Week Twelve: Extra Credit Review

  

 

    For my extra credit review, I chose to watch and analyze a short video about Carl Jung's standpoint on the importance of dreams. Overall, this video was extremely informative in terms of how the unconscious is revealed in dreams, and how dreams may impact conscious thought by unveiling the unconscious. Carl Jung's statements regarding how dreams impact the daily lives of humans helps me to further analyze how dream logging can serve as a potential treatment for deja vu patients with highly-frequent cases. Some important quotes I thought that stood out to me were:

1. "It may be you know, that what the unconscious has to say is so disagreeable that one prefers not to listen."

This statement is made by Carl Jung while he explains that many people refuse to address the thoughts hidden in their unconscious, since many of them are not acceptable or perceived as "correct." This may be a reason why people with deja vu refuse to make the connections to their past dream material--if a terrible event is captured in a false recollection episode, many people will refuse to acknowledge that such an event was actually closely mirrored by thoughts in their unconscious and later fabricated in the events of their own dreams.

2. "Exactly, its like a demon in him that makes him think like that in spite of the fact that he doesn't want it [...] so I must explain to him that he has an unconscious and that the dream is a manifestation of it and if he succeeds in analyzing the dream, we might get an idea about that power that makes him think like that." *this quote is definitely the most important!*

This statement may support my research claim which connects anxiety and deja vu by hypothesizing that anxiety not only causes deja vu, but can also result from deja vu occurrences themselves. When Jung uses the term "demon" to describe how unconscious thoughts are motivating the conscious through dream events, he shows that in many cases the deja vu fueled by unconscious memories can be anxiety-inducing and may seem as if it is a punishment from God. Carl Jung also touches upon the fact that many people experiencing deja vu consistently worry about another episode occurring and become distressed about said episode by saying "in spite of the fact that he doesn't want [another memory to be unveiled]." Instead of leaving this conjecture to fear, though, Jung is progressive and poses a solution for getting rid of the "demons," which involves analyzing dreams in order to understand the unconscious thought process, rather than letting forgotten dream events control your life through false recollection events, which may motivate your own actions against your wishes. 

3. " [...] the unconscious is in a compensated relation to consciousness [...] and if he has a full picture and has the necessary moral stamina well then he can be cured."

This final quote from the video gives a tell-all summary of Carl Jung's connections between the unconscious, dreams, and the conscious. He says that the unconscious is in a relationship with the conscious, which is facilitated by dream content (the content is created from unconscious thought, which allows for the unconscious to communicate with the conscious through memories of dreams). Ultimately, a cure for people suffering from false recollection events, and other issues involving unwanted messages being sent from the unconscious, is proposed: if one has the moral strength in order to sit back and analyze their dreams, they will be able to understand where these unwanted thoughts and memories are coming from, rather than attributing them to outside forces such as signals from God or moments of clairvoyance.

    I chose this video because it involves direct conversation from Carl Jung himself, who is the creator of my theoretical frame. He makes connections between dream material and the unconscious, which are very important for the final argument in my essay. By establishing a true relationship between dreams and false recollections, my possible treatment for patients rooted in understanding dreams is made valid by the philosophy of Carl Jung! :) 

    The link to this very informative video is as follows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6G9IWa3XiI