(女儿一年前的作文)

进入未知：释梦

    自第一个旧石器时代人在地球上行走起，人类一直对梦和它们的起源着迷。刚开始，人类不能有效地将梦与现实区分，认为梦是意识生命的延伸。古代文明将梦看作神的信息并努力地去解释他们，希望从中发现信息的内在含义。祭司和巫师也会搜索梦以寻找具特别意义的符号。这些信息通常被当作预言，于是部落就急忙为很快要发生的灾难或意外的好运作准备。在古希腊和罗马，军队常常伴随着梦境翻译人员，在古埃及，那些有能力生动做梦的人会获得特殊地位。在中世纪时代，梦想被认为是来自魔鬼的邪恶诱惑，趁人们在最薄弱的睡眠时机下手。然而到了19世纪，梦在科学观中发生了巨大变化。梦被认为是来源于体细胞，如消化不良引起，从而失去了其重要性和解释的需要。在十九世纪后期，一位心理学的重要人物，弗洛伊德，发表了一部论著，<<梦的解析>>，书里拒绝了梦的宗教和躯体的观念。这本书因提出: 梦是重要的心灵创作，而不是毫无意义的夜间活动或神的启示， 而成为心理学的一个里程碑。

在梦的解析里，弗洛伊德讨论了梦的结构和功能以及形成过程，他通常采用解释梦例来支持他的理论。他指出，“梦想的可能来源：

（一）最近的和心理上重要的经历，这些直接表现在梦中

（二）最近的几次重大经历，由梦连成一个整体

（三）最近的一个或多个重要的经验在梦里和一个当时的无关经验混合

（四）一个主观的重要经历(如一连串的思绪），这些经常在梦中和最近的无关系的印象被表现出来。

上面提到的重要经历与重要心理思想有关，并通过一系列关联与无意识思维产生关系。这一组梦想思维在梦里由一个接一个的梦元素表达出来。梦元素本身往往是不重要的，但它们的心理意义通过与梦想思维连接表现出来。因此，正如弗洛伊德断言，梦由两个主要组成部分：一是外表内容，即做梦者在梦里实际看到或听到的影像；二是潜在内容，或被代表的思维。由于可进行众多的连接，许多潜在内容数量通常明显大于外表内容。在解释梦的过程中，人们必须通过追踪连接外表内容的影像从前向后推，以此来确定潜在内容。根据弗洛伊德的说法，“当解释工作完成时，梦就被看作实现了一个愿望”。

通过几个梦境，特别是儿童的，弗洛伊德认为儿童心理审核机能充分充分发育，他演示了如何这是可能的，并得出结论，梦往往是一种是被压抑的愿望之一，它在梦里被扭曲地实现，因此使得梦想不愉快，而不是实现完全的愿望。

在潜在梦想能发展成为外表梦想之前，有几个关键过程必须发生。第一个也是最明显的是这些过程的凝聚工作。利用样本梦的解释，弗洛伊德表明，“每一个梦的内容元素原来是超定，也就是说，它是一个结点，享受在梦里思想多方面的代表权”（弗洛伊德269）。在凝聚工作即将完成时，另一个同样重要的程序是开始工作，这是流失过程，其中的梦想元素的心理值被修改，以避免心理审核。这个心理审核压制某些梦想元素，因为做梦者不希望那些元素出现，梦者会减轻其强度，并给予新的价值，通过对自决的方式，从小型值元素，这些新的价值观随后进入梦的内容”（弗洛伊德290）。第三个因素是控制梦的形成是其展示性方面。因为梦想不是抽象思维能力的展示，它塑造成形象化的语言，通过视觉形象和具体的影象来表现。即使在前面提到的三个进程已经完成，梦仍可能脱节，荒谬。这种困境得到解决，方法是，尽管有时不完全，在梦的最后阶段形成时，进行二次拟订。在梦的碎片不容易流动的地方，这个功能可添加它从梦想收集的材料，使梦想似乎更为连贯和比较完整。在他的论述的最后一节，弗洛伊德描述了将精神刺激转换成有意识的思考或运动的仪器。

这个仪器，他把他称作Y系统，包括感知系统，记忆系统，无意识和前意识。当感知系统探测到刺激，系统将它转移到第一个存储系统，感知变成一个“记忆痕迹。” 记忆痕迹又通过各种记忆系统往下传，且记忆系统通过从最基本的到更加复杂的关联(如声音，影象，符号等)改变记忆痕迹。最后，到达潜意识，再传输到前意识。再转换成意识。虽然正常思维是这种方式，但梦想通过逆向过程，即回归过程而形成。弗洛伊德认为，（弗洛伊德265）“在回归里，梦想思维的结构被分解成原材料。”通过对梦的亲近观察并通过比前人更详细的对梦的讨论，弗洛伊德让公众更好地理解梦及他们的形成。

在弗洛伊德的<<释梦>>的论点慢慢彻底改变了人们对梦想的看法，尽管他的很多理论被现代心理学家抛弃，但他有关梦和无意识的观点，极大地影响了哲学家，艺术家和其他心理学家。弗洛伊德认为<<梦的解释>>是他最伟大的作品之一，然而，当它第一次出版时，它并没有如弗洛伊德曾希望的那样引起人们的兴趣和注意。事实上，“第一次出版只印刷600份..且花了8年才卖完。对它评论有但不多，大多是不利的。直到1913年才有第一本英文翻译。但弗洛伊德的“无意识不能被控制”的观

