Maria
Teresa De Donato, Ph.D.
Traditional
Naturopath, Homeopath, Life Strategist, Author
The
World of Dreams
Interview
with Dr. Rosa Genovese
Actress,
author and theatrical director. Dr. in Clinical Psychology
The world of dreams has characterized the
existence of Man since his appearance on Earth. Over the course of the
millennia, various interpretations have been made of the nature, meaning and
usefulness of dreams. From the oldest civilizations that have existed,
including the Babylonian, Jewish, Greek, Roman, modern and contemporary, each
one has expressed their own opinion on seeing dream as a representation of real
life, as language of the soul released from the body during sleep, as
inspiration and message from God or other spiritual entities, or as a symbol of
our irrational passions.
Despite Cicero
That is why today we will be talking with Rosa
Genovese, (Italian) Doctor in Clinical Psychology.
T: Rosa ,
Thank you for accepting my invitation and being here with us today.
R: Thanks to
you, Maria Teresa, for giving me the opportunity to talk about this interesting
and important topic. As you say, dream accompanies man from its origins.
Moreover, humanity has always been fascinated by the mystery and the dream is
still today, despite the fact that scientific studies give us more and more
precise responses to what happens at the cerebral stage, partly wrapped up by
mystery. There are, of course, more answers and more interpretations for the
same phenomenon.
T: Rosa, as we have stated in the introduction,
there are so many views about the dream - from its total uselessness to
prophetic prophecy inspired by the gods, to the utmost expression of the
intellect or our subconscious, as we will learn more in a little bit. Personally, as
a Naturopath having a holistic view of life and health, I believe that knowing
and deepening dream-related issues, trying to interpret their symbolic meaning
in the most correct way, can help us identify unresolved issues at an emotional
level kept in the depths of our subconscious. In this way we can help people
become aware of their symbols and meanings, especially when it comes to
recurring dreams, and to 'work' during waking and conscientious times to remove
the problems that have caused them. This can be done by helping our
client/patient to develop a new perception of reality and, consequently, a new
way of approaching it and interacting with it.
As Dr. in Clinical Psychology, what is your personal opinion on this subject? Do you find that dream interpretation is absolutely crucial as part of the analytical therapy? And if yes, why?
As Dr. in Clinical Psychology, what is your personal opinion on this subject? Do you find that dream interpretation is absolutely crucial as part of the analytical therapy? And if yes, why?
R: In the
context of psychoanalytic therapy, dream analysis is a fundamental moment in
the path of self-knowledge of the subject that needs help. Interpretation must,
however, be considered within the analytical-client/patient relationship. I
emphasize the importance of the therapeutic relationship because it can not be
excluded from an interpretation in the here and now of analytical dynamics.
Otherwise we would fall into the naive idea that dreams have a static, fixed
interpretation. To understand the difference between dream interpretation
within a therapeutic relationship and static interpretation, we need to think
about people who give meaningful meanings to dreams by matching them to numbers
and then playing them in the lottery. This, for example, it is what usually
happens in the southern regions of Italy Naples
T: In his book The Forgotten Language Erich Fromm, a
famous German psychologist and sociologist, argues that "in symbolic
language, inner experiences, feelings and thoughts are expressed as sensory
experiences, events of the outside world." Would you agree with this
statement?
R:
Yes, I might agree. In fact, we often live our dream as something that happens
to us and not as something that deeply belongs to us and which we ourselves
produce. We treat it as something that needs to be understood, studied,
analyzed, and interpreted. Moreover, dream is an expression of our so-called
mute cerebral hemisphere, which in most people is in the right hemisphere. The
left hemisphere is the one where the language is based and is the analytic
hemisphere, at least in most people, though there are exceptions. The right
hemisphere is that of creativity, intuition, holistic vision of the world. As
the left breaks down, it analyzes the experience in detail. Through dreams, the
right hemisphere sends us messages with its communicative mode, which is a mode
that is expressed through symbols. That
is why we can feel dream as something that happens to us and not that we
produce ourselves.
