So we begin to see a little bit by way of the mechanism that Freud wants to use to understand dreams, the dream production goes by this process of �dreamwork� in which latent content gets transformed into the manifest content. The thing that you experience, the actual narrative of the dream itself, and we use dream interpretation, to take us from the manifest content down to the latent content, the unconscious level of desires and such that had produced those dreams, and the reason why there can be a difference between what is at the latent level and what's at the manifest level is that sometimes the things at the latent level are painful to acknowledge. So if one has an unconscious desire to have sex with one's opposite sex parent for example, then that probably will be difficult to acknowledge at the conscious level. So Freud says, "I'm going to suppose to account for that, I'm going to suppose that there has to be some mechanism that as it were sweetens the message, that makes it a little bit easier to accept what's going on, and that's where the process of distortion and other transmogrifying techniques that the mind has to sugarcoat our desires a little bit; that's where that comes in. For example, Freud says, "The very great majority of symbols and dreams are sexual symbols,'' when he talks about a symbol, I think what he means is that there are things that occur versus for example artifacts that can give clues to the dream interpreter as to what the underlying latent content actually is. This is perhaps the most controversial part of his theory of dreams. So he says that for instance knives, daggers, spears, pistols are all symbols of male genitalia whereas bottles, pockets, cupboards, churches, chapels are all symbols of female genitalia. Piano playing, pulling out a tooth, pulling a branch off a tree for him are all symbols of masturbation. He says flame is always a male genital and the hearth is its female counterpart. the hearth rather, the hearth is it's female counterpart. That is that whenever you're having a dream in which you are sitting in front of a fire roaring in a fireplace that dream has sexual content in the sense that you have a desire to engage in intercourse with someone and that desire expresses itself not by virtue of you having a dream in which you are having sex with someone, but rather by virtue of you having a dream in which you're sitting in front of a fire watching the flames grow up inside of the fireplace licking the walls of the chimney and so on, and that is supposed to be representative of the latent desire to engage in sexual intercourse. Now a natural question is, How do you know, how does Freud know, and as you can now predict his response will be. Here's another example of resistance folks, so when Professor Green says to me, "Freud, how do I know that this is all true?" That's just more proof that Professor Green has this repressed set of desires that are knocking on the door that are bothering him and this idea that there's, he�s got, these desires in him makes him anxious and upset, and so he wants to try to squelch my theory, Or so perhaps Freud would say. Now I want to say in response we've seen before that one can find that a theory is troubling; one can find that's something that you're learning about is perhaps disturbing, and nevertheless still want to figure out whether it's plausible, whether it's true, whether it's something that involves empirical support. There are plenty of theories that are upsetting. That doesn�t, that fact itself doesn't keep us from being able to test those theories and if the theories turn out to be true as sought after, as verified by various tests, then we've got to swallow that bitter pill and accept the fact that our unconscious minds are not as pretty as we thought they were, but that doesn't prevent us from being able to put it under a few empirical investigations. So I want to suggest that here there's a discussion of dreams, Freud has the most provocative and fascinating claims but he's also veering more towards the Mr. Hyde aspect of his theory, of his theorizing less and less and a bit away from the Dr. Jekyll part, because it's radical, it's perhaps shocking, and when it comes to determining an answer to the question offering his audience and answers to the question how do I know all these things about the interpretation of dreams. Freud is least helpful because he suggests whenever anybody wants to ask how one knows, that's just a sign of resistance. To which I think we in good conscience could say that's a bit of a cheat. It's not an intellectually legitimate response. Just because I'm questioning your theory doesn't mean that I'm completely controlled by vested interests that make me want to trash it. I want to question the theory because if it's true, I want to know about it and I want to have to deal with the consequences such as getting some better understanding of those perhaps troubling unconscious desires of mine, if the theory is true. But that doesn't mean that we can't put the theory up to a relatively impartial and relatively rigorous set of empirical standards.
