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A Dream Within a Dream

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aybala50's picture
Submitted by aybala50 on Sun, 10/02/2011 - 7:21pm

http://aybala50.glogster.com/a-dream-within-a-dream-/

 

People's fears, even in dreams can be a disability. As soon as we are born, we are affected by those around us, hence the blank slate that may have once existed disappears very early in life. So, how do we know what we actually want from life? I want to be who I am and do what I want to do, however, all of what I want has been tainted by the "normal" set by culture and society. In our dreams, we feel anxiety for what is not 'normal'. If not in our dreams, then in our waking state, there is an uneasiness for what we may have 'committed' in our sleeping state. I believe that in this sense, we are all disabled by culture and societies restrictions. 

People fear the unknown, or the abnormal. Society has norms set for nearly everything including gender and sexuality and we fear what is unusual in this sense. We are disabled even in our dreams, where we are supposed to be the safest? Where our deepest desires are supposed to come out? In Freud's opinion the manifest (surface) content of our dreams portray what will not damage our psyche. So, all of the dreams that are listed in this project merely show distressing situations. However, they all have latent (hidden) contents attached to them. The true desires are present in the latent content of the dream. Does this mean that society only effects the manifest content of our dreams? Is it possible that our deepest desires which are hidden in the latent contents may show us more about what our true desires are, maybe desires that are not bound in any way to "normal"?  

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Kaye's picture

entangled dreams

Submitted by Kaye on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 9:13am.

The audio track heightened the anxiety represented in your collage about dreams and reinforced the fear of the abnormal that people often keep repressed.  I found your selection of images, use of boldly colored key words, and inclusion of narrative fragments to be quite powerful, although I would have appreciated more description of the thought and artistic processes that generated this particular collage. 

I'm somewhat puzzled by your characterization of dreams as  places "where we are supposed to be the safest," especially when the music, text and images your present have nightmarish qualities.  If the "latent contents" of dreams reveal our "true desires" and if society only regulates the "manifest content" of our dreams, why do some dreams feel so unsettling, not just upon waking and reflecting on them, but while we're dreaming?  This suggests to me that society and our subconcious are intra-acting and are entangled.  I'm curious whether this a dimension of Jungian psychology and the theory of the collective unconcious?

Much to think about and ponder!

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