Q: “Why [do humans] not have the ability to understand dreams?”
I believe that humans may have the ability to understand dreams, but there would be no way of scientifically proving this ability. There have been numerous theories about what our dreams mean, including Freud’s, but the problem is that we can never prove that these theories are correct. There is no black-and-white answer when it comes to understanding something like dreams. We have nothing to base our ideas about dreams off of, and therefore we can never know if our ideas are correct.
I thought the idea of describing dream theories as an attempt to describe what is in a closed box was a great idea. The fact that we may remember some of our dreams may provide us with the ability to shake the box, but we can never fully know what it is in the box. That is why Freud’s theory on dreams is interesting, but it can never be used as empirical evidence. I think it is great when certain Freud supporters will say that Freud’s ideas are just a gateway to an improved theory. I do not believe we could ever understand what dreams meant, but I do like the idea that we could use Freud’s theories as a gateway to maybe a improved theory of the human mind.
I also find that your question could be looked at as maybe wondering why humans are not biologically capable of understanding dreams. If this was the point of your question, then I think I may have an interesting answer. If humans are biologically not capable of understanding dreams, then maybe dreams do not have a true purpose. I say this because, in natural selection, Humans develop things that would give them an advantage to survive; therefore, I feel that if dreams have a true significance, then humans who could understand them would have a great advantage over other Humans. For example, if my dreams were telling me an internal conflict that I was hiding from my conscious, then I could discover it and then solve my conflict. Maybe Humans do not have the ability to understand dreams because dreams do not actually have any purpose; dreams could just be a random activation of experiences that are stored in the brain.
I think that one of the most interesting ideas related to understanding dreams is the act of lucid dreaming. The fact that there have been scientific tests that proved that people could be conscious in their dreams is extremely interesting. Lucid dreaming provides me with another reason why I do not believe that dreams hold any significance. If people can be conscious in their dreams, and then control their dreams, then I do not see how a dream could really have a purpose. How can my dream have an inner meaning if I am controlling every part of it? I feel that dreams have always been analyzed to find a true meaning only because dreams are part of the unknown. Anything that people do not know will constantly be analyzed, and people will make theories about it. With that said, I do feel that Freud’s ideas about dreaming are important; for this reason, I did dome research about Freud and lucid dreams, and I found out that Freud actually wrote about them briefly. When discussing his own lucid dream, Freud said, "I won't go on with this dream any further and exhaust myself with an emission." It seems that Freud did not want to discuss lucid dreams because they brought up too many conflict into consciousness.
What do you think about Freud’s feelings regarding lucid dreams?
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