Dear Duygu,

I suggest “The interpretation of Dreams” (Freud), “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious”(Lacan)

Lacan proposes that “the unconscious is structured like a language”. He details how the deeper unconscious wish is expressed in the content of the dream.

 Freud described “the unconscious ... remained to be the single most unknowable and more or less untheorizable element of all observable features of human psychology”  - (Rahimi, available at http://somatosphere.net/2009/04/unconscious-metaphor-and-metonymy.html)

All the best,

Dionéia

Thank you all

All mammals dream.   Dreams often are about problems we are experiencing and their content reflect some of our tensions relative to these problems.  Laboratory rats trying to search food in maze , dream about these maze.  Dreaming is probably an offline problem solving activity for sorting through all kind of past experience in order to face the challenges of our future.  It is probably the same for all mammal although human do project much further into the past and the future.  Dreaming are essential moments of learning from experience for all mammals.  Deprivation of REM sleep prevent learning from experience to happen.

Dreams can have many layers to them - from helping organise what happened during the day (including the formation of memories and learning) to the more practical dimension of dreaming as the manifestation of our unconscious tendencies and needs.

Providing you consider dreams to be a valid topic of scientific interest for researchers and of clinical interest to clinicians (I surely do), they´re a kaleidoscopic source of insight and meaning that somehow dilutes the personal into the universal dimension (following a more Jungian fashion, there seems to be a common archetypal, image-based language for dreams and metaphor that can be seen in myths and fairy tales across the globe, even though all dreams are also pertinent to the dreamer and will also contain highly personal themes, landscapes, symbols, characters...) 

One way in which dreams might offer insight into our unconscious drives is by showing things our conscious awareness does not only ignore, but pushes towards the unseen (those events, feelings, ideas etc that are not "acceptable" either because of cultural conditioning or because they might not reinforce our self-image).

As a possible example, someone non committal - distant - reserved and cold might dream of a winter landscape (that´s covering the pain). Of course, they would never describe themselves that way - thus they dream it. Think of an achiever without a real life seeing something like this in a dream. And, if you asked them, they would probably say they give their heart wholeheartedly only to face rejection time and again. Seen under this light, rejection is how we project our own fear of intimacy out there, and that could be symbolised by dreaming of a cold and barren landscape (suggesting aloofness or a lack of real intimacy).

I have worked extensively with dreams in this way (together with an interpreter/analyst) and the possibilities of dream work are not only fascinating, but of great transformative potential.

The relationship between subconscious mind and dreaming can be understood by focusing on symbolic transformation. Based on a previous study I concluded that there are two forms of transformations, dream/subconscious transformation and awakening transformation.  Dream/subconscious transformation means that dreams enable individuals to unveil the subconscious or  hidden and unseen dimensions of the person transformed into signs or symbols.  I take awakening transformation to mean the attempt to change the reality through interpreting dreams and relating them to that reality.  Across the polarities of subjective-objective and unseen-seen, dreams are viewed as vehicles for symbolic transformation of subconscious, inner or incorporeal  experiences to be outward or corporeal realities, socially or collectively communicated and discussed.  For more information see, el-Aswad, el-Sayed 2010. “Dreams and the Construction of Reality: Symbolic Transformation of the Seen and Unseen in the Egyptian Imagination," Anthropos, 105 (2): 441-453. 

Hello Duygu - In general parlance the subconscious and unconscious seem to be mentioned as though they are identical. In this respect i'd not wish to suggest this should alter among those happy to proceed as such.

Nonetheless i'd suggest an architecture where the unconscious is considered to be on the same neural pathway as the conscious - part of it regardless of conscious / unconscious labels. - whilst the Subconscious is considered separate. Here then the unconscious can be regarded as a deep reach of the everyday mind where'unconsciousness' becomes noted as remote in the conscious. In this respect we can access only some of its contents, for example we may know our fears quite well while their specific drivers remain deeply implicit as do archetypal symbols of those fears and other emotions. Ofc they surface in dreams & this is just a way of arranging a topographical outlook on a phenomenological level for an enhanced sense of the source regarding the minds stereotype and archetypes.

This way of thinking needs to appeal, but if it does - one might then consider the unconscious as a short term memory ( in relative terms ) - keeper of a life history of events, and a recoder of experiences into stereotypes. Also home of fight or flight, fear emotions, peripheral vision, the receptacle of dreams, and receiver of archetypal symbols from the subconscious.

The subconscious having been disentangled from concepts of the unconscious may then be considered the prime symbol generator and source of most poignant Archetypes. For instance the place of our best conscience, the long term memory, home of our human essences, and keeper of emotional intelligences defining our evolving developing selves. Ofc the un is in the same business with sub & ultimately although we elucidate upon a bifurcation between stereotypes and archetypes, gather a sense of demarcations time & space.

On a phenomenological level this suggests the unconscious initiates phenomena after which an ongoing series of exchanges then takes place i.e - unconscious to - subconscious to - conscience - deepest emotion - deepest desire - unconscious. Perhaps matters go back & forth a great many times until the unconscious has gathered enough exchanges to aggregate matters into dreams. All being subject to 'flux' in respect of concerns ongoing or becoming resolved.

All very hypothetical - perhaps phenomenon rarely allow us to have facts rather than methods we know we can trust or not. Whatever the truth this outlook needs Freud's topographic way of thinking.

In other words a separate subconscious / unconscious opens phenomenological space - the ability to predict mapping, sense triggers, loops, and interactions of many types between different versions of memory, of our conscious & unconscious fears, compares the better emotional self and the worst and more. For that matter endlessly more aspects of our sublime awareness that tends to be suppressed to the research if the subconscious and unconscious are seen as identical -Regards