点没有被广泛接受，尤其是在美国，它被认为是对人的自由意志的攻击

原文：

Into the Unknown: Dreams and the Unconscious

Since the first Paleolithic peoples walked the earth, humankind has always been fascinated by dreams and their origins. The first humans could not effectively distinguish dreams from reality, and considered them extensions of conscious life. Ancient civilizations saw dreams as messages from the gods and endeavored to interpret them in order to discover the contents of the messages. Priests and shamans would search the dreams to find symbols that held special meanings. The messages were usually prophetic and communities would rush to prepare for either an impending calamity or unexpected good fortune. In ancient Greece and Rome, armies were often accompanied by dream interpreters, and in ancient Egypt, those with the ability to dream especially vividly were given a special status. During medieval times, dreams were considered evil temptations from the devil targeted at individuals who, in their sleeping state, were at their weakest. During the 19th century, however, the scientific views on dreams changed dramatically. Dreams were said to be caused by somatic sources such as indigestion and thus lost their importance and need for interpretation. In the late 1800's, a significant figure in psychology published a treatise that rejected both the religious and somatic views on dreams. The Interpretation of Dreams, written by Sigmund Freud, established itself as a milestone in psychology by proposing that dreams are significant psychic creations rather than meaningless nighttime activities or products of divine inspiration.

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud discusses the structure and function of the dream as well the process by which it is formed, often using sample dream interpretations to support his claims. He states, "The source of a dream may be:

(a) A recent and psychologically significant experience, which is directly   represented in the dream

(b) Several recent, significant experiences, which are united by the dream into a whole

(c) One or more recent and significant experiences which are represented in the dream by the mention of a contemporary but indifferent experience

(d) A subjective significant experience (a recollection, train of thought), which is regularly represented in the dream by the mention of a recent but indifferent impression" (Freud 160).

The above mentioned significant experiences are related to psychologically important thoughts, which are in turn related to other unconscious thoughts through a series of associations. This collection of dream thoughts is represented in the dream by a succession of dream elements. The dream elements themselves are often unimportant, but gain their psychological significance through their connection with noteworthy dream thoughts. Therefore, as Freud asserts, there are two main components of a dream: the manifest content, or the images that the dreamer actually sees and hears in his or her dream, and the latent content, or the thoughts that are being represented. Since there is a multitude of connections that can be made, the latent content is often much greater in volume than the manifest content. To determine the latent content, one must trace the connections backward from the dream images in the manifest content in the process of dream interpretation. According to Freud, "when the work of interpretation has been completed the dream may be recognized as the fulfillment of a wish" (Freud 111).

Through the analysis of several dreams, especially those of children, whose psychological censors Freud considered not fully developed, he demonstrated how this is possible, and came to the conclusion that the dream wish is often a repressed one and its fulfillment in the dream is consequently distorted so that the dream seems unpleasant and not at all like a wish fulfillment.

Before the latent dream thoughts can develop into the manifest dream content, there are a number of key processes that must take place. The first and most obvious of these processes is the condensation work. Using the interpretation of a sample dream, Freud shows that "every element of the dream content turns out to be over-determined that is, it is a nodal point, enjoying a manifold representation in the dream thoughts" (Freud 269). While the work of condensation is being completed, another equally important procedure is at work, this being the process of displacement, in which the psychological values of the dream elements are changed in order to avoid the resistance of the censor. This censor represses dream elements that represent thoughts that the dreamer would find undesirable by stripping them of their intensity and "creates new values, by way of over-determination, from elements of small value, these new values subsequently getting into the dream content" (Freud 290). The third factor that controls the formation of the dream is its regard for presentability. Because the dream is not capable of presenting abstract thoughts, it molds them into figurative language that is easily represented by visual and concrete dream images. Even after the three processes previously mentioned have been accomplished, the dream may still be disjointed and nonsensical. This dilemma is solved, though sometimes incompletely, by the final process in dream formation, the secondary elaboration. Where the fragments of the dream do not flow together easily, this function adds material it has gathered from the dream thoughts so that the dream appears to be more coherent and less fragmented. In the final section of his treatise, Freud describes the psychic apparatus that transforms stimuli into conscious thought or movement.

The separate components of this apparatus, which he calls the ^-systems, include the perception system, the memory systems, the unconscious, and the preconscious. When the perception system detects the stimuli, it transfers it to the first memory system, where the perception is changed into a "memory trace." The memory trace is passed on through the various memory systems, which alter it through a series of associations, the first being the most basic and the later ones more complex. Finally, it reaches the unconscious, which transmits it to the preconscious. After being transferred from the preconscious, the unconscious thought is now a conscious one. While normal thinking proceeds in this fashion, dreams are formed by reversing the process, that is, by its regression. Freud maintains that "the structure of the dream thoughts is in the regression broken up into its raw material" (Freud 265). By taking an intimate look at dreams and discussing them in greater detail than those before him, Freud gives the public a better understanding of dreams and the way they are formed.

Freud's arguments in The Interpretation of Dreams slowly revolutionized the way people regarded dreams, and although many of his theories were later dismissed by modern psychologists, his ideas regarding dreams and the unconscious greatly influenced philosophers, artists, and other psychologists alike. Freud considered The Interpretation of Dreams to be one of his greatest works; however, when it was first published, it did not gamer the attention and interest that Freud had hoped it would. In fact, "only 600 copies were printed of the first edition... and these took eight years to sell. Reviews, and there were not many, were mostly unfavorable, and the first English translation, by AA Brill, was not released until 1913" (Butler-Bowden). The idea that the unconscious is unable to be controlled was not widely accepted, especially in the U.S., as it was seen as an attack on human free will.