The idea that dreams predict moral
behavior is far-fetched. Some believe that those who are reckless, cruel,
indulgent, and selfish in their dreams reveals what they are really thinking in
such situations as the dream context appears, and how they would act in real
life if they were presented with a similar situation. They predict that
in a serious situation, such as the decision to save a child or rob a bank,
their actions in a prior dream would forecast their true character as rising to
the occasion, rather than successfully suppressing any instincts that would
allow them to commit a moral or immoral act. My question to them is: if
one were truly morally corrupt, why would they need a dream to reveal it?
Wouldn't they simply be that way in real life? The man who represses his
evil instincts in light of a conflict is just as moral as the man who believes
he is moral but has never been tested in the real world.
In The Interpretation of Dreams,
Freud thought of all dreams as being the source of wish-fulfillment: all of our
actions in dreams being expressions of wanting what we haven't been able to
obtain. In this context, the dreams in which our self-interests cause
immoral acts are only our way of re-enacting what we wish we could do, not what
we would do if a similar situation occurred in real life. You might wish
you could yell at your mother sometimes, or grope an attractive person you
saw. You might do this in a dream, but you wouldn't really do it in real
life (not without expecting some consequences, anyway). Desires that are
placed in check are not sins by default, as some in the Church would have you
believe. Not acting on your immoral thoughts still allows you to be
morally innocent. Most of the time we aren't even conscious when
committing an act of evil in dreams; yet in real life we sure as hell are, no
pun intended. The dream lawyers would cook up an insanity plea, every
time!
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