Just Dreamin': Freud, the Talmud and the Interpretation of Dreams

I had a dream last night. Not a nightmare - there was no threat of imminent danger, but nonetheless I woke up feeling a kind of dread. I've had dreams like this before - dreams about which I may only remember a particular image - a set of broken ceremonial swords lying on a snow bank, a 'boom box' perched precariously on a high shelf, seeming to defy gravity; a motor-scooter, a luminous green, parked on the wrong side of the street. None of these images suggest danger or are even menacing, yet I wake up from them feeling they might mean something terrible and important that I very much want - or is it that I don't want? - to know.

Our sages tell us that a dream is one-sixtieth part prophesy; after all, G-d speaks to his prophets through dreams. 'Whoever sleeps without dreaming for seven days is wicked' - another suggestion that dreaming shows a connection to the divine.  The other parts of dreams, the sages say, come from 'the innermost thoughts of the heart.'  We know where dreams come from, yet we repress them, or we feel dread on their account, or maybe we repress them because we feel dread! The possibility of their significance is overwhelming, so we move on. After all, repression is not a skill that needs training or practice. But Rav Chisda says, 'A dream that has not been interpreted is like a letter that has not been read!' The message comes, it has my name on it; but I'd just rather not. Put it under the pile, click delete!

Rav Chisda insists: open it! It can't be that bad after all, because the sages have another principle in their dream-interpretation tool-box: 'dreams go after the mouth' - that is, the meaning of the dream is determined by its interpretation. Ha! the sages make it easy: whatever that letter contains, I'll turn the words to my own advantage. Were the rabbis of the Talmud 'post-modernist' before their time, saying that everything depends upon how I look it? Though some people like to claim this, the very same rabbis also say that a dream needs to be 'interpreted according to its content.'  Confusing! - it seems like the rabbis never took Philosophy 101, let alone Psych 101.  How can a dream 'go after the mouth' of the interpreter, and at the same time need to be interpreted according to its content?  

Dreams provide an opening into parts of the soul which I don't fully acknowledge, and in my conscious everyday-life don't fully know.  Rav Chisda's demand - 'open the letter!' - is not that far from that of Socrates' demand, 'know thyself!'  Coming to interpret the dream opens up a pathway for communication in the soul, and thus self-knowledge.  Dream interpretation pulls those innermost thoughts of the heart - the Talmudic expression for the unconscious perhaps? - into conscious life.  Dreams, the rabbis tell us, have twenty four meanings latent within them: a good interpretation is one that through speech - because dreams 'go according to the mouth' - brings one (or more) of those inner thoughts of the heart into my consciousness.  That the 'validation of a good interpretation is internal,' as Jonathan Lear writes, is to say that dream interpretation is a means of integrating the self.  A good interpretation is one which resonates for me, as I give a voice to that which had never before been heard.

Of course, the stranger within may not always bear a message that I want to hear; it's not something I want to entertain about myself.  There's a good reason for Rav Chisda's insistence: 'open the letter!'  The message is not always - at least on the surface - friendly.  But without reading the letter, I remain in silent battle with that part of myself I can't confront, instead of acknowledging it as a possible key to my transformation.  It's not just a matter of recognizing unpleasant truths about myself or unpleasant desires that I may have, but of expressing them, interpreting them, and in so doing, raising them to a higher level.  In this sense my dreams are prophetic: my neshama bears a secret, but it's only through my interpretation - engaging with the stranger - that I realize my heart's prophetic message.  Only through interpretation is the prophetic character of the dream revealed.

There's no escaping the dream, or the unconscious, or the stranger within. When on the Jewish holidays, the cohanim stand with their backs towards the ark chanting their priestly blessing, the congregation simultaneously intones their own supplication - have you ever noticed? - about dreams!  We don't ask that the dreams be nullified: you can't nullify the stranger within! He won't go away; nor will the dreams.  So we ask rather that they be transformed: 'And just as you transformed the curse of the wicked Bilaam into a blessing, so may You transform all of my dreams for the good.' And the Talmud goes on: the congregation should end their supplication as the cohanim finish the blessing that ends with 'shalom' -  peace.   One who finishes his 'dream-prayer' before the cohanim finish their chanting should intone: 'You are Peace and Your Name is Peace; May it be Your will that you grant us peace!'  The only way to reach that peace - between the warring parts of the psyche - is through opening the letter that comes from the part of that soul which has not yet been fully acknowledged.  Then comes the work of transformation - of which both introspection and prayer are a part.  Only then comes the final goal:  peace.  In this case, not the peace between men, but that which is its pre-condition: the internal peace of the individual soul! www.openmindedtorah.blogspot.com