The Interpretation of Dreams and of Jokes

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

I. HISTORICAL FORESHADOWINGS

4,000 Years Ago: The Dream of Dumuzi and the Interpretation of Geshitinanna

Cro-Magnon Cave Painting of a Dream: Jouvet’s Interpretation

Semantic Depth: Manifest vs. Latent Content

Repression of Dreams

Dreams in Religion, Philosophy, Medicine, and War

Bias in Interpretation

Behaviorism and the Eclipse of Dreams in Modern Psychology

Conditioning and Instinctive Drift

Dreams and Darwin

Helmholtz’s "Unconscious Inferences":

Cognitive Psychology’s Neglect of Dreams

Memory and Dreams

II. FREUD’S INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS AND HIS TREATEMENT OF JOKES: BREAKTHROUGHS, ERRORS, REVISIONS

Freud’s Transition from Neuroscience to Psychology

Dreams as Just One Dialect from a Family of Release Phenomena

Aphasia and Dreams

Dreams as the Royal Road to the Knowledge of the Unconscious

The Manifest-Latent Content Distinction and the Dream-Work

The "Dream-Work" as Sub-Work

Formalization of the Manifest-Latent Content Distinction: m ≠ m × context

Outright Errors in Freud’s Dream Theory

Jokes

III. SAMPLES OF DREAMS AND OTHER RELEASE PHENOMENA, WITH INTERPRETATIONS AND COMMENTARIES

Freud’s Standard Approach to Interpreting Dreams and other Release Phenomena

Freud’s Interpretation of a Freudian Slip: The Fugitive Aliquis

The Irma Dream and its Analysis (Sigmund Freud)

The Picture Dream of Dolores P. (Matthew Erdelyi)

The Elephant Dream of Alice V. (John Nemiah)

Allan Hobson’s "Mozart at the Museum" Dream

Zelda’s Dream: "Worst Case Scenario"

Freud Dreams Chinese Poetry: 弗 梦 汉 诗 (Diane M. Zizak)

Problem-Solving Dreams (Deirdre Barrett)

Dream-Like Cognition in Schizophrenia

Theoretical Cautions on the Overlap between Dreams and Schizophrenia

CHAPTER IV. NEUROSCIENCE FOUNDATIONS OF DREAMING

REM Sleep: REM’s, Short-Wave EEG’s, Motor Inhibition, Genital Arousal--and Dreams

The Unravelling of the REM = Dreaming Consensus

Double-Dissociation between the REM State and Dreaming (Mark Solms)

Hobson’s Revision of the Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis: The "AIM" Model

The "Hot Zone" of Dreaming (Giulio Tononi, Francesca Siclari, et al.)

Form vs. Content: Hobson’s "Formalistic" Theory and the Question of Dream Meaning

Dreams as Paradoxical States of Simultaneous Activation and Deactivation

Complications with the "Frontality" Notion

Complications with the "Limbic System" (Does it Even Exist?--Joseph LeDoux)

The Neural Default Network: Mind-Wandering, Fantasy, Daydreams, Dreams

Release Phenomena: Meaning and Implications

V. QUANTITATIVE CONTENT-ANALYSIS

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Analysis

Recovery of Subliminal Stimuli in Dreams, Daydreams, and Fantasy

Signal Detection Theory (SDT) and Fantasy: ROC Curves, d′, and β

Quantitative Content-Analysis in Literary Criticism

Quantitative Content-Analysis of Dreams (Hall, Van De Castle, Domhoff,

Problems with Modern Quantitative-Analytic Approaches to Dreams

The Continuity Hypothesis (Freud, Jung, Calkins, Hall, Domhoff, Schredl, Bulkeley, Erdelyi, Jenkins)

Application of Signal Detection Theory to Dream Recall (Erdelyi et al.)

VI. DREAMING AS NOISY REMEMBERING

Incorporation of Awake Experiences in Dreams over Time (Freud, Jouvet, Nielsen, Blagrove, Brugger)

Hypermnesic Dreams

Dreams as Leading, Lagging, and Concurrent Indicators

The Associative Structure of Memory and Resulting "Spheres of Meaning"

Freudian Distortions are the Same as Bartlettian Distortions but for Motive:

Repeated Long-Distance Recalls of the "War of the Ghosts": Interpretations and Quantitative Content-Analyses

VII. OVERVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS

Dreams Have Meaning, and at More than one Level

Context is the Key to Latent Contents

Formalization of the Manifest-Latent Content Distinction: m ≠ m × context

Dynamics: Weighting of Items in the Contextual Ecology

Interpretation is Probabilistic

Symbolism

Distortions—Bartlettian and Freudian: Implications for the Dream-Work Notion

Dreams are Hypermnesic (Sometimes)

Dreams as Leading, Lagging, and Concurrent Indicators

The Continuity between Dream-Life and Awake-Life

Dreams are One Dialect from a Family of Release-Phenomena

Associative Structure Undergirds Meaning—as well as Errors and Biases

The Essential Fact about Dreams: They are Confusing but Honest

APPENDIX

Application of Signal Detection Theory to Narrative Recall, Including Dreams:

Classic Signal-Detection Theory, ROC Functions, d', P(A), and H│Fc

Application of Classic SDT Notions to Recall: From ROC to roc Functions and Conditionalized Hits (H|Fc)

Achieving the Target False-Alarm Level, Fc: Paring-Down Narrative Recall Texts

Implementing the CCFR Procedure: Illustration of the Computation of H|Fc

Empirical Validation of the CCFR

Alternatives to the H|Fc Index of Criterion-Controlled Free Recall

REFERENCES