The Interpretation of Dreams Masks for Adults, but not Children
The Censorship Contradiction Less Dream Distortion in Children than Adults
As an initial matter, before proceeding to an exploration of Freuds explanation for the origin and relevance of dreams, it is first necessary to acknowledge that The Interpretation of Dreams does not stand alone as Freuds final statements with respect to many of the theories and conclusions stated in the text. Although this is the most famous text, and considered by many to be his most definitive work on the subject of dreams, it is well-established that he made many refinements later in his career and that some of these refinements were designed as clarifications while others were extensions or modifications indeed, as noted by one scholar, the text doesnt adequately reflect a rounded, balanced view of Freuds final theory of dreaming. Although his book on dreams contains the kernel of what he considered, to the end of his life, to be his most valuable discovery, it remains heavily weighted toward his earlier theory. HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod76926356(McLeod 37) The scope of this paper is therefore confined to this particular primary text and in no way involves subsequent modifications or theoretical alterations.
Thus qualified, there persist contradictions throughout the text that constantly arise when comparisons are made with respect to Freuds treatment of children and his treatment of adults. These contradictions cannot be explained away as separate and distinct phenomenon because Freud attempts to connect childhood and adulthood in a larger theoretical continuum. He attempts this, in the first instance, by failing to distinguish between the functional components of the human mind, whether the unconscious or the conscious, when writing about dreams as they are inspired and processed in children and adults. To be sure, he notes superficial differences, but the underlying psychological mechanics are in his mind essentially the same. It is with these underlying psychological mechanics, however, that theoretical and practical contradictions arise and are never explained away. Critical to an understanding of these contradictions, as it pertains specifically to differences between children and adults in ways that challenge the cohesiveness of Freuds larger theoretical framework, is his notion of the censor mechanism as it applies to creating an ostensible barrier between the unconscious mind in which dreams take place and the conscious mind in which dreams are to be reviewed and interpreted.
Freuds notion of censorship is seemingly logical and envisions a mental process through which dreams are inspired and arise but cannot be known precisely to the conscious mind because of a censoring mechanism. This type of censorship, in turn, results in a distortion of the dream and it is this distortion that becomes known the conscious mind rather than the actual reality of the dream in the unconscious mind which inspired the subsequent distorted reality in the conscious mind. Censorship thus operates, in Freuds view, to create the disparity between the true substance of a dream and its manifestation in waking moments. Freud, in the primary text, argues that The fact that the phenomena of censorship and of dream distortion correspond down to their smallest details justifies us in presuming that they are similarly determined HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod99556066(Freud 143) and further that Nothing, it would seem, can reach consciousness from the first system without passing the second agency. HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod99556067(Freud 144) The censor is therefore a gate of sorts and it functions to block and to distort. The problem, noting the role that wish fulfillment and repression play in Freuds theory and which will be discussed in the next section, is that this essential censorship mechanism functions differently in children and in adults. Specifically, seems to suggest that there is a censorship mechanism in both children and adults but that it operates differently and thereby yields different results or different degrees of distortion.
Freud does acknowledge, to be fair, that Child psychology, in my opinion, is destined to perform the same useful services for adult psychology that the investigation of the structure or development of the lower animals has performed for research into the structure of the higher classes of animals. HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod99556050(Freud 127) Despite this lip service to distinguishable types of psychological analysis based on age, Freud nevertheless applies the same overarching theoretical framework to both children and adults. At no point does he separate the two from his larger framework instead, he attempts to use the purity of wish-fulfillment as something quite akin to an escape hatch. This problem, that Freuds censorship mechanism functions differently for children and for adults, is important because it compels him to locate some plausible reason for the different degrees of dream distortion. In children, for example, Freud notes that there is much less dream distortion that is true in the case of adults. The actual substance of the dream, in effect, passes though to the conscious mind of he child than it does to adult. What is less clear from an examination of the primary text itself is whether this contradiction in terms of censorship was originally anticipated by Freud or whether it was a contradiction that he was puzzled by and forced to attempt to overcome. The contradiction, however, poses three main possibilities. First, Freud might have simply been incorrect about
The internal psychological mechanisms of the human mind generally and the operation and functions of human dreams more specifically. Second, his theory might have been too ambitious by trying to superimpose and overarching psychological framework on all human beings from childhood to adulthood. This is a particularly interesting possibility because the fact is that childhood anchors a substantial portion of Freuds theories and it is hardly surprising that he perceived a logical need to connect childhood and adulthood in a manner that he could thereafter use in order to connect adult dreams and psychological needs to childhood experiences and urges. Finally, and the course that Freud ultimately pursued, was an attempt to explain away this censorship contradiction and the different degrees of dream distortion by extending his theoretical framework. He attempted to do this by more carefully articulating and advocating his notions related to wish-fulfillment and regression.