T: Still referring to
dreams, and considering that both Western and Eastern civilizations have viewed
myths and dreams as meaningful expressions of the intellect, and people’s
inability to comprehend them as a form of illiteracy, Fromm asks himself also
another question, that is: "Is it important to understand this language
when one is awake?"
What is your view and how
would you answer this question?
R:
I think it is important because our brain is composed of two parts: the right
hemisphere and the left hemisphere that are specialized in differente areas and
communicate with each other through nerve fibers, the most important of which
is the callous body. So it is the same physiological structure of the brain
that answers us: It is important that the two hemispheres communicate with each
other. Pathologies arise if we use only one way of processing information. In
order to feel complete we do need to integrate analytic and holistic mode.
Dream happens when we sleep and understand, or at least try to understand its
message when we are awake can only enrich ourselves and also help us in many
situations of our life.
T: When we talk about
dreams and their possible interpretation, two great figures emerge: Freud and
Jung. The differences between the two are many, but in an attempt to summarize
as much as possible, we can say that Freud considers dreams the realization of
repressed irrational passions we might experience during our waking hours.
According to him, the human being has impulses, feelings, and desires that
motivate his actions, but which he (Man himself) is not aware of. Man,
therefore, would be driven to act by his "unconscious". Freud also
believes that these irrational desires are deeply rooted in our childhood; that
they emerge through dreams during adulthood; and that in reality they are the
result of generally destructive and/or incestuous sexual impulses ... . Jung,
on the other hand, says that every dream represents both the desires of the
past and the goals that the dreamer sets for their future. With his theory,
Jung ends up conceiving the unconscious as an entity possessing its own
intelligence, whose ability greatly exceeds that of introspective
consciousness. These two visions - and the consequent schools of thought - are
almost always presented as antithetical to each other.
Instead of seeing them in
opposition and, thus, having to opt for one or the other, couldn’t the truth be
in the middle and, therefore, include both of them?
R: We
know that for Freud dream is the fulfillment of a desire that has been removed;
that dream has a manifest and latent content; and that the analyst must go and
investigate its real meaning as a detective by shedding "light" in
the patient’s unconscious. Pathology for Freud can be triggered by a current
event, but has its roots in childhood and in sexuality that develops in precise
phases. Furthermore, dream is deformed by censorship that always works
unconsciously to hide content that the subject is unable to accept. Well known
is the famous Oedipus complex that Freud derived from the Greek tragedy of
Sofocle, where Oedipus had sexual intercourses with his mother without knowing
that she was in fact his mother. Freud transposed the story to a phantasmatic
level, extrapolating from that tragedy the following concept: the child wants
his mother, but this desire is censored by the child and then by the adult
because the very thought is unbearable and also for fear of his father's
revenge. Fear that can then trigger the sense of guilt. Freud's investigation,
therefore, focuses mostly on the childhood years of the subject and on his
sexuality. Then he will also investigate the aggressiveness inherent in man
with what he called ‘the instinct of death’. Freud developed an essentially
pessimistic vision of man and his destiny. As for Jung, Freud initially
regarded him as his favorite pupil, almost as a son, surely as his spiritual
heir. But Jung, at some point in their amicable and professional relationship,
broke his master's expectation and developed his own theory which, in my view,
introduced two fundamental aspects. One consists in having a vision of man that
takes into account all his lifelong path. Freud, on the contrary, focused only
on the early years of the patient's life where, in his view, all psychic life
took shape, since for him it was at that time that everything was going to
happen. He considered healthy only people who would reach a mature and
heterosexual sexuality. Jung, instead, introduced the concept of detection. This is a concept that is
very important because it moves from a pre-sexually-based
theoretical/psychological plan to a plan, that, as we could say, it’s more
existential, where man tries, throughout his life, to understand who he is; he
