JamesWhitehead
Piffle Prospector
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,199
I did not read very much in the event. Just a fairly short chapter in which Freud in Germanic scholarly mode sums up the authorities who line up on either side of the debate as to whether dreams emerge from our daily lives or allow us to escape entirely from our own selves.
He gives an amusing dream from Hildebrandt.
The dreamer goes to St Helena to sell sell Moselle wine to Napoleon, who receives him cordially. But the dreamer has never been a wine-merchant, nor ever wished to be one. He has never been on a sea-voyage and had no interest in visiting St Helena. He has no sympathetic feelings about Napoleon - in fact he detested him. The clincher is that the dreamer was born after the death of Napoleon.
The dream has no connection with the life of the dreamer. Cases such as this seem to have set Freud off on the symbolic route in order to re-establish connections at another level. His dogmatic reduction of wild and varied subject matter to sexual terms is probably why the book has remained unopened for years.
Perhaps it is best treated as a rich storehouse of material and an ideal bedside book.
He gives an amusing dream from Hildebrandt.
The dreamer goes to St Helena to sell sell Moselle wine to Napoleon, who receives him cordially. But the dreamer has never been a wine-merchant, nor ever wished to be one. He has never been on a sea-voyage and had no interest in visiting St Helena. He has no sympathetic feelings about Napoleon - in fact he detested him. The clincher is that the dreamer was born after the death of Napoleon.
The dream has no connection with the life of the dreamer. Cases such as this seem to have set Freud off on the symbolic route in order to re-establish connections at another level. His dogmatic reduction of wild and varied subject matter to sexual terms is probably why the book has remained unopened for years.
Perhaps it is best treated as a rich storehouse of material and an ideal bedside book.