The Modern Dream-Vision: Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams and Mailer's An American Dream: Difference between revisions

{{byline|last=Gordon|first=Andrew}}

“The aim which I have set before myself is to show that dreams are capable of being interpreted,” wrote [[w:Freud|Freud]]. If we choose to analyze the function of dreams in twentieth-century literature, in particular a novel such as {{NM}}’s, which is a dream-vision, then it seems to me that we can turn to no better guidebook than the monumental Interpretation of Dreams. As we are all aware, Freud was the first to demonstrate that dreams are not detached from the rest of our mental life, but are on the contrary psychical acts of the deepest significance, because they put us in contact with the shadow land of the unconscious, which he called “the true psychical reality.” “The respect paid to dreams in antiquity,” he wrote, “is based on correct psychological insight and is the homage page to the uncontrolled and indestructible forces of the human mind, to the ’daemonic’ power which produces the dream-wish and which we find at work in our unconscious.” Paradoxically, through the use of modern scientific method, scrupulous observation and rational analysis, Freud restored the ancient respect for the power of the primitive and magical modes of thought represented by dreams. Twentieth-century man began to conceive of his mental life as a vast iceberg, whose majesty is increased by the fact that nine-tenths of its bulk lies beneath the surface.