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The shape of dreams | page 1, 2
As a psychoanalyst, Ellman sees dreams as a point of entry into a patient's inner world. At the same time, he does not feel that dreams represent, as Freud put it, the royal road to the unconscious. In the place of dreams, the idea of transference (the relationship between patient and analyst) has become the primary means of unlocking the unconscious. Echoing the adage that Freudian patients have Freudian dreams while Jungian patients have Jungian dreams, he says: "When you focus too much on dreams, you distort the analysis. Patients give the analyst what they believe he or she wants." Other psychiatrists agree that the status of the dream in psychoanalysis has been subtly downgraded. In part, this reflects the economic realities of managed care. Less money means fewer sessions and more emphasis on psychopharmaceuticals -- many of which, including antidepressants, suppress REM sleep. The upshot is not just less time and money to devote to dream analysis but fewer dreams to analyze. George Makari, a psychoanalyst and director of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, still feels that Freud's ideas offer the most comprehensive model for understanding our inner life. Yet he's cautious about the reliability of dream work. "This is the movie you directed, whether you like it or not, and pursuing dreams in this manner can make for startling encounters with oneself. But," he adds, "the interpretation of dreams can only usefully occur with a great deal of context." Popular belief in the validity of dream interpretation -- whether Freudian, Jungian, "Eastern" or otherwise -- seems stronger than ever. A glance at any bookstore psychology section reveals a plethora of books on dream analysis, glossaries, dictionaries and guides to dream symbolism. On the Ask the Dream Doctor Web site, one can submit one's dreams for instant interpretation (at $20 a pop) and read the "Teen Dream of the Week." On the Dream Lover Inc. site one is told, "All dreams are good dreams!" The International Institute for Dream Research is amassing a "dreambank" from visitor submissions. Clearly the way we think about dreams has changed over the past 100 years. But have dreams themselves been altered by changes in sexual consciousness or the mass media? Has the sheer glut of interpretations domesticated our dreams, robbed them of their strangeness? Makari doubts it. Sure, the content of our dreams has changed over time, like the content of delusions -- which have shifted from 17th-century witches to late 20th-century surveillance systems. "Does this suggest the mechanism of delusion formation has changed?" Makari asks. "I think not. So, too, for dreams." Michael Moskowitz, a psychoanalyst and founder of Other Books, a bookstore and publishing house devoted to psychoanalysis, thinks the meaning of dreams is less obvious now. Once, he recalls, it was common to hear people say, "That's an obviously Oedipal dream" or "That's obviously anal." Yet the primal conflicts expressed in dreams are ultimately just as powerful as ever, Moskowitz believes. In other words, it's just as horrifying now as it was 100 years ago to dream about killing one's father or having sex with one's mother. Thus there is a disincentive to dreaming -- one heavily tapped into by the modern psychopharmaceutical industry. The Prozac nation doesn't dream as much the Freudian nation, and that may be part of the attraction of drugs. Where, finally, has all this talk about dreams gotten us? Has it brought us closer to insight into our selves and our inner demons? Or has it made us, simply, connoisseurs of dreams -- and, for the more squeamish among us, eternally condemned to listen to others speak in the voice of their innermost narcissistic being, without even receiving an analyst's fee for our troubles? From a distance of 15-plus years and several thousand miles, my father's faith in the meaningfulness of dreams now seems one of his more endearing qualities. It was futile to contradict him, as I once tried to do. Nowadays, I try to remember my dreams. But the morning ritual -- the divulging of those dreams -- is one I don't miss. I'm pretty sure that Freud himself would have blushed to find himself a guest at my family's breakfast table.
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