MDMD: On dreams

[Terrance]

Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
> For Freud, dreams were wishfulfilment, the play of the unconscious. Sleep is
> necessary to allow dreaming to take place; we dream while asleep, even when
> we recall nothing upon waking. Freud claimed to be a scientist; in fact he
> produced an allegory of imperialism (describing female sexuality, for
> example, as a dark continent - a direct reference to Africa as the
> unknowable obsession of European colonial powers, principally Britain and
> Germany). 

Snip, thanks again, 



"Franz loved films but this was how he watched them, nodding
in and out of sleep." (GR.159)



Freud,  the "scientist" has often been compared with Nietzsche, the
"poet."

I am reminded of Nietzsche's statement that  "man believed that he was
discovering a second real world in dream, and here is the
origin of all metaphysics." 


What are we to make of Nietzsche's claim about dreams and
the origin of metaphysics, of  the origin of ghosts, and of gods? 

In 'The Gay Science,' Nietzsche
surmises that consciousness has come about or developed from
the necessity to communicate. He argues that from the
beginning, communication was useful to humans (particularly
between those in control and those controlled or ruled) and
that it developed only in proportion to the degree of this
need or its utility. For Nietzsche, conscious meanings that
arise from the need to communicate are superficial. 

What about a grievance? A shade, like Mason's with a Grievance? Those
controlled may be only able to communicate after being set free, even in
death. Recall that Dixon and Mason will, not unlike Slothrop and Enzian,
become paranoid about what they are doing and for whom. "Who are we
working for?" 

 

"Man, like every living being, thinks continually without knowing
it, the thinking that arises to consciousness is only the
smallest part of this-the most superficial and worst
part-for only this conscious thinking takes the form of
words, which is to say signs of communication, and this fact
uncovers the origin of consciousness." 

So the world of which we become conscious is merely a surface-and
sign-world. 


Again, in 'Gay Science,' Nietzsche says, 

"Owing to the nature of
animal consciousness, the world of which we can become
conscious is only a surface-and sign-world, a world that is
made common and meaner; whatever becomes conscious becomes
by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general,
sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great
and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to
superficialities, and generalizations."

What of the world and words of the unconscious? The world where,
perhaps, the conflicts, the relationships of controlled and controllers,
the Sadists and Masochists, dissolves, where the word no is not heard. 



"The word NO does not seem to exist for a dream. Dreams
show a special tendency to reduce two opposites to a unity
or to represent them as one thing."

This almost sounds dialectical, but is not. 

 For Freud, neuroses, dreams, errors, taboos, jokes, slips (like Dave
Monroe's clock) Religion or Civilization (Freud makes no distinction
between Religion and Civilization), Eros and Death,  ----are all
understood as the outcome of Conflicting forces.

"And now, I think, the meaning of the evolution of
civilization is no longer obscure to us. It must present the
struggle between Eros and Death, between the instinct of
life and the instinct of destruction, as it works its way
out in the human species. This struggle is what all life
essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization
may therefore be simply described as the struggle for life
of the human species. And it is this battle of the giants
that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about
Heaven."
      --Civilization and Its Discontents