Culture is all around us, especially in the music and the media, but we tend to miss it. I missed this one because I missed the show entirely but this bit of insight makes me want to watch the show.
David Lynch’s cult classic Twin Peaks has a few great examples culture. Mainly the use of dream-analysis; Dale Cooper solved the death of Laura Palmer in his sleep, literally. But he doesn’t remember, he knows that he knows but it’s been kept from him. He states in the show ‘My dream is a code waiting to be cracked – break the code, solve the crime’
Interestingly enough Lynch didn’t have an interpretation of the dream, it was an after thought; he had a ‘waking dream’ of this whole dream sequence and decided to add it into the show.
I’m sure The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud would have come in handy in solving the crime. But what is the book really about? Freud description is;
In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or co-operation is responsible for our dreams.
Though the book is widely considered to be his most important contribution to psychology, I have serious doubts about this book. For starters, people think differently and I suspect that they would dream differently as well. I don’t pretend to understand the whole Dream Interpretation theories; I just don’t think every dream would fit neatly into these interpretations.
I do a lot of dreamwork; and I agree with you regarding people having different thought processes. Also, different cultures do. For example, snakes in one culture may be regarded as evil, but symbolic of rebirth in another. For those reasons, I’ve never been a fan of dream dictionaries.
You may want to pick up Twin Peaks. I saw it when it was originally on and remember enjoying it. I’d like to rewatch it now as an adult and get all the things I surely missed back then.
I don’t think I really understand Dream interpretations. As far as I’m concerned I would consider it a personal discovery
That’s it, exactly. A “personal discovery”. 🙂
If you record your dreams, you’ll soon discover your own symbolic language.
you’d have to start having dreams before you can interpret them
I have dreams, I just don’t remember them often 🙁
Funny that I stumbled across this – This is the exact topic of my MA Dissertation 🙂
good luck with it Adam