Page 137 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

118 Mysteries of the Mind

God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy
[preach] and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.”

By the late nineteenth century, dreams
were being examined from a physiological per-
spective. The ancient notion that God spoke
directly to men in dreams was pretty much
dismissed by a culture that was becoming
more scientific and materialistic. Then came
the groundbreaking work of Sigmund Freud
and Carl G. Jung.
In 1899 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), a
Viennese psychiatrist and the founder of psy-
choanalysis, brought dreams into the realm of
Dreaming of worlds Dreams, or night visions, might be audito- the scientific community with the publication
beyond. (ANDREW C. ry and present a direct message (as in Job of his monumental work, The Interpretation of
STEWART/FORTEAN 33:15–17, Genesis 20:3,6) or at other times be Dreams, in which he maintained that the
PICTURE LIBRARY) symbolic, requiring skilled interpretation. dream is “the guardian of sleep” and “the royal
Jacob had a dream of a ladder set up on Earth, road” to understanding the human uncon-
the top of it reaching to heaven. He beheld in scious. Freud’s theory was basically that the
this dream angels of God ascending and dream was a disguised wish-fulfillment of
descending on the ladder with the Lord stand- infantile sexual needs, which were repressed
ing above it, confirming the covenant of by built-in censors of the waking mind. The
Abraham to Jacob (Genesis 28:12). King apparent content of the dream was only con-
Solomon received both wisdom and warning cealing a shockingly latent dream. Through
in dreams (I Kings 3:5, 9:2). the use of a complex process of “dream work,”
which Freud developed, the dream could be
unraveled backward, penetrating the uncon-
scious memory of the dreamer and thereby set-
SIGMUND Freud brought dreams into the ting the person free.

realm of the scientific community with his publication According to Dr. Stanley Krippner (1932– ),
former director of the Dream Laboratory at
The Interpretation of Dreams.
Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York,
contemporary experiments in sleep laborato-
ries have confirmed many of Freud’s specula-
The New Testament accounts surrounding tions and cast doubt upon others. Some psy-
the birth of Jesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.) record chiatrists, including Lester Gelb, argue that
a number of revelatory dreams. Joseph was the concept of the unconscious should be
instructed to wed Mary and was assured of her totally abandoned in explaining human
purity (Matthew 1:20), in spite of the apparent behavior. Gelb feels it would be more useful to
fact that she was already pregnant. Later, recognize several states or types of conscious-
Joseph was warned to flee to Egypt (Matthew ness—working, sleeping, dreaming, daydream-
2:13), return to Israel, (2:19) and to go to ing, trance, and so forth—each of which can
Galilee (2:22). The Magi (the three wise men) be productively studied by behavioral scien-
were warned in a dream not to return to their tists. Krippner stated that possible confirma-
native land along the same route as they had tion of Freud’s emphasis on sexual symbolism
come (2:12) because of Herod’s evil inten- does occur occasionally in modern electroen-
tions. Acts 2:17 contains the prophetic verse: cephalographic dream research, but he further
“And it shall come to pass in the last days saith observed that human thought processes are too

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