Letter to Freud

Dear Dr. Freud,

If the mind is so good at hiding uncomfortable truths from us, why should I trust my dreams to tell me any truth at all?

If repression and defence mechanisms can distort what reaches our conscious mind, why would they simply switch off when we sleep? Could a dream not be another defence in itself—taking something uncomfortable and cushioning it with harmonious memories, symbols, and completely unrelated thoughts? And if a dream is constantly in need of an interpretation to understand its meaning, how do we know when we have uncovered it and not created it?

That would probably be the first couple of questions I would ask you if I ever managed to get you to feature on my blog, Id Eat That.

Grilling you, though, would not be my only goal. I would also be trying—perhaps not very subtly—to hide my admiration for your ideas. After all, I am just a fan!

It's fascinating that what someone refuses to say can matter just as much as what they have already said. Silence, hesitation, changing the subject, brushing something off as irrelevant—things we usually treat as common brain fog—suddenly become keys to personality and more via the application of resistance. There is something almost ironic about the idea that the mind can reveal itself through the very act of trying not to.

But just when I start agreeing with you, free association makes me suspicious all over again.

I do have to say the idea is clever: removing the filter, letting the mind wander, and seeing what slips through. But how do we know that what slips through actually means something?

Suppose I am lying on your infamous couch and, somewhere between talking about school life and my childhood, I randomly mention a red umbrella. How do you decide that the umbrella has any significance rather than accepting the much less exciting possibility that I simply thought of a red umbrella spontaneously in the moment?

That is where I start worrying about interpretation. Once an analyst is actively looking for hidden meanings, is there not a danger of finding it everywhere?

Perhaps that is also why I draw the line between using psychoanalysis and actually living by it.

I do not think I could ever start analysing every dream I had, every Freudian slip that occurs or every strange thought that crossed my mind. But I would take one habit from you that is not trusting myself easily.

In those moments where I react much more strongly than a situation seems to deserve, keep making the same kind of decisions, or feel completely certain that I know why I did something, I like to interrupt myself with that one slightly irritating question:

Why am I actually doing this?

That, more than dream analysis itself, is probably what I would carry into my own life—the possibility that what I consciously believe about myself may be true, but may not always be the actual truth.

And that brings me back to where I started: dreams.

I can understand why they fascinated you. They’re strange, unfiltered and often emotionally charged enough to make us wonder whether they are saying something we cannot say as directly as when we are awake. But that is exactly why I hesitate to trust them completely.

If the mind can disguise, soften and redirect uncomfortable truths while we are conscious, I am not convinced that sleep suddenly makes it honest.

So if you did accept my invitation to join me at the Chef’s Table, I suspect we would still be arguing by dessert.

If conscious knows how to disguise itself, Dr. Freud, why are you so sure the unconscious can’t do the same?

Yours sincerely,

Pari Darmora