For Freud (and this is already a trick phrase, because there are many many
Freuds) dreams were. above all. the royal road to the unconscious. Dream
interpretation was inseparable from the treatment purpose of psychoanalysis -
which classically stated, was the intention to make the unconscious available
to consciousness. One key problematic in current understanding is that we no
longer think of consciousness as easily divided into a binary formula -
conscious or unconscious. States of consciousness, aspects of consciusness,
artificial intelligence models of consciousness - and many other questions have
complicated the issue in interesting and productive ways.
So the first question that seems relevent to me is are you asking how Freud
would use dream validation in a treatment process, or as a theorist, or as a
way to understand film arts? It has sponsored a tremendous amount of confusion
when these three Freuds are conflated.
JMC wrote:
> So far, I think everyone involved in this discussion believes that audiences
> perceive black-and-white presentations as more authentic than color
> presentations. The question is why? I believe the answer lies in the history
> of photography and film itself. Our perception is typically that
> black-and-white presentations are historically prior to color presentations
> and that primacy (first cause . . . ) is simplicity itself.
>
> We can however press the issue of the black-and-white to color presentation
> in _BWP_ further by investigating its relationship to other witch movies.
> What comes to mind is _Gone with the Wind_ . Any takers?
> A relevant _Gone with the Wind_ movie is _Wild at Heart_, which, though it
> does not use the B+W, C shift, borrows other stylistic motifs.
>
> Here's another problem: Freud invokes the understanding of dreams held by
> primitive people at the beginning of _The Interpretation of Dreams_ (Chapter
> 1) as follows: "They took it for granted that dreams were related to the
> world of supernatural beings, and that they brought inspirations from gods
> and demons." With Aristotle, however, dreams "are already regarded as
> constituting a problem of psychology. We are told that the dream is not
> god-sent, that it is not of divine but of daimonic origin. For nature is
> really daimonic, not divine; that is to say, the dream is not a supernatural
> revelation, but is subject to the laws of the human spirit, which has, of
> course, a kinship with the divine." Freud then recognizes that the ancients
> distinguished between true and false dreams, yet Freud himself does not make
> this distinction--as far as I can tell.
>
> Are all dreams for Freud true? For Freud all interpretations are obviously
> not valid--validation depends on, among other things, context
> (latent-content), and Freud makes a distinction between psychic states.
> However the radicalness of Freud is that all psychic content has a level of
> validity. He does not seem to make a distinction that would characterize a
> difference between the authentic and the inauthentic within the psychic
> content. Interestingly enough, we seem to make these same distinctions in
> regard to film--film is "psychic." This question--I hope--takes us back to
> the question of point of view in cinema: do we wake or do we sleep? What
> state are we in?
>
> JMC
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