Proprioception, Cricket, and Interpreting my Dreams
Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s Die Traumdeutung
I was walking through a neighborhood that I remembered from my childhood. Everything was further spaced out than I remembered, and my entire field of vision was covered with a faint amber glow. Music was playing. Music that sounded no closer and no further away regardless of where I walked. It was subtle, and its intended tone wasn’t obvious, but there was something mildly unsetting about it. I could imagine hearing it, demanding it is turned off, and having people ask what the problem is. I feel as though this place has always been at the back of my mind. The hotel lobby of the soul.
The preceding paragraph isn’t a real dream. It’s a scene that’s been popping into my head as I’ve been thinking about dreams. It may incorporate elements of real dreams I’ve had, combined with something from a novel or film that has found its way into my unconscious. Before I get into the actual dreams I’ve been having, I’ll introduce the big man himself.
I had the privilege of going to a school with a dedicated psychology class, which I believe is a rarity. Sigmund Freud was always the most discussed figure. We learnt central Freudian concepts, like the ego, id, and superego distinction, and were told that his methods were archaic and had been superseded by the empiricism of Skinner boxes and psychometric tests (Bergmann, 1943). When I got to the university level, psychoanalysis wasn’t so heavily focused on, but there was still a peppering of Freud throughout the course. We were sucked in by attention grabbing concepts like penis envy and the Oedipus complex and discussed that, despite being frequently wrong, Freud’s contributions are invaluable, and his more questionable ideas aren’t what is most important about his legacy (Cherry, 2022).
It took me a shamefully long time to decide to read Freud’s own work. I decided to pick up a copy of Freud’s dream book, which I refer to as Freud’s Die Traumdeutung in the subtitle of this post. I read the 2006 translation entitled Interpreting Dreams, but it has also previously been translated as The Interpretation of Dreams.
Soon after I started reading Interpreting Dreams, I decided that I wished to record and interpret my own dreams, using what I understood of Freud’s methods at the time of each dream. This was followed by my reflecting on each dream later with a greater knowledge of Freud’s approach. My methods, therefore, were clearly not the epitome of scientific rigor. On the one hand, this seems appropriate given that Interpreting Dreams would never pass through a modern peer review process. On the other hand, it was written by the ‘father of modern psychology’, so take anything I write with a pinch of salt. On this note, it is rightly noted in the introduction of Interpreting Dreams that, despite exploring previously unpublished findings and ideas, the book was written for a general (albeit highly educated) audience. Whatever we might be tempted to say about its impact on the validity of Freud’s research, it’s hard to argue that there isn’t something inherently compelling about Freud resisting having his scientific curiosity filtered through peer review and ethics boards, and carrying out a thrilling Beagle voyage into the Galápagos Islands of his own mind.
The dreams I have had since deciding to partake in this exercise have generally been tame, with many having a childlike innocence about them. Freud would likely say that this was my preconscious mind censoring the darker elements of my dream thoughts. There are certainly older dreams that I’d be reluctant to publish in a public blog post.
The first dream I recorded felt absurd at the time but turned out to be easy to create meaning around. I dreamt that my parents presented me with two blades as a present, but I was only to take one. They looked essentially like machetes, but they were supposedly for cutting meat. I intended to use them for cutting steak to make a meal for some guests who were coming round to my flat. I had an image in my head of hosting a dinner party throughout the dream, but I don’t think I ever got to host this event before waking up. I was imagining the steak being perfectly succulent and being covered in a fancy red wine reduction that I wouldn’t know how to make in real life. My parents might as well have been the same entity for the purpose of this dream. My brain didn’t distinguish between things that my mum said and things that my dad said. They recommended that I take the sharper blade as it was more fit for purpose. However, I was worried about cutting myself. Eventually, I discovered that these blades had been made illegal and I was forced to give them up. This caused me an odd sense of relief.
So, how does one interpret this dream? Freud talks about manifest versus latent dream content. Manifest content refers to the literal, surface level elements of the dream; the gifting of blades and the images of meat and wine in this case. Latent content is that which is represented by, or hidden behind, the manifest content; unconscious elements that relate to wishes held by the dreamer. In fact, Freud makes the bold claim that all dreams are acts of wish fulfillment, even when they appear to be the exact opposite.
In an attempt to mould my dream into something that conforms to Freud’s theories, I could say that the relevant dream wish is the wish that I was given further encouragement by those around me to take worthwhile risks. This is represented by my parents encouraging me to take the sharper, but more useful knife. This lines up perfectly with thoughts that I’d been having the day before the dream about how I need scaffolding to take the fear inducing aspects of life head on.
As for the significance of the steak-based dinner party (I never host dinner parties, by the way), this could be the simple wish that I spent more time with my friends and was better equipped to impress them. The overall theme of the dream then could be said to be a need for support and validation. The thing that I dislike about this interpretation is the fact that I was relieved when I was forced to give up the blades, suggesting that I wish to be encouraged to take risks, but am also looking for excuses not to take them.
