On Dreams

What is a dream? Is it merely the wanderings of the mind while asleep (or perhaps even awake)? Is it a wish? Is it anything at all?

Freud claims that dreams represent "unfulfilled wishes." Going along with his theme of "wishes are for the unhappy," the logical conclusion would be that happy people never dream (or never remember their dreams). I feel this is not the case.

First of all, to call a dream an unfulfilled wish is to imply that one would WANT the events in the dream to happen, on some level. Talking solely from my personal experience, I had a dream once in middle school in which I received a detention for an unmentioned offense. Am I HONESTLY supposed to believe that unconsciously, I WANTED to be in trouble? That I DESIRED a detention? If that is the case, I would concede a certain masochism on my part.

However, I would argue that such is far from the truth. I am opposed to inflicting harm on others, SERIOUS harm, in all but the most extreme circumstances, and would NEVER desire to inflict anything upon myself. From other dreams, the details of which I will not divulge here, Freud would likely diagnose me with sado-masochistic tendencies, I charge I insist is balderdash.

His claim to "universal symbols" in dreams is equally dubious. Any given event, object, color, ANYTHING, in the context of a dream, could not POSSIBLY have a universal meaning. Why? Humanity. For each individual, any given object has a unique meaning that is distinct, personal, perhaps completely opposed to what another individual would see in the same object.

Now that I have laid my case against Freud's preposterous ideas of dreams... how does this relate to art? As Freud argues that art is merely the projection of these dreams and fantasies... it has everything to do with Art. And since Freud's "interpretation" of dreams is worth little more than a lump of cat poo... how am I to take his views on Art seriously? Answer: I do not. Freud is nothing but a Fraud.