Freud, Rüyalar, Psikanaliz, Filmler - Reflection of Freudian Theories on Films through Dreams

  

  The  Influence of  Dreams on the Films on the  Way of Freud 

    Sigmund Freud is seen as the founder of the psychoanalysis, and he made very significant
studies and also gave important works on this issue. He expressed conscious, unconscious 
and subsconscious with the example of the iceberg to tell levels and features of mind.
Furthermore, he defined these in a general such way that conscious consists of  ego,
subsconscious consists of super – ego, and unconscious consists of  Id which is darkside of
the personality as Freud said that "It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality... It is 
filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organisation, produces no 
collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs 
subject to the observance of the pleasure principle" [Sigmund Freud [1933]. New 
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Penguin Freud Library 2 ] He aimed to reveal the
supressed feelings and hidden desires that have existed since the humanity's primitive times
through the his psychoanalysis and dreams. He thinks dreams as a way to unconscious, and to
him, all feelings and thoughts that we push into subconscious by  social pressure arise during
the sleep. He mentioned his ideas about dreams in his book "The Interpretation of Dreams".
He tries to analyze the  personalities of humanbeings by means of dreams and writes about
that there are manifest content -which is clear, literal interpretation of the dream, the thing we
see, and it doesn't include covered meaning expressions but includes things  remembered-
and latent content –which is obscure, dark and includes hidden meanings, and also gives the
actual meaning of dream. So, he distinguishes them from each other. On his study book , he
notices the common universal meanings in dreams, and mostly about sexuality
 
   Considering Freud and his studies on dreams, it is seen that dreams have been significant
for humanity since ancient times.  People have believed in dreams and having different
meanings, and they used dreams as a guide in their lives. For example, Sumerians in
Mesopotamia had wrote their dreams on the clay tablet,and in Ancient Greece, Herodotus
who is father of history told a dream about the death of the Lydian King Croesus's son in his
book "Histories", and the King tried to save his son from death but the dream became true
and his son died, Penelope's dream about her husband Odysseus is also an example for this
but there is important point here that people used to distinguish dreams good - bad or
significant - insignificant from each other. In addition to these examples, Ancient Egyptians
also gave importance to dreaming and they saw them as a message from God like the others.
People in that times acted to the dreams coming from God and the language of Gods,
sometimes they saw them as a warning, dreams were seen as the connection between gods
and mortals. Generally, they were told with hieroglyphic language because it was believed it
was the best way to tell dreams. People often went to learn meanings of their dreams to priest
or wiseman before anything happens such as wars. Dreams and analyzing of them have had a
crucial position in human's life since humanbeings slept and woke up. It can also be given a
simple and known example about Ottoman Empire, it is that the first Sultan Osman Gazi had
a dream that he saw a plane-tree which was growing in his chest and the branches of this tree
covered all the world, after he woke up, he asked its meaning to Sheikh Edebali and his
dream came true.
 
   Sigmund Freud analyzed dreams for many purposes such as understanding their meanings,
treating his patients through dreams or uncovering their deep desires etc. He prepared the
ground for many various areas and gave the direction to them with his methods. Especially,
he effected the art and its types such as painting, films, poems, books, photography in many
ways. It is very easy to see the effects of dreams on surrealism movement for example -in 
literature- Andre Breton who is one of the surrealism founders tells that “I believe in the 
future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so 
contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.” ― André 
Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism. The artists used dreams and Freud's method in order to
show what unconscious brought in their works. They tried to show the unreadable instead of
being readable just like latent content. In the area of painting , Salvador Dali  reflected
unconscious on his painting ,which includes Freudian theories such as sexuality,
psychoanalytical things, hidden childhood memories. George Orwell tells that “If 
Shakespeare returned to the Earth tomorrow, and if it were found that his favourite 
recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead 
with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear . . .  One ought to be able to hold 
in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting 
human being.” in his essay Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali. Also, Dali
wrote Hidden Faces and his autobiography The Unspeakable Confessions of Dali. Even
their names give us a clear clue. In sculpture, Dali is seen again with his work Lobster 
Telephone that is a surrealist object symbolizing the secret desires of the unconscious and
including sexual connotaions for Dali. Sexuality is already seen between dream and reality in
his paintings. In literature, there is a good example for the influence of dreams : Stephenie 
Meyer wrote Twilight thanks to her dream. Jed Rubenfeld is also one of the writers using
psychoanalysis in the novels and he used it in his book The Interpretation of Murder .
 