This possibility of having dreams that alter our perception of ourselves makes Freud’s claims quite bold. I had one that I don’t remember enough to interpret, but I awoke feeling very shaken up and remembered kicking an unknown person while they lay on the ground, possibly after an imagined fight that I’ve forgotten. Freud claims that when we think we have committed a certain act in a dream we may in fact have been dreaming about someone committing this act, and simply seeing through their eyes as they do so. We are, therefore, like actors in a play. However, the idea that dreams can have meaning and can reflect our actual values must have been quite unsettling before modern psychologists and neurologists began dismissing dreams as meaningless neuron firing that cannot be demonstrated to mean anything. This seems to speak to a larger point about epistemology, which is that, although the forces of skepticism and empiricism can spell the end of a comfortable delusion, they can also banish the eerie and the uncomfortably mysterious1.
Thankfully, even if Freud was right, some dreams are not deep enough to be spooky. My next dream was a sillier one. I dreamt about a structure in the middle of the ocean. It may have been a simple oil rig, or it may have been an elaborate Atlantis-like structure; the details were unclear. I dreamt that I was sneaking around the structure, as if acting as a spy or an assassin. There was an ever-present threat looming, which in my waking state I can deduce to have been armed guards. The fanciful scenario as well as the emotional detachment that I felt made the dream reminiscent of a video game. This is surprisingly common of my dreams; despite how little time I get to play video games in my waking hours. Maybe it’s a regression to childhood. Upon waking up, I decided that the dream was too silly for meaningful interpretation. However, it is actually fairly textbook.
Before the dream, I had woken up and realised that nature was calling. However, I didn’t want to get up and went back to sleep instead, hoping my bladder would survive. Freud discusses dreams that incorporate physical stimuli, whether this be pain, sexual stimuli, or, in this case, the need to urinate. One dreams of relieving the need stemming from this stimulus, which serves the purpose of preventing them from waking up2. In my example, I was avoiding detection while residing on a structure surrounded by water. Meanwhile, in the real world, I had tried to fall asleep before I became too keenly aware of my need to pee. This could be why I don’t in fact remember what the threat I was hiding from was, and instead remember the thrashing of the water below. I assumed upon waking up that I had been hiding from armed guards purely because that would fit with the rest of the scene, but I was actually hiding from the evidence of my own senses and repressing my need to urinate. This differs slightly from the archetypical physical stimulus dream as the dream represented me successfully repressing my need rather than relieving it. However, I still don’t feel that my interpretation is any more far-fetched than Freud’s claim that climbing stairs in a dream is a symbolic representation of sexual intercourse.
While we’re on the topic of sexual intercourse, the second half of Interpreting Dreams demonstrates that Freud’s reputation precedes him. Some of the book is, ironically, like a perverted fever dream. Although, modern readers who laugh at Freud with his preoccupation with sex could easily laugh at me, making a lay attempt at using Freud’s methods with my own dreams (I believe my unconscious mind plagiarised the last one from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 23).
A third sample dream featured a friend of mine and took place in an unknown location. I was repeating the phrase ‘it’s just cricket’ as if it was a funny catchphrase. My friend, still laughing, said, ‘Will you stop with the it’s just cricket!’ I have no idea what this phrase means. Something that immediately springs to mind is the British phrase, ‘it’s not cricket’. But it was definitely the inverse that I was saying in my dream. I tried Googling the phrase and discovered that It’s Just Cricket is a cricket store in the UK, and a cricket academy in the United Arab Emirates. I don’t believe I’d heard of either before the dream. I suspect that Freud would think it a cop out for me not to interpret this nonsense, so I’ll make an attempt. The friend that featured in the dream was one that I enjoyed exchanging childish pranks with when we were younger. I can’t remember whether any of this took place in the dream, but given that someone might say ‘it’s just not cricket’ to suggest that something isn’t decent or fair, someone could reasonably say ‘it’s just cricket’ when saying the inverse. Namely that something is fair and square. Therefore, if I were to commit a mischievous act against my friend in retaliation for something purile that he himself did, I might say ‘it’s just cricket’ as in ‘it’s only fair, suck it up’. This would explain his chastising yet good natured demand that I stop saying it.
What would the dream wish be if I were to accept this far fectched interpretation? Maybe something simple like I want to have a laugh with my friend. Maybe my friend has nothing to do with it and it’s something deeper4.
