The study of Psychology has long been at issue with the general population, partly perhaps in that we can all see ourselves in the issues presented. We are all from the same fabric, all human, and none of us want to be seen as weak out unimportant. The human element of our being, our make-up, strives to protect us from being different “outside the pack” but in our growth of understanding we must also understand our history, our individual development for though were are all from the same fabric, each of use are unique in experiences that mold the adult design.
I’ve studied Psychology now for more then forty years, dreams are a great part of our development, more then we may know. The brain is a organ that rules itself, dreams are the function of our need, a place where we may accept something that we might not otherwise.
The medical profession is justly conservative. Human life should not be considered as the proper material for wild experiments.
Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.
Remember the scornful reception which first was accorded to Freud's discoveries in the domain of the unconscious.
When after years of patient observations, he finally decided to appear before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at and then avoided as a crank.
The words "dream interpretation" were and still are indeed fraught with unpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts of childish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of dream books, read by none but the ignorant and the primitive.
The wealth of detail, the infinite care never to let anything pass unexplained, with which he presented to the public the result of his investigations, are impressing more and more serious-minded scientists, but the examination of his evidential data demands arduous work and presupposes an absolutely open mind.
This is why we still encounter men, totally unfamiliar with Freud's writings, men who were not even interested enough in the subject to attempt an interpretation of their dreams or their patients' dreams, deriding Freud's theories and combating them with the help of statements which he never made.
Some of them, like Professor Boris Sidis, reach at times conclusions which are strangely similar to Freud's, but in their ignorance of psychoanalytic literature, they fail to credit Freud for observations antedating theirs.
Besides those who sneer at dream study, because they have never looked into the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the facts revealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the pellucid atmosphere of dream investigation.
Is dreaming a gay wonderland? Not really, but it allows humans to explore what is not known to them, to try something, to see something, to feel or experience something in life we are or may be, afarid.
advertisement