is quite incapable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another. But the remarkable thing about the procedure of the dream-work lies in what follows. The material offered to the dream-work consists of thoughts-a few of which may be objectionable and unacceptable, but which are correctly constructed and expressed. The dream-work puts these thoughts into another form, and it is a strange and incomprehensible fact that in making this translation (this rendering, as it were, into another script or language) these methods of merging or combining are brought into use." Freud believes that the use of language, the choice of words used is a reflection of the writer in that it is also an "account of representation", and about what isn't written down, but is being read. I think the saying is "reading between the lines". Theorist Edward Said had also discussed language and its effectual use. He points out the inability of language to accurately represent reality. “In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a represence, or a representation.” (Orientalism 21), (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba990922.htm Freud also believed that the development of language played an important role in the inference, "intonation", physicality of the spoken word, and with writing, an accompaniment such as a picture to get the story across to someone.

On Freud

In our class discussions we spoke often about contributing to genres. One part of the Freud reading struck me as particularly useful when considering genre theory. Freud writes: “The ‘creative’ imagination, indeed, is quite incapable of inventing anything; it can only combine components that are strange to one another.”

It is useful to consider this phrase in terms of the creation, or as Freud would claim “combination”, of fiction. It seems to me that in terms of fiction Freud might contend that the entirety of fiction has already been written and it is the practice of “new” writers to do nothing more than combine or manipulate elements of past works and massage them into a contemporary format, thus creating a “new” but entirely un-original prose.

The question that this leads me to is the same paradox, the same which came first; the chicken or the egg, question that we’ve followed since the beginning discussions on genre theory. If one was to claim that every new thing is just a sum of previous parts, a conglomerate of some ancient original then, by design, they are admitting to the establishment of some “original” thing at some point. Before we can contribute to the genre it must be established and defined. In order for an original to be imitated it must first be created or introduced. If Freud is accurate in his claim that imagination cannot invent anything then how was the “original” form conceived of in the first place? Then my curiosity forces me to wonder if we understand the original creative process is it possible to ever get back there and create something truly new. Or by investigating the original and attempting to redo it, are we merely falling prey to imitation once again?

-Okay, I’ve given myself a headache, I’ll see you in class.

11.26

Freud's all about reading into the meaning behind dreams and stuff like that (or at least that's what I've gleaned from the reading, I know close to nothing about Freud otherwise), so would learning his techniques not be useful in picking out the hidden meanings and subtle nuances within the very works we've already read? Be showing us what to look for and what those things mean, Freudian (<-is that a word? yeah, right?) techniques would be extremely useful in the study of not just literature, but literary theory. Now that we've learned WHAT these theorists are looking for, Freud can help us figure out WHY that is, and WHAT it means. Or, at least, that's the theory.

Besides, even if we were to completely ignore the work we've done so far (unlikely), Freud would be very useful in analyzing the authors of the next few pieces we work on. It is because fiction is so like a dream, both within our control and just barely beyond it. What somebody writes (as opposed to what may have been said in previous classes) DOES have some basis in how they think, or what they believe, or what they've been through. Cut back to the beginning of the term, with the car chases. If we read a story with a very realistic and believable car chase Freud, or rather, somebody with Freudian ideas, would conclude that the author has had some experience with car chases. I know that this methodology is flawed, at best. Just look at A Million Little Pieces, the author didn't go through that, but god damn it if it's not believable.



I thought this passage, about the difference between latent and manifest dreams, was relevant to my interests:

"Among the most surprising findings is the way in which the dream-work treats contraries that occur in the latent dream. We know already [...] that conformities in the latent material are replaced by condensations in the manifest dream. Well, contraries are treated in the same way as conformities, and there is a special preference for expressing them by the same manifest element. Thus an element in the manifest dream which is capable of having a contrary may equally well be expressing either itself or its contrary or both together: only the sense can decide which translation is to be chosen."

Feminism, Colonialism, now this? Oh My!

After everything we have learned up to this point I am left to wonder why were were given this specific reading. However after what we did this past Tuesday with the Shakesphere the reading makes some sense. Sigmund Freud's "Dream Work" exerpt was difficult to pick though but after looking it over over the break I decided to do the following paragraph:

The first achivement of the dream-work is condensation By that way we understand the fact that the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent one, and is thus an abbreviated translation of it. Condensation can be on occasion be absent; as a rule it is present, and very often is enormous. It is never changed into the reverse; that is to say, we never find that the manifest dream is greater in extent or content than the latent one. Condensation is brought about (1) by the total omission of certain latent elements (2)by only a fragment of some complexes in the latent dream passing over into the manifest one and(3) By latent elements which have something in common being combined and fused into a single unity in the manifest dream

When asked what this specific paragraph may have to do with the idea of literature and Freud I had to really sit down with this. First I decided to examine the word condensation. Condensation is defined as, when something ie: a thought or something physical is made smaller or summed up. The other definition of condensation I recall based on my on my outside knowledge is what occur es when a room is too hot and the inside walls sweat. However keeping in mind the idea of condensation according to Freud he defines this as "a manifest dream that has smaller content than the latent one" Latent dreams already exist but have not yet been realized.Tying Frueds thinking in with what we did on Tuesday, could this be saying that the fathers visit to Hamlet or Hamlet's mother committing suicide was forshadowed, based on what we learned so far? I think Freud's Ideas concerning literature and the general idea of Dream-works is correct to some extent but not completely. I usually wouldn't agree with his thories but this one actually holds up in the discussion. He also mentions that condensed dreams cannot be changed into the reverse I disagree with this. Not to be entirely off topic here, but generally speaking about dreams, what's to say that just because you have a small idea or dream it cant become something bigger. Yes it is true that bigger dremas can become small over time because of distraction or loss of interest but this doesnt make them any less important. Going back to the idea of condensation, in terms of literature this idea can be compared to the novel and the short story. One is obviously longer than the other so you are going to have more time to say more and develoup more, whereas short stories force you to flush out your ideas and characters early. Freud's Idea of dream-work leads back to this. Condensation and expanding of dreams even if it is done on purpose or unconsciously still means that the person involved has to on some level acknolege what they want or desire eventually.

11/21

For Monday, read the excerpt from Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis in Modern Literary Theory, and the relevant pages in the introduction to that section, if you haven't done so already.

For the response, please try to use the text (quote it) to try to take a stab at what relevance this (or Freud generally, if you know anything about him) might have to the reading of literature.

Have a fine Thanksgiving.