Scripts and the structuralist analysis of dreams

This article demonstrates that elicited dream narratives use a differing narrative structural and functional framework, as proposed by narrative framework on elicited personal narratives. A quantitative structural and functional analysis of five male and female collected samples showed that dream narratives follow a homogenous structure of (1) Topic introduction, (2) Orientation, (3) Complication, (4) Evaluation, and (5) Coda, consequently reflecting the omission of proposed resolution unit, which confirms suggestion of the difficulty to distinguish between resolution and coda. Moreover, this article devotes attention to specific structural particularities, proposing that analepses and prolepses might indicate, firstly, the simultaneous processing of new spatial information and new protagonists, and secondly, reflecting indirectly the experience of dream bizarreness.

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2020

The author suggests that dreams are an expressive means through which the psychic apparatus delineates, construes and communicates an issue it is faced with. It is shown that there are substantial differences between this approach and more classical understandings of the nature and function of dreaming. Instead of laying emphasis on dream work as a defence system or as outlets of unconscious drives, the author highlights two further aspects of dreaming: (1) that in and through dreaming the psychic apparatus has developed a specific capacity to identify and express questions, problems and emotional experiences with which it is confronted, in a complex spiral and vertiginous way, as described in the paper; (2) that dreams encapsulate kernels of experience into "engrams" by constantly searching for ways of addressing and readdressing emotional experience.

Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG, U.K. https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/dreams-and-their-interpretation Philosophy of Dreams | Can I be immoral in my dreams? What makes dreams different from awaken reality is that thoughts and images, sensations and feelings are hosted in a dimension where logic is somehow shifted: the basic principle that underlies its propositions-something is what it is and cannot be something else-does not work anymore, or it plays a different function 1[1]. While awake, the chair I am sitting on, the glass of water upon the table, lights that come through the window are all manifestations of a reality that still exists when I am dreaming: yet, the consciousness of these phenomena is inwardly diverted, and often distorted, because reality has there a different source; dreams are projections of an individual light that is shed onto phenomena that aren't visible by instruments-our senses-rather than a speculative function, that mirrors objects in our inner life. Nevertheless, the light that makes dreams possible, which dualism supposes different from the one that shapes reality as it is, arranges objects and people in a scenario that symbolize reality, as in a theatrical representation: if something puzzles us for its consequences, i. e. actions that follows a track of events in a storyline, they might-or might not-be judged as moral, or immoral, accordingly to laws everybody has made theirs. But are these laws still effective in a world where logic is set aside? Is possible to apply the same operators, as they work with logic, to shape our judgement over events, and give rewards and punishments accordingly? The question made upon what morality can be observed in dreams cannot be separated from ontological issues: is dream a different reality? If answered correctly, the moral I follow in the one and only world I live in will give me [Digitare qui] 1 Scientists and philosophers have addressed this question since very early in history; many are the functions theorist have appointed to dreams: we decide to stick on the mainstream varieties, that are Freudian psychoanalysis, according to which dreams are wishes that unconscious tries to bubble on the surface of consciousness; Flanagan point of view-dreams are epiphenomenal occurrences, or evolutionary by-products, like some elements in architecture, the spandrels of arches-and Revonsuo adaptive theory, that considers dreams as rehearsal of threats that may happen in waking life.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1992

DIRECT INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS: TYPOLOGY I.eland van den Daele Freud's general formulation of dream genesis, upon which he appears to hinge his theory of dreams, is his assertion that a dream is the product of the "disguised fulfillment of a suppressed or repressed wish" (1900, p. 160). This formulation is the cornerstone of his clinical theory. The clinical theory assumes that psychological conflict is at the basis of neurosis, and that psychological conflict is exactly modeled in the dream. That is, the dream is the laboratory of neurosis. In a general review of Freud's theory of dream interpretation, it is useful to distinguish a theory of genesis and a theory of translation. The theory of genesis addresses the source and the motivational foundation of dreams. The theory of translation deals with the mechanics of dream interpretation, much in the same way as grammars and dictionaries provide rules and referents for the translation of languages. In the general literature on Freud's theory, the theory of genesis and the theory of translation are treated as interdependent and overlapping. Nevertheless, the theories may be disentangled, just as what is written and the question of why it was written may be distinguished. The problem with a wish fulfillment theory is that it constrains. In the limits it imposes, the dream is permitted only a self-oriented, affect-laden aim that tends toward discharge. If the imagistic language of dreams is understood as a general language that may express any variety of meaning, Freud's constraint is analogous to a constraint on the writing of English that it should only concern topics that suggest or lead to sensual release. The contention that a dream, including Freud's dream of Irma's Injection, represents more than the fulfillment of a wish is furthered by investi-Portions of this paper were delivered at the Eleventh Annual Spring Meeting of the American Psychological Association Division of Psychoanalysis. Chicago, Illinois: April 1991. My gratitude to students and patients for use of their dreams.

