Week Ten: Literature Review #4

Continuing dream research and determining
the connections between unconscious memory
of dream material and deja vu may lead to
the discovery of a potential treatment for
persistent deja vu cases.

    Another important piece written by Kurt Forrer can be found in a scientific journal titled "International Journal of Dream Research." This scientific report further investigates how dream content can manifest into conscious action. In this text, Forrer compares the seemingly-opposite dream theories from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung--Freud's theory, which tries to deny dreams manifest into daily life, can actually show strong parallels to Jung's theory, which hypothesizes that dreams are the motivation for all human action. Throughout his text, Kurt Forrer continually emphasizes his conclusions that dreams are the unconscious motivators of all humans, and uses sexual content in dreams in order to support his claim that dream events will unfold in the near future for the dreamer, just as if the person dreaming was hypnotized to unknowingly preform their exact dream sequences in real life.

    In his abstract, Forrer made a variety of very important points while summarizing his journal contribution, stating,

        "A more intensive study of the dream's complexity and its intricate web of manifestations demonstrates that our waking brain shatters the unified and intelligently interconnected construct of life into seemingly disconnected occurrences" (Forrer 153).

         "[The study involving the brain's perception of the past] highlights the deceptive side of time, while giving us the impression that the dream with its multiple manifestations that extend their tentacles over decades, is some kind of 'fixed construct' reminiscent of the 'mysterium coniunctionis' that Jung, in common with countless mystics had experienced" (Forrer 153).

        "In that state the past, present and the future are all one, thus forcing us to infer that time, and with it free will, are illusory and that the dream is the indispensable bridge between us and what forever IS" (Forrer 153).

    The theory being explained by connecting both Freud's "Unconscious" and Jung's "mysterium coniunctionis" essentially proves that the brain has enough power in order to subconsciously motivate the human it controls outside of their conscious awareness. This linkage between the brain's manifestation of dreams and reality, which is dubbed as a "mysterious connection" in Latin by Jung, is one that is very important to tracing the possible roots of the deja vu phenomenon. Forrer also uses the terms "waking brain" and "disconnected occurrences" to show readers that once the brain is transferring from its dream state to its awake state, it breaks up the previously-seamless dream events into smaller, fragmented pieces which may be remembered and mimicked in real time, whether it be through a false recollection event or through blatant human action. Since the deja vu phenomenon may create false recollections by recognizing the previously-forgotten dream events kept within the motivating unconscious, if research were to trace the brain's activity while it provides dream material and stores it upon waking up, the bridge between mental awareness and action can be built and studied in order to trace dream events. If dream material becomes identifiable in the human psyche, it is possible that extreme cases of deja vu, which persists as false recollections of dream-motivated events, may be treated by bringing the dream material into the conscious mind, where it will exist as more than just a flash of a memory "from the past."

    Kurt Forrer's work is both credible and important to my project because the peer-reviewed journal in which his works exist within is directly focused on how dreams impact human action, and part of the human activity involves having deja vu occurrences. By utilizing this author's insights into not only dream material itself, but also its connections to the synchronicity and deja vu phenomena, I will be able to provide continuous information in order to answer my research question.

    Some key terms found within this text include:

1. mysterium coniunctionis - "mysterious connections" in Latin, a term used by Carl Jung while explaining the impacts of memories from dreams on human action

2. waking brain - when the brain awakes from a dream, it breaks up its memory of this dream into smaller, disconnected parts that may be remembered and acted out within the experiencer's near future

Citation:

Forrer, Kurt. “‘To Test or Not to Test; That Is the Question.’: Is There a Way of Verifying the

    Validity of the Interpretation of Our Dreams?” International Journal of Dream Research, vol.

    7, no. 2, Oct. 2014, pp. 153–169. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx

    ?direct=true&db=aph&AN=118205053&site=ehost-live.