I had the strangest dream last night (or the scariest, you pick) where Obama hired me and many other people to attend a concert in an attempt to kill Hitler, who hosted it. I dressed up in my tux and had a gun in my right hand pocket. Before the concert started, Hitler invited special people to sit in the balcony. The concert started with his speech, which wasn't important, because at the end of it muscular men started to climb up onto the ceiling above the balcony where important people were sitting, and when the drum roll started, they dropped down into the balcony. For some reason, the balcony was made up of material that acted like a trampoline, so when many heavy muscular guys landed on it, the important people bounced out of their seat and fell onto the seats below and died. Some people fell back into their seat on the balcony, so the muscular guys climbed the ceiling and dropped down again before they could regain their wits. I was sitting beneath the balcony and watched in horror as the bodies landed on the seat before me.
Hitler gave a smug speech terrorizing the remaining audience, and the concert continued. At the end, I caught him leaving and intended to sniper-shoot him, but he turned to me and talked to me and I froze with fear and couldn't pull the trigger. He talked to me about something that I can't remember now, but I smiled and went along with it. Then he walked away and I talked with the clerk person at her register to calm my nerves, and I must have said something revealing because Hitler turned back and grabbed my neck. He asked me if I was a homosexual, and knowing why he asked I denied it best I could. It helped that I had left my black coat with its gun in the pocket at my seat up in the balcony before I had vacated it for the special people, so that my tuxedo look wasn't complete. I looked relatively feminine. He let me go and walked away, saying something about looking forward to working with me later on, or something that said I wasn't rid of him yet.
I was walking back home when I realized that I had forgotten my coat and gun at the theatre, so I went back to get it, and had to sneak past a private movie screening to do so. It was still there. As I contemplated about how to contact Obama and get government protection from Hitler, while still keeping my disguise with Hitler intact so that he wouldn't kill me, I woke up.
Now, I don't know how Freud would have looked at this, but I'm sure if he had, he would have been able to suggest something enlightening. Freud is deeply interested in how the subconsciousness work, about what we instinctively think even though society has conditioned so many thoughts out of our mouths. It's doesn't discriminate against any thoughts, and he suggests that if we paid close attention to our dreams, which is where the subconsciousness arises most vividly, we can learn a lot about the human psyche and personality. This is where his Oedipus complex comes from, as an attempt to understand why males subconsciously desire their mother and compete with their fathers. I think that this particular tree of thinking allows for a lot of BSing, because it's easy to prove just about anything with justification from the subconscious. But Freud conducted his studies because he was trying to help clinically mental people recover.
The main technique he uses in his analyses is the idea that important events in our immediate lives play small roles in our dreams, while our secret thoughts and wishes, unbeknown to us as they may be, make up the central plot. So if I recognized that yesterday was June 1st, the start of National Pride Month initiated by President Obama, I can understand why homosexuality and Obama made their way into my dream. The central parts at the balcony, mission to assassinate Hitler, and, well, Hitler himself. How did Hitler get into my dream?
Maybe it has something to do with my suicidal thoughts lately, to suggest that I don't really want to die, enough to lie about my sexuality to live. Or maybe I just didn't want Hitler to kill me because I know he can come up with creative ways to kill. Maybe it's to put me in a situation where I have someone depending on me, where I have a job, a task, a test to overcome, and that my failure to do so reflects all the failures I've been facing in my life. Maybe it reflects how much society has been scaring me lately, and how much I don't want to be part of a world where people like Hitler live (notice the present-day-ness of Hitler living in Obama's presidency) and hold position of power and can get away with conducting group murder. It also reminds me of the dark Bourgeoisie/Parisian world in Père Goriot by Balzac, which young Eugène de Rastignac must struggle to navigate without losing his soul to its corruption.
Freud and Balzac are on my SLE syllabus. What new comment can I make with Freud?
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