Relating Addict: Dreams and the 'Either/Or' Fallacy

Dreams and the 'Either/Or' Fallacy

Freud (1913) believed that dreams could show cause and effect in a few ways. Sometimes they show the same thing from different perspectives and other times they will have a short dream first and then a longer dream which may show a cause-and-effect relationship. Dreams can also show cause and effect by changing one image into another.

However, most of the time cause and effect is not shown in dreams, instead it is mixed up with other things in the dream. Freud (1913) believed that dreams cannot show the alternative "eithor/or" but instead they show both possibilities as if they are both possible.

A dream might show the cause of someone's pain as:

their resistance to accepting a solution
their unfavorable sexual conditions
that their pain is not hysterical but organic

The dream would show all of these possibilities and add a fourth solution that comes from the dreamer's wishes (Freud 1913).
When someone tells you about their dream and uses the alternative "either/or," it doesn't mean that the dream has two mutually exclusive possibilities. It means that the dreamer was thinking about both possibilities.

Dreams often ignore the rules of logic. They can change things that are opposite, like "No" to "Yes." They can also show things as both themselves and their opposite. For example, a dream might show someone being happy and sad at the same time.
Dreams also use a technique called "condensation" to show similarity, agreement, or contiguity. This means that they can combine two or more things into one image. For example, a dream might show a person who looks like both their mother and their father.

Condensation can help dreams to avoid censorship. Censorship is the process of blocking out thoughts and feelings that are too painful or disturbing to think about. By combining two or more things into one image, dreams can get around censorship and express these thoughts and feelings in a disguised way.

Dreams are often about the dreamers themselves. They can show the dreamer's thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They can also show the dreamer's wishes and desires. By understanding dreams, we can learn more about ourselves and our unconscious minds.

References