The final dream that I’d like to analyse came at a stressful time, during which I had to forget about finishing Interpreting Dreams for a few days. I had discovered that the ethics application for the thesis I am currently working on needed amendments, and I had spent the day wrestling with various potential problems with my research plans. After this day of academic trauma, I finally managed to force myself into bed and fall asleep. I dreamt that I was in a room in the house I grew up in. It was essentially a playroom when I was a child and an office space and storage room when I got older. For some reason I was disorientated and off-balance. I had no idea what my body was doing until I smacked into something or fell over entirely. Knowing that I was not going to be able to keep my balance if I stood up, I ended up crawling over to a bookshelf. The one book I remember focussing on was a work by J. R. R. Tolkien documenting the lore of Middle Earth. This book could well have been The History of Middle-earth (Tolkien, 2002) or its unofficial 13th volume, The Nature of Middle-earth (Tolkien, 2021). However, despite being a fan of The Lord of the Rings since childhood, I have never owned these books. I was packing a suitcase ready to go back to my flat in Perth. Suddenly, without explanation, I was back in my Perth bedroom. I got up out of bed and was just as unbalanced as I had been in the other room. I walked towards my desk and fell forward, knocking over a glass of water and smacking my head on my television. I was expecting that when I heaved myself up, my TV would be smashed, and the desk would be covered in water. To my pleasant surprise, the glass had been almost empty, and the TV was fine. As usual, I was not thinking about what any of this could mean while dreaming, but upon waking up I had no trouble developing a Freudian explanation.
During the proceeding academic trauma, I had been reminded of the days where my academic performance was significantly worse as a general rule. The first room I was in was the room where I used to do all my study during high school. These days, I tend to do my study at the library, but the bedroom of my flat is where I finished my recent ethics application. After floundering around in vain in my former study area, I had yet again fallen over in my bedroom. But everything was fine. The television wasn’t broken, and the glass wasn’t full. This was very transparently a wish fulfillment dream. The falling over in the room of my childhood and teenage years represented my academic challenges of the time and the falling over in my bedroom represented my current challenges. The fact that the fall was harmless was my brain’s way of convincing me that my academic challenges will be harmless. This almost fits in with the academic stress dreams that Freud documents. Freud discusses exam dreams, claiming that these dreams almost always depict previous exams that we’ve passed, rather than exams that we’ve failed. Therefore, what the dreams are actually communicating is that the exam we’re currently worrying about will be ok, just as the others have been ok.
As for the significance of Tolkien, it’s hard to say what’s going on there. It makes sense in terms of manifest content as I’ve been revisiting my Tolkien fixation of late. It also makes sense that books would feature in a dream that symbolises academic performance, even if the book I remember isn’t related to anything that I’m studying. However, I’m not sure what significance Tolkien in particular could have in terms of latent content. There are plenty of tales of courage and heroism in Tolkien’s legendarium. Could I be calling myself a hero for improving my academic standing? I should probably resist giving that interpretation to avoid a charge of narcissism.
It is an interesting exercise for anyone interested in epistemology to go through the motions of Freud’s methods (or at least a rough, not very academic approximation of them). On the one hand, one can experience for him/herself the pull towards confirmation bias and self-serving interpretations, thereby understanding why these methods were superseded. However, there really is something special about Freud’s ability to see that there was something worth searching for behind the conscious that needed to be understood in order to understand psychological dysfunction. And as Freud mentions several times throughout Interpreting Dreams, it is quite brave to be such an open book and demonstrate his methods by applying them to his own dreams.
References
Bergmann, G. (1943). Psychoanalysis and experimental psychology: A review from the standpoint of scientific empiricism. Mind, 52(206), 122-140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/LII.206.122
Cherry, K. (2022, August 15). Sigmund Freud's life, theories, and influence. Verywell Mind. Retrieved June 28, 2024 from https://www.verywellmind.com/sigmund-freud-his-life-work-and-theories-2795860
Evrard, R., & Rabeyron, T. (2017). La signification occulte des rêves: Freud pourfendeur ou pourvoyeur de mythes? [The occult meaning of dreams: Freud slayer or purveyor of myths?]. Psychology Bulletin, 552(6), 463-476. https://doi.org/10.3917/bupsy.552.0463
Oil Rig Operation | U.S Navy Seals | Modern Warfare 2 Remastered (2020) | No HUD | RTX 3080 | 4K. (2022, May 5) [Online video]. YouTube.
Freud, S. (2006). Interpreting Dreams (Underwood J A, Trans.). Penguin Classic.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2002). The History of Middle-earth (Tolkien C Ed.). Harper Collins.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2021). The Nature of Middle-earth (Hostetter C F Ed.). Harper Collins & Mariner Books.
It may be unfair to charge Freud with making spooky superstitious claims as he made sure to abstain from supporting the idea of prophetic dreams, despite the prominence of this idea. However, he did seem to give more weight to the idea of psychic dreams towards the end of his life (Evrard & Rabeyron, 2017).
Despite popular opinion to the contrary, Freud asserts that dreams are preservers rather than disturbers of sleep (Freud, 1899/2006).
Remember the oil rig mission?
Maybe a cricket bat is some kind of phallic symbol.