Journal of Mind and Behavior, 1986

Claude Lévi-Strauss developed structuralist methods in anthropology. His most successful application of structuralist methods is to be found in his analyses of myths, but the method may be applicable to the analysis of dreams. Some exploratory studies are described.

International Journal of Dream Research, 2020

The structural approach to the investigation of the meaning of dreams is described, which is also the foundation for the research method Structural Dream Analysis (SDA). The method focuses especially on the relationship between the dream ego and other figures in the dream and the extent of activity of the dream ego. Research with this approach has produced new insights on the connections of dream content with the personality of the dreamer. Five major dream patterns were identified which accounted for the majority of the dreams. These patterns are closely correlated with the psychological problems of the dreamers and their development in the course of psychotherapy. Additionally, typical changes in the dream series’ patterns could be identified which corresponded with therapeutic change. The usability of the structural approach is exemplified with the famous specimen case of psychoanalysis, Amalia X, and its 96 dreams. The implications for different psychoanalytic theories of dreami...

applies structural analysis to the study of dreams

Philosophy International Journal, 2021

This short article analyses the relationship between dreams and stories and the underlying existential significance of both. Man is not the only animal who dreams, but he is the only living being who can communicate to his fellow creatures what he dreams and invents, through words and images.

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 1998

I wish to convey the enthusiasm that I feel about dreams, their significance in clinical work, and the many new ways that we have learned to understand them. I would also like to familiarize the reader with some findings about dreams that have come from neurobiologists and cognitive scientists. Some of those researchers have made broadside attacks on the psychoanalytic theory of dreams and the practice of dream interpretation; psychoanalysts have either returned the hostility or simply ignored the empirical research. My own view is that both empirical researchers and practicing psychoanalysts could benefit by a serious exchange of information. The current gap between psychoanalysis and neurobiology did not exist when psychoanalysis was founded. Freud's first scientific research (1877) was on animal neurology, the development of the nervous system of the eel. Later, one of Freud's major works was the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), which attempted to create a model of human mental functioning based on the neurological knowledge of his time. This work is still appreciated by cognitive neuroscientists today. If one studies the Project carefully, one realizes that most of Freud's later thinking about psychoanalytic metapsychology had its origins in the psychoneural model that he developed in the Project. Over the years, however, psychoanalysis, cognitive science, and neurobiology have become estranged from one another, although something of a dialogue (not always friendly) between the fields has continued, especially in the area of dreams. I would like to reconsider the relation of psychoanalysis to cognitive neuroscience by focusing on the theory of dreams. We will look at how modern psychoanalysis theorizes about dreams, how we approach dreams clinically, and how we can integrate the data from cognitive neuroscience with clinical observations about dreaming. The psychoanalytic view of dreams has changed dramatically in the hundred years since Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. Many psychoanalysts, from Jung to the present, have questioned Freud's conclusion that all dreams are caused by unacceptable wishes. The White Institute has been among the leaders in revising psychoanalytic dream theory. In 1950, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann argued that many dreams do not deal with wish-fulfillment. Erich Fromm (1951) saw in the dream an attempt to express psychodynamic conflict. Paul Lippmann (1998) sees dreams as responding to both private concerns and social factors. Edgar Levenson (1983, 1991) has shown how dreams often portray the most simple truths about the dreamer's experience, truths so blunt that in the clinical setting, neither patient nor analyst may fully understand them without first reenacting them during the process of dream interpretation. I have argued (Blechner, 1983) that dreams may express things that are An earlier version was presented at a conference of the

Memory, Trauma, and the Construction of the Self, 2021