Dream
By medium: dream art
Related: daydream - psychedelica - fantastic - hallucination - nightmare - night - sleeping
Poem of the Soul, Nightmare (1854) - Louis Janmot (1814-1892)
Definition
Dreaming is the subjective experience of remembered and imaginary images, sounds/voices, words, thoughts or sensations during sleep, with the dreamer usually not being able to influence the experience.
[D]reams are full of imagery. This imagery ranges from the banal to the surreal; in fact, dreams often provoke artistic and other forms of inspiration. Forms of dreams include the frightening or upsetting nightmare, and erotic dreams with sexual images and nocturnal emission.
For a long time true dreaming had only been positively confirmed in humans, but recently there have been research reports supporting a view that dreaming occurs in other animals as well. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream [Nov 2005]
Dream interpretation
Interpretation of Dreams (1900) - Sigmund Freud
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]Whether we love or hate Sigmund Freud, we all have to admit that he revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. Much of this revolution can be traced to The Interpretation of Dreams, the turn-of-the-century tour de force that outlined his theory of unconscious forces in the context of dream analysis. Introducing the id, the superego, and their problem child, the ego, Freud advanced scientific understanding of the mind immeasurably by exposing motivations normally invisible to our consciousness. While there's no question that his own biases and neuroses influenced his observations, the details are less important than the paradigm shift as a whole. After Freud, our interior lives became richer and vastly more mysterious.
These mysteries clearly bothered him--he went to great (often absurd) lengths to explain dream imagery in terms of childhood sexual trauma, a component of his theory jettisoned mid-century, though now popular among recovered-memory therapists. His dispassionate analyses of his own dreams are excellent studies for cognitive scientists wishing to learn how to sacrifice their vanities for the cause of learning. Freud said of the work contained in The Interpretation of Dreams, "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." One would have to feel quite fortunate to shake the world even once. --Rob Lightner for amazon.com
Dream interpretation is the art of determining the meaning (or alleged meaning) of the symbolic content of a dream.
Dream interpetation is a part of psychoanalysis; the seminal work on the subject is The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.
Joseph in the Old Testament interpreted the dreams of a Pharaoh of Egypt.Daniel also had the gift of interpreting dreams,saying "There is a God in heaven that reveals mysteries." --wikipedia.org [Jun 2004]
Martin Luther King Jr. - I Have a Dream (1963)
Martin Luther King Jr. - I Have a Dream (1963) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
One of the greatest and most memorable moments in the civil rights movement occurred when 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Not only was the gathering of so many united people extraordinary, but that day Martin Luther King Jr. stood before the marchers and delivered his most eloquent and inspiring speech. This video offers the "I Have a Dream" speech in its entirety, as well as footage of the opposition the protesters faced, such as the fire hoses the police in Alabama used to disperse the crowds. The narrator explains that the hoses shot 700 pounds of pressure, enough to strip the bark off a tree. However, the grimness of this era is not the only focus in this video. Dr. King had so much hope and faith in the success of the civil rights movement, and the greatest demonstration of this is in the famous speech. He uses modern metaphors and poetry to get his message out clearly, as when he describes the capitol as having given blacks a check marked "insufficient funds," but he reminds us that they will refuse to believe the bank of justice is bankrupt, that they will cash their check for riches of freedom and security of justice. Throughout the speech he emphasizes his mission: nonviolence as a method of overcoming ("Soul force against militant force") and the importance of walking together as a unified group, and never walking alone. Although the video ends with his death, it still leaves the viewer feeling uplifted with Robert Kennedy's memorial address, pleading with Americans to hold on to Dr. King's views and adopt them as their own. A concise video with one of the greatest speeches of our time. --Samantha Allen Storey, Amazon.com
Le Cauchemar (The Nightmare) - (1781) Henry Fuseli
Being in the grips of a nightmare is a common occurrence that we can all relate to, but we may never experience one exactly as a particular artist depicts it. Here Fuseli conjures up a terrifying image filled with mystery, panic, and yet with a vague and disturbing familiarity. It suggests the way the woman feels in the grip of a demonic nightmare, not what she sees. The Nightmare was reproduced as an engraving; a copy hung in Sigmund Freuds apartment in Vienna in the 1920s.
Traumnovelle (1925/26) - Arthur Schnitzler
Traumnovelle (1963) - Arthur Schnitzler [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Traumnovelle (1925/26) (adapted as the film Eyes Wide Shut by American director Stanley Kubrick)
Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, adapted into the film Eyes Wide Shut by director Stanley Kubrick, and also dramatized for BBC Radio 4 as Dream Story, details the thoughts and psychological evolution of doctor Fridolin over a two day period. In this short time, he meets many people who give a clue to the world Schnitzler is creating for us. This all culminates in the masquerade ball, a wondrous event of masked individualism, sex, and danger for Fridolin the outsider.
The mystery of this novella comes from the self-discovery that Fridolin experiences, a descent into the depths of his own mind, and the changes in the relationships between people. It incorporates a plethora of psychological imagery and symbolism.
This book falls into the period of Viennese decadence after the turn of the century. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumnovelle [Dec 2004]
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