Forgive me for moving this to a new thread, but Boomer School was getting stale and I felt some of the others might want to get in on this one.

Your response to my dream account (428449) is articulate and creative, but it doesn't hold up. The idea that dreams can be analyzed to give us clues to our emotional state and mental condition is a foundation of Freudian analysis, but it doesn't have a shred of evidence to support it, in fact, until Freud dreamed it up, no one with access to the same evidence he had ever proposed it. It is an intriguing idea, it gives us a tool for exploring the subconscious and a means of organizing a theory of human thought, but it is not only without supporting evidence, it is hard to conceive just what kind of evidence might convincingly support it if it could be found.

In your analysis of my dream, you have created a consistent and persuasive connection from the dream to my own psyche, but you have been able to do so without any knowledge whatsoever of my personal history or my psychological health. But it sounds convincing! Please don't take this as a personal attack, you are not the only person to subscribe to neo-Freudian ideas, they are very popular, especially among intellectuals and particularly in the English-speaking world. But the "evidence" for the Freudian model is based more on the linguistic richness of English,
its ability to coin metaphors and analogues, than on verifiable experimental evidence. Believe me, a straight translation of Freud into Spanish sounds like Scientology. It is only one step removed from gibberish. I understand that German was also a very Freud-friendly language.

Freud's ideas that mental pressures, if constrained, must emerge in other forms and behaviors, is based on a hydraulic model for human consciousness, a technology which would have been familiar to Freud as a doctor. But other models, perhaps more effective ones, exist today: the brain as computer, switchboard, even a hologram. To say that refusing to think about something forces that concept to emerge later as symbols in dreams or as neurotic behavior, makes no sense without the hydraulic pressure theory. It's like saying that if you play only rock and roll on your stereo it will be ruined for playing classical music.

What do we really know about dreams? Not much, actually. We know that people often dream about what's on their mind during waking hours. That's not surprising, that's the basic raw material the dream process (whatever it is!) has to work with. We also know that some dreams seem to be universal, such as flying, falling, being naked in a crowd, showing up unprepared to class, having your teeth fall out, running away from a monster, or being in a fight where your best punches seem to have no effect on your opponent (Democrats have that one all the time). Freud's ideas take all of these into account, but so do alternative explanations. For example, I tend to believe that dreams are part of some sort of maintenance procedure the brain has to run periodically, like a file compress or a memory reformat. Studies in dream deprivation tend to support this idea: if you are prevented from dreaming, you go crazy. Perhaps these "common" dreams reflect key behavioral modes which all of us share. The dream may have no meaning at all, it is just a by product of the maintenance procedure.

Another possibility is that dreams may be some sort of training mechanism mammals have evolved in order to prepare themselves for emergencies. For examples, if you fall out of a tree, you're likely to panic. If you dream about falling out of trees all the time the sensation will be more familiar to you and you're much more likely to keep your wits about you and grab a branch on the way down. Can I prove any of this? Of course not, but it suggests that alternative theories exist and they can be made to sound just as reasonable if they are presented in a "scientific" manner, especially if it is liberally peppered with classical references and Graeco-Roman terminology.

So why am I down on psychology? I'm not really, the creation of tentative preliminary theories is essential to the success of any science and other branches of psychology, such as perception studies, are well based on scientific methods. Freud is to be honored for being the first to attempt to put psychology on a scientific basis, instead of a religious or mystical one. He set up a philosophical system which is, in principle, testable. But he made no effort to carry out the tests, or to set up procedures for testing objectively. He also cloaked the entire enterprise in a medical terminology and on literary allusions that are more a testament to the man's enormous erudition and skills as a writer than any clinical research. It's too simple to be true, and too easy to be useful. My major gripe with psychology is the grip it has on modern intellectual thought. Freudian and Jungian concepts are entwined in our arts and literature, they are present in lay conversation, and they have even invaded our political discourse. We even legitimize psychologists by inviting them to testify as expert witnesses in legal proceedings and giving them the power to intern the mentally ill.. For a science which is in about the same state of development as medicine was when Harvey was discovering the circulation of the blood, this is unacceptable. Should pschiatrists still have access to the legal powers given to medical professionals? I suppose we have little choice, as someone once pointed out, when you're in the jungle and bitten by a poisonous snake, you have little choice but to consult the tribal medicine man, he's the only one around who has any experience at all of what you're going through. But keep your fingers crossed if all he can do for you is a funny little dance.

As for my dream; I have nothing to do with the elections as part of my job. I had the dream last year, when I was undergoing some pretty severe personal problems. Perhaps the dream had something to do with them, but if so, by analysis of the dream you should be able to tell me just what they were. Doing it the other way round isn't science, it's philosophy.