While I agree with Hobson's position on dream theory, there is a part of his argument that remains weak. He brushes off the possibility that dreams are instigated by infantile wishes by saying that "we can never know that" (The Philosopher's Zone).
I don't know whether or not I agree with his claim that "the idea that the unconscious is mainly repressed is wrong" (The Philosopher's Zone) simply because I have dreams that seem to come from a part of my mind that I'm not aware of - my unconscious. I'm not ready to completely dismiss the possibility that dreams access our unconscious even though "most of our unconscious is cognitive" (The Philosopher's Zone).
While I want to agree with Freud's idea that dreams tap into our unconscious, I still believe that Hobson is correct to state that dreaming is "caused by brain activation and sleep," and when you dream, you experience "sensor motor hallucinosis," the randomness of dreams comes from "chaotic activation from the brain stem," and forgetting dreams comes from amnesia that is "related to the loss of nonadrenergic and serotonergic and histaminergic modulation of the fore-brain"(The Philosopher's Zone).
I think there's room to combine the theories and say that the way we dream has very much to do with how our brains work scientifically, but the content of our dreams might be the brain's accessing of unconscious information.
No comments:
Post a Comment