Dream: I walk into a class room at my school. Two girls who will be called Jen and Sue are there talking to the teacher affectionately known to the school as The Doctor. He says the test is not too hard, though there are some tricky problems. One of the questions on this test appears to be an instruction to draw a symbol. The girls say they can't draw the symbol, they draw it in a weird sideways fashion while I draw it well right side up. They symbol has a curve at the top which connects through a line to some other curves. It reminds me of the Star Wars symbol for the Empire. Doctor says both symbols are acceptable. I sit down to take the rest of the test. The test shows an anime cartoon of about a a love triangle between a girl and two guys. The test then ask questions like: What are these character's relationships? I find the test too hard and ask Doctor what exactly the questions are for? He says he won't tell but that some questions on the test are tricky. I feel a breeze coming from outside the door.
So now I must undertake an analysis of this dream. The first interpretation I will do will be Freudian. I know Jen and Sue were in my class last year with Doctor. Doctor's first class was hard, his second was easy. Doctor is a chemistry and physics teacher. The test will not be to hard but it will present some problems. The first challenge is the symbol. Like in the Prince and the Pauper I draw the symbol right, thus meriting something. But Doctor says both are right. Though I associate the symbol with the Star Wars Empire in the dream, upon reflection it appears to look more like the rebel symbol. The love triangle puzzles me and Doctor won't tell me the answer.
My associations with Sue and Jen need to be talked about. They are friends with this girl I was thinking of asking out (which is a big deal for me). I also know they don't understand whatever Doctor teaches us. Since the manifest dream content seems to point toward the second, the unconscious meaning must be about the first. This becomes clear when I analyze the rest of the dream. Doctor has several associations for me. He is a spiritual and philosophical man. He had been coaching me on my Heidegger paper, but transfered me because he hated Heidegger's language. He would rant about how our generation was disrespectful and lazy sometimes.
The love triangle. Odd. First the story is presented in an Anime format, the only format that I can tolerate love stories in. My understanding of this is frustrated in the dream I think because in the dream I was think of it as an academic activity. How does one test on that? Yet I face the choice right now in my waking life of throwing myself into a love triangle. The girl (whom we will call Heather) who is friends with Jen and Sue is trying to get my friend to go to the dance with her. He does not want to because she already has a boy friend. The boy friend does not want to the dance and does not mind Heather going with my friend. She doesn't seem to like her boyfriend all that much. I face the choice of throwing myself in the middle of all this, telling Heather if my friend doesn't want to go I'll go. So I must take Sue and Jen as Heather or my relationship with Heather and the love triangle as my situation. Both my symbol and Heather's symbols are right in Doctor's eyes. If I pursue a relationship with Heather (the wrong way according to religious guilty superego) it still fine my dream tells me. And if I choose to not, that's even righter. The dream serves as wish fulfillment in both ways. The test serves as a distraction from this, reminding me that one can't calculate a matter such as this rationally and therefore not to deny the heart. Thus I can be right no matter what I do in relation to Heather. The dream fulfills my wish that I make a satisfying choice regarding Heather not denying my feelings yet also not denying the risks I fear with regard to entering a relationship.
I think I may have done something wrong here but I did the best I could. First time analyzing a dream like this. Next analysis: Jung
2 comments:
I'm not so sure about the love triangle--it's just really sort of complex and hard to figure out, as you rightly put it, but your analysis throughout sounds pitch perfect... it's very very Freudian. When you say "I also know they don't understand whatever Doctor teaches us. Since the manifest dream content seems to point toward the second, the unconscious meaning must be about the first," this is just right on. I take what you're saying to mean that the manifest content is that the girls don't understand the Doctor, while the latent/unconscious content would be that the Doctor doesn't understand himself. If that's what you mean by "the second" and "the first" here (that the second is the Doctor and the first is the girls), then I'd say it's perfect. Because what you then figure out is that putting the symbol on the board, which you often refer to as a "challenge" and as "tricky" (Freud would pay even more attention to the wording of the dream-text, or the way that you first put the dream into words, as you probably know), which are words that seem to indicate frustration and show that you have ambivalent or somewhat spiteful affective connections regarding the stuff the Doctor does sometimes--putting the symbol on the board then is a way of getting back not at the girls but at the Doctor. Freud would no doubt also look at how you used the word "right" in saying that it is right side up: what you're saying there is that you know how to do it, what you draw is right or *correct*, while the girls (that is, the Doctor), don't get it.
Or at least that's what I take you to be implying. Regardless, you seem to be doing a great job. Keep in mind that psychoanalysts say that self-analysis (which this dream analysis is a part of) is extremely difficult. Most analysts will, when they want themselves analyzed, just go to another analyst and become their patient. Freud, of course, analyzed his own dreams a lot, though.
Thank you, you have actually opened me up to a new interpretation. What if the dream is about a secret wish to have Doctor look stupid since he won't try to understand Heidegger.
But the thing is that was not what I was saying. I was saying that the dream must be about Heather because the dream was set in a school setting where the girls would not understand Doctor.
Thank you. I was also wondering what you thought about my attempt on Lacan since I know him mostly through Zizek.
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