tries to identify himself, that is, to discover his own individuality and
creative uniqueness, and his being in the world: it seeks meaning, the meaning
of his being into this world. And it is in this kind of thought that dream also
assumes a different meaning from what Freud meant. Freud referred to the
subject's life, while Jung extends the vision to an unconscious which is not
only individual. Jung introduced a second fundamental concept, that of the collective unconscious, elaborating a
spiritual vision of life where all humanity is evolving, and the dream of the
individual is inserted into a vision not only of ontogenetic, but of his
personal development, even phylogenetic. It is like saying that we are all
connected and dreams can assume archetypal aspects that belong to the subject
and his evolutionary stages as it is inserted into the historical path of whole
humanity. Now to answer your question about the possibility for these two
theories to integrate with each other. I do not think this integration is
really possible because Freud's and Jung's psychological theory differ from
each other on many fundamental aspects, so that Jung turned away from his
master for some ideas he felt irreconcilable with each other. There are
Freudian, Jungian, and Adlerian psychoanalytic schools, but they follow
different theoretical approaches that originate from different therapies; even
though currently the various psychoanalysis schools are looking for a
confrontation and are more open to dialogue than in the past because they can
not ignore current studies and recent discoveries of neuroscience. Time and
again in the psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic fields, however, it has been
pointed out that different theoretical approaches can also work because they
all share a common basis: the therapeutic relationship based on an empathic
relationship, and the therapeutic alliance between analyst and patient, which
is a "contract" of some sort in which they join their efforts in the
pursue of a common goal according to agreed terms.
T: Very interesting and
thank you for these further insights, Rosa. Speaking of the unconscious and the
role it plays in dream activity, Freud also cites the concept of
"censor" that we have already mentioned. Do you have more to add to
what you have already said about what it is and how it works, but above all
could you, please, explain how from the concept of "censor" we end up
with that of "neurosis"?
R:
Censor is the moral part, what Freud called Superego, that is, all the
introjected social norms. We know that Freud divided the psychic apparatus into
three parts, the Id, the Ego and the Superego. Three fundamentally unconscious
instances that operate beyond our consciousness. Freud compared the very Ego to
the tip of an Iceberg. This equals to say that we do not know, that we are not
the masters in our own home, that our psychic apparatus is almost all
unconscious and acts outside our consciousness. According to Freud, neurosis appears when these instances
come into conflict with each other: the Id is the erotic push, the push to life
without rules, and is pure vital energy without inhibition; the Superego is the
one that sets limits on the basis of social rules introjected while the Ego
must mediate between these two opposing forces and it is precisely when the ego
fails to calibrate these different instances that unbalance steps in and
neurosis may manifest itself. Hence, it should be clear by now why Freud
considered the dream the way to the unconscious, because through its images and
symbols, the dream is able to circumvent censorship and to put us in touch with
our deeper instances that are, according to his theory, incestuous sexual
desires, morally unacceptable or fixations to immature stages of sexual
development. The sexual stages were for Freud the oral, anal, phallic and
genital. The healthy person was to get to overcome the various stages and
develop a mature genitalia. Obviously, analytical work and dream interpretation
need an expert to deal with, because we are hardly able to understand the
meaning of a dream that, in order to avoid the censorship, disguises itself.
It's just like a thief who, to escape the guards, disguise himself as an innocuous old woman.
This, however, happens within us, so that in a sense, we are all at the same
time both thieves disguised as old women and guards. It goes without saying
that this sometimes creates a very difficult conflict that leads to neurosis,
according to Freud understanding, and that causes symptoms and circular
thought, that is repetitive, finds no alternative solutions, and may culminate
in a profound subjective illness.
T: What are, or might, be
in the dream the symbols of a latent neurosis?
Could you, please,
mention some cases based on your personal and professional experience?