Wish-Fulfillment Purity of Wishes and Unresolved Degree-Causation Questions
In an attempt to explain the censorship contradiction between children and adults, Freud relies in his fundamental notion that dreams are the products of wish-fulfillment desires and the conscious experiences of the past. Generally speaking, dreams arise from desires or attempts that manifest themselves in the unconscious in an effort to forge a resolution of some conflict between wanting and having or realizing. Both children and adults have dreams motivated and inspired by this phenomenon. The distinguishing feature, which Freud employs in an effort to explain the censorship contradiction, is a purity level that is associated with these wishes, desires, and unresolved conflicts. Childrens dreams pass more easily and more accurately from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind, pursuant to this line reasoning, because their wishes and desires are simpler and less affected by guilt or fear. A child wants a toy car, the child saw a television advertisement for a toy car before falling to sleep, and the child dreams of a toy car. A young child dreaming of the mothers breast, given the fact that no guilt is associated with breastfeeding by a child, is unlikely to lead to distortions and Freud thus theorizes that the conscious mind of the child will recognize the actual substance of a dream about a mothers breasts much more literally than an adult with the same desires and wishes. Specifically, describing this concept of purity as it applies to wish-fulfillment and the censorship contradiction, he states that
The dreams of young children are frequently pure wish fulfilments and are in that case quite uninteresting compared with the dreams of adults. They raise no problems for solution but on the other hand they are of inestimable importance in proving that, in their essential nature, dreams represent fulfilments of wishes. HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod99556050(Freud 127)
This is an odd passage, difficult to digest, and it raises some of the same problems previously mentioned with respect to the censorship contradiction. At the same time, it would appear after reading and rereading the text dozens of times, that Freud is both dismissing the contradiction and then nevertheless asserting a consistent causal connection among the dreams of all human beings in the form of children and adults. He would appear to be wanting to have his cake and to eat it, too more particularly, he fails to account for the fact that the censorship contradiction may actually be caused by different psychological causes rather than simply be a question of degree. If the unresolved conflicts of adults are rooted in childhood, and if Freud cannot adequately explain how or why the conscious mind of the child is more closely connected to the unconscious mind than is the case with adults, then the legitimacy of the entire theoretical framework becomes much more vulnerable and suspect. Childrens desires and wishes are neither cloaked nor suppressed whereas the desires and the wishes of adults are disguised and suppressed. The adult dream is akin to an obstacle course, littered with desires and past experiences which would frequently cause guilt or shame in the conscious adult mind, and the distortions arise from the conflicting desires and constraints. The childs dream, on the other, is portrayed as a type of superhighway in which there is a clear starting point and a fairly clear finishing point. Freud never adequately resolves how to connect an adult mind driving in circles with a childs mind driving in a comparatively straight line. In sum, Freud seems unable to clearly establish that the censorship contradiction can be explained away solely with reference to a sort of purity of desires scale. This is not meant to suggest that wishes do not on occasion inspire dreams, for they most certainly may, but that human psychology may be more nuanced than Freuds initial work on dreams accounts for.
Overly Narrow Scope Rooting Personality in Parents and Base Urges
Finally, in addition to the aforementioned shortcomings manifest in the censorship contradiction and the inadequate purity explanation pertaining to wish-fulfillment, Freud consistently seems to view dreams and psychological disorders as always being anchored in a childs relationship with parents and base urges such as sexual urges that are typically prohibited. At one point in the text for example, he observes and concludes thusly
In my experience, which is already extensive, the chief part in the mental lives of all children who later become psychoneurotics is played by their parents. Being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed at that time and which is of such importance in determining the symptoms of the later neurosis. HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod99556184(Freud 261)
This type of heightened emotional attachment that Freud attaches to children who later become psychoneurotics, whether emotions expressing extreme forms of love are hatred, he subsequently tends to attribute to a sexual attraction to one parent and jealousy of the other parent. He postulates, in effect, a love triangle in which the child deprived of pursuing sexual instincts and sexual urges becomes affected or damaged in some way as a result. He thereby attempts to explain some of the previously mentioned contradictions between children and adults, with respect to censorship and the purity of wish fulfillment, by sketching an evolutionary development of the human psychology which is affected and altered by these experiences during and throughout childhood. The problem, however, is that Freud reduces all human children to essentially sexual creatures rather than taking a broader view of human needs and desires. Children are perhaps motivated more by the need for food and water than by an abstract notion of sexual attraction the types of base human necessities need to be better incorporated into Freuds theoretical framework. The first problem, in short, is that Freud seems to conceive of childrens base needs too narrowly. A second problem is that Freud seems to focus disproportionately on the family unit and does not adequately consider or account for other social factors which might affect dreams and psychological developments. Parents are not always the primary caretakers, relatives and schools sometimes performing those functions, and he rarely alludes to underlying socioeconomic conditions or peer relations. His scope, in sum, is extraordinarily narrow and almost seems to force a series of theories that must be affected by other variables. These are weaknesses in the persuasiveness of the text as a whole.
Conclusion
In the final analysis, a review of the text clearly demonstrates that Freud engaged in an ambitious attempt to explain certain features of human psychology and human behavior in new and novel ways. Additionally, despite some contradictions and inconsistencies, he frequently seems to recognize these contradictions and attempts to explain them away in a manner which will aid in maintaining theoretical unity. The problems however, outweigh the proffered solutions more specifically, when analyzing his treatment of children and adults, it becomes apparent that he is unable to completely reconcile the contradictions in a manner that transcends familial relations and sexual urges and prohibitions. This may very well constitute a significant contribution to human knowledge, as this paper acknowledges, but it cannot serve as a comprehensive statement of dreams and human psychology because the works scope is simply too narrow.
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