Dreams and dream symbols

According to psychoanalysis, our dreams have also some meanings. Our unconscious is free to express itself during our dreams. Our dreams give some message from the unconscious. There are some deep fears or desires to produce such dreams. They are called latent content. When these deep fears and desires take the forms of a visual dream, it is called manifest content. When the latent content is transformed into manifest content, it goes through two processes: dream displacement and dream condensation. Dreams displacement means to replace a safe person or event instead of unsafe person or event. For e.g. if you are attracted to your relative which is unsafe to have sex, you may replace-a safe person in your dream. On the other hand, dream condensation means to visualize the fearful scene for our unconscious troubles, wounds and mental conflicts. Sometimes we fight with tigers, bears and dogs in our dreams. The dream displacement and condensation are collectively called primary revision. But when we start to analyze the cause behind such dreams, it is called secondary revision.

Dreams have also symbolic meanings. Very often our dreams are guided by sexual psychology. So, there are male imagery and female imagery. Male imagery represents male genital organ and female imagery represents female genital organ. Male imagery is also called phallic symbols. The symbols for male organ are towers, rockets, guns, arrows, swords, stick and the like. These things stand upright or go off like male organ. But the symbols for female organ are different. The female symbols are the caves, rooms, walled gardens, cups, enclosures, containers and the like. The female imagery is also milk, fruit, other foods. The milk, fruit and food represent their breast while eaves, rooms and containers represent genital organ. Therefore, dreams and their symbols have important meaning in psychoanalysis.

(Mirror stage, Imaginary order and the symbolic stage)

One of the famous French psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan developed the concept of 'Mirror Stage‘ in his study of child psychology. He said that the infant, in the early months, cannot experience itself. The infant experiences itself and its environment as a random, fragmented and formless mass. The infant does not know its own body and organs. lts legs are also strange to it. But when the baby is between six to eight months, is goes through the 'Mirror stage'. The baby develops a sense of itself as whole rather than a fragmented or formless mass. The child develops its own image in whole like the image reflected by mirror. If you show the mirror, it can understand that it is its own body. This development of the infant's psychological stage is called the mirror stage. Lacan says that mirror stage is the beginning of the 'imaginary order’ which means the world of images. The child makes the images of the things, image of its own body and the image of its mother. But it still feels that it is closely related to mother. It has the sense of union with the mother. The attachment to the mother is very powerful for the child. This attachment continues until the child learns the language. The child's acquisition of language is very important stage. This stage is called ‘symbolic order. This stage is the process of learning symbolic meaning of the words in language. Now, the child learns the difference between "I' and 'you’. He thinks that he is different from mother and other people. He makes his own separate identity. He also learns that he is a boy or vice versa. This separation from the mother gives a sense of loss which haunts all over his life. This sense of loss is never fulfilled in his life. So, he is attracted with his mother for the hope of fulfilling this loss. He says that this lack or loss is like metaphor and metonymy. He also says that metaphor is condensation and metonymy is displacement.