Freud makes me remember my dreams: Irony!

Do you remember when I simultaneously sated two desires by simultaneously telling you about how I started to keep a dream diary and write in some weird anachronistic tone? Well, I just realised something quite funny to do with that and I thought I’d share. Because that’s what this blog is for: sharing. And caring! Anyway…

One of the things I was told in the guide to remembering dreams which I downloaded* is that in order to better remember your dream the next day, you should sort of engage your dream muscle (my words) before you go to bed by re-reading the previous night’s dream. I would say just re-rad one of the longer or more vivid dreams you’ve had, because I’m still quite erratic and sometimes the dream account of the previous night is just ‘Ellie was texting me that she was in the bath that she preferred MSN to Facebook chat and I was using her laptop to message her back’. Yep. That’s all I remember from that night. However, sometimes when I’m really good at remembering my dream I write like six pages, and they help me remember better.

Sorry for the ramblings. I promise I’m going somewhere.

So, I’ve told you about how it’s important to engage your dream muscle in order to remember your dreams. Well, I’ve realised that sometimes when I wake up and can remember practically nothing it’s best to go read something super-academic and complicated, because for some reason that seems to engage the same part of my brain! So I’ll be three pages into my latest set book from Uni and – BAM! a flood of memories hits me. Then of course I reach for my dream diary and scribble down everything I remember as it comes to me, not even bothering too much about chronology.

What’s funny  about all this (weird funny not ha ha funny) is that at the moment my ‘latest  super-academic and complicated set book from Uni’ is something by Freud who is obviously LORD AND MASTER of dream stuff. The irony (because I am aware that that doesn’t on its own constitute irony) is that this book has nothing to do with dreams. He talks about pretty much every freaking other thing – daddy complexes, the pleasure principle, primary narcissism – but not dreams, except that they’re part of our imagination. Thanks, Sigmund.

Well, I find it funny that Freud makes me remember my dreams even though he’s not talking about them.

FUN TIMES. I totally didn’t just write this to distract me from eughhhhehhehhehehheheheh reading list. I did finish Effi Briest though! Pretty sad book, but not as bad as I’d expected it to be.

I feel like this:

 

 

*The ‘guide’ h is really short – only a two-page PDF – and you can download from this therapists' webpage here. This therapist is great because she reviews every episode of In Treatment with the eye of a real therapist. It was fascinating reading, also because she often talks about the differences between Freudian and Jungian ideas but in a totally not self-serving academic way which is great since that’s my favourite kind of way.