Week Five: Literature Review #2
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| Kurt Forrer's "The Dream as a Posthypnotic Command" compares dreams to being hypnotized. The author questions if human action is that of free will, or if it is all predetermined by the unconscious content of our dreams. |
My second literature review investigates a piece by a particularly important author named Kurt Forrer. This chapter, titled “The Dream as Posthypnotic Command,” written in Forrer’s own scientific journal investigating psychopathology, describes how the processes of hypnosis and dreaming may be connected. The author suggests that the familiarities and unconscious motivations enlisted upon one being hypnotized may manifest themselves in the same way that one who has had a vivid dream begins to feel uncanny familiarities after their dream experience. The main idea in Forrer’s text is that we are all motivated by our dreams, and that all of our decisions are pre-determined by the unconscious mind. A very compelling statement made by the author says, “In short, we are no more autonomous than a puppet on strings” (Forrer 86). This quote struck me due to its blatant and unforgiving tone--the author must believe, without a doubt, that we are simply “puppets” with no true personal motivations.
The author’s main arguments to support his claim that dreams have comparable effects on people’s decision-making to those of being hypnotized include many surprising cases, but perhaps the most interesting case discussed by the author is one of an author who practically predicted the Titanic sinking. W.T. Stead, the author of a short-story that directly sequenced the events of the Titanic twenty-six years before the ship unfortunately sunk, claimed that the entire storyline came to him during a dream. The piece Stead wrote, titled “From the Old World To the New,” had many specific parallels to the real-life situation on the Titanic, such as “the sinking of an ocean liner that carried an insufficient number of lifeboats resulting in the loss of many lives. Like the Titanic, [the ship in Stead’s short story] sank as a result of striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic” (Forrer 84). Such a strongly-foreshadowing story written years before an event’s occurrence has been dubbed pre-emptive literature by Forrer. This predisposition to having knowledge of future events can be strongly connected to the idea of deja vu, as the sense of familiarity may be caused directly by behavior and events that occur in dreams.
Another quote that has potential for analysis in my essay is found in the abstract of Forrer’s journal chapter, stating, “My research in dreams has convinced me that dreams are the source of our inspiration and motivation. Evidence for this comes from creative people who have received ideas from their dreams or have been presented with solutions by them to their problems” (Forrer 83). This is a very confident statement, and seems to blame dreams for our own actions regardless of if we feel that we have made decisions as a result of our conscious thoughts. Essentially, Forrer is telling readers that none of our actions are a result of our own choice, but that we are ultimately controlled by the unconscious manifestations of our own mind. These unconscious manifestations may connect to the deja vu phenomenon because it could be possible that false recollection stems from previous dream experiences, and the conscious awareness of persistent deja vu events may just help the mind to recognize its own fabrications of reality. Kurt Forrer’s pieces are all strong sources for the deja vu discussion, and this author is very much worth further investigation.
While looking for sources, common results in my search inquiries were pieces written by Kurt Forrer. The sheer volume of texts pertaining to dreams, the deja vu experience, and connections to Jungian synchronicity prove that this author is definitely an important contender for my research project. During my meeting with Professor Goeller, I was presented with both this piece and another written by Forrer. This shows that both my professor and I have come to realize just how important this author’s analyses of the deja vu phenomenon and the theory of synchronicity may be to my research project.
A few key terms included in this text, and which may also be implemented into my own writing, include:
Pre-emptive literature - literature written by authors who have inspiration from their own dream material. It is very common for this literature to foreshadow future events to a tee, such as the sinking of the Titanic.
Dream memory - sensations of familiarity experienced by one whose dreams have already predicted an event in the present. This sense of recollection may actually be an unconscious motivation for most actions performed by human beings, suggesting that humans have no free will and are instead completely controlled by their unconscious mind.
Posthypnotic command - a task that must be completed by a person who has been hypnotised to do so. This command will be carried out with no explanation, and may very often be forgotten shortly after.
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