    The signs of Freud and his theory about dreams and psychoanalysis could be observed
easily in films. In the First European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, "Bernardo Bertolucci, 
the festival's honorary president, has been in psychoanalysis since the late Sixties, and has 
spoken about the way in which this experience coloured the films he made immediately after 
his analysis began: Last Tango in Paris, The Conformist, The Spider's Stratagem, 1900 . 'I 
found that I had in my camera an additional lens,' he said, 'which was not Kodak, not Zeiss, 
but Freud.' by summarizing the idea in the Guardian. So Freud has become a wealthy source
inspiration for many areas of art with the interpretation of dreams and so contributed to art.
 
   A lot of films –influenced by dreams and Freud's theories- were made and have still been
made, and also these films were influenced by surrealism. For example, Stalker(1979), A 
Dangerous Method(2011), the series of The Conjuring, Dreams(1990) which consists of the 
own dreams of Akira Kurosawa, Brazil(1985), Psycho(1960), 8½(1963), A Clockwork 
Orange(1971), Carnivals of Souls(1962), Shutter Island(2010), Inception(2010), Fight 
Club(1999), the series of The Final Destination, Repulsion(1965), Persona(1966), Black 
Swan(2010), A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984), 8 Seconds(2015), Jonathan Strange and 
Mr Norrell(2015) which is both the novel and TV series, are some of good examples that
dreams and reality enter each other. In these films, it is observed that people lived dreams as
if they were real but it is hard to distinguish them from one another. They usually contains
subliminal messages from the unconscious. An oppurtinity serves us in these in order to see
or understand unconscious because dreams are shown to us in clear and so it can be seen
Freud's theory “the royal road to the unconscious”. Films about this subject are like a critical
key to open the secret doors of mind. In films, it can be seen things that cannot seen in real
life. Because dreams and realities are presented together, it can be understood latent content 
by the audiences. Many feelings such as desires, fears, fury, passion are clear or are shown in
the films. The directors and the senarists tried to adapt the dreams into screenplay thanks to
Freudian knowldegement and surrealism. For example, Salvador Dali is among the best
examples for it with  Luis Buñuel's surrealist film  Un Chien Andalou, which is a film about
Buñuel's and Dali's dreams. They told their dreams each other and decided to make them film
showing suppressed, hidden feelings and desires in the mind. Jean Epstein says that "No idea 
or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. And 
"Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols 
would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." [  Buñuel, Luis (1983). My Last Sigh. Abigail Israel
(trans). New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-52854-9 and Sitney, P. Adams (1974). Visionary
Film: The American Avant-Garde. New York: Oxford University Press.] This films shows
that seen is unseen and unseen is seen related to manifest content and latent content trough
using repetition of hands, a dressed man on the bicycle like a nun, a locked bok changing
place constatntly. These examples reflect sexuality, hidden desires, things not told, existing in
the dark side human- uncoscious in the shortfilm being 17 minutes Un Chien Andalou. Dali
worked with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney and they are also fascinated by Freud and his
dream theories, they used it with the art and toughts of Dali in their films.
 
   As seen, dreams and Freudian theories about them influenced many areas and so we can
observe hidden things that we cannot tell somebody in our mind thanks to art. Ancient
Egyptian saw that sleeping was as a open- eye to the dream world. Also Freud saw so and
wrote The Interpretation of Dreams  giving a different way to our lives.