R:
There is no longer much talk of neurosis today as in Freud's times. It is more
about discomfort and discomfort can manifest with nightmares, choking, restless
sleep. It is important to note Rem sleep, that is, the the kind of sleep in
which we dream, Rem means Rapid Eye Movement and it's just the state we are
when we are dreaming. Nighttime sleep is carried out according to cycles that
are repeated during the night several times of sleep Rem and Non Rem. So we all
dream many times overnight, even though people often think they do not dream,
or just wake up and we quickly forget what we dreamed of. Waking up in the
middle of the night completely sweaty, following a nightmare, can tell us
something is wrong. Often as a result of a trauma, we have distressing dreams
that can keep reoccurring. In these cases, however, it is important to turn to
a specialist who can help us get better.
As
far as I'm concerned, I give a lot of importance to my dreams and I keep a
notebook with a pen on the bedside table next to my bed, so I write down my
dreams as soon as I wake up because dreams can fade away and there is a risk
that we forget important details. As far as my professional practice is
concerned, you know that I've worked as a long time professional actress, then
my path went on with writing theatrical texts and staging them. Moreover, after
the borth of my daughter, I deepened the theatrical teaching for children and
developed a personal didactic method that came out through the text: Pinocchio dei diritti, (Pinocchio of
rights) which combines the theatrical practice with the International
Convention on the Rights of the Child. But I still had an unfulfilled dream in
my heart. Not a night dream, but a dream I could call a strong desire to resume
the psychology studies I had interrupted in my youth. I went back to my
academic studies and graduated in Psychological Science and Techniques in Life
and specialized in Clinical Psychology. I am currently conducting the annual
internship to get ready for the state examination in June 2018 which will
qualify me to practice as a psychologist. Hence, my knowledge is both
theoretical and observational. Only after passing the State exam I will be able
to do clinical consultations. Here, in Italy, to go through psychological therapy,
you need to turn to a psychotherapist or an analyst who requires further
training to be acquired with 4-5 years of academic studies, which both
psychologists and doctors can be enrolled in.
T: What are some tips
that we could give to our readers in relation to today's topic?
R:
We could recommend them to give more room to their dreams. Take time to write
down, reflect on the day. The dream opens different windows in our daily
routine. We are often overburdened with commitments and deadlines and we identify
ourselves with a precise role. The dream, on the other hand, brings us to a
different, deeply human dimension, which is above all our emotions and desires.
It brings us back to ourselves, to our fears, our concerns, our past, our
present, and why not, it tells us in every way what our future might be. The
dream belongs to that authentic voice inside of us we often do not listen to.
To our deepest Self.
T: The World of Dreams is
not only fascinating, but also as vast and therefore it is impossible to consider
all aspects in a single interview. Don’t you agree, Rosa?
R:
It is true, as you have often stressed, the dream has always accompanied
mankind. And it always looks for meaning. The subject is vast and surely the
dream manifests itself in multiple dresses. There are those who think they can
anticipate the future: famous is the myth of Cassandra, whom is given by god
Apollo, the faculty of foresight but at the same time the condemnation to not
be believed. In ancient Greece, for example, it was believed that during sleep
Asclepio, the god of medicine, would visit the person to inspire, cure, or
guide them. There are those who consider the dream a divine communication, and
such examples are present in the Bible: In Genesis there is the episode of God
speaking to Jacob in a dream, showing him the famous staircase that goes up to
Heaven. Some scientists have dreamed of their discoveries before transcribing
them. Besides, to quote back Jung and the collective unconscious we can find
that fundamental discoveries for human evolution have been dreamed of, thought,
and realized almost simultaneously in different places of our planet.
T. It was a very interesting experience
and we hope that the material presented and the issues discussed might have
been useful and informative to our readers. If any of them want to contact you
and learn more about your business how can they do so?
R: For those
who would like to contact me for my comedies or other topics related to
clinical psychology, they can do so by visiting my site www.rosagenovese.com or
they can write directly to my e-mail:
rosa.genovese@tin.it
T: Thank you again, Rosa ,
for having taken part in this interview. I wish you a great success in all your
activities.
R: Thanks to
you, Maria Teresa, for suggesting this interview that has stimulated me to deal
with a topic that is very dear to me and thanks to all the readers who have
followed us so far.
MariaTeresaDeDonato-RosaGenovese©2018. All Rights Reserved.
