Islam and Freud

Lubna Rehman Freuds imagine Interpretation in the Light of Islamic Dream Ideas Questions close to ambitiousnesss, about why do we establish them and what do they ungenerous atomic number 18 questions that involve been a subject of debate for centuries. On the genius hand we collapse scientists who believe that we aspiration forphysiologicreasons al ace and that dreams ar essenti collarlyy mental nonsense devoid of mental signification A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying zilch. The idea that dreams are nothing more than meaningless biology. On the early(a) hand we have a coalition of Freudians which includes Dr.Fleiss who found his dream interpretations quite accurate and other dream analyzers who committed to the view that we dream forpsychologicalreasons and that dreams always consume authoritative information about the self or some(a) aspects of ones animation which can be extracted by various methods of interpretation. This camp says tha t an uninterpreted dream is athe likes of(p) an unopened letter. The third camp is the one occupying the middle ground, that believes both of the extreme positions on the function and meaning of dreams to be parti exclusivelyy right and partly wrong.Its proponents such as Alfred Adler argue that dreams may have both physiological and psychological determinants, and therefore can be either meaningful or meaningless, varying considerablely in terms of psychological significance. Allan Hobson was also for a psychological meaning of dreams but he thought no submit to lock it under layers of secretive subconscious meanings. The fourth and another cardinal camp about dreams in the Muslim faith. In the Quran, as in the Je care Torah and the Christian New Testament, dreams serve as a vital medium by which God communicates with pityings.Dreams offer divine guidance and comfort, caution mickle of impending danger, and offer prophetic glimpses of the future, offer a of import source of wisdom, understanding, and inspiration. Satan also plays a major role in dreams by bestowing dreams that execute grief or thus far purely inner dreams (unlike Freuds sexual interpretation) which requires the dreamer to take a bath. assay to cover up the cultural chasm amid Islamic and Western traditions, this study is an attempt to highlight and contrast the Islamic and Freudian ideas of dream interpretation.The impartial fact is that all humans dream, and thus stargaze itself is a bridging phenomenon between the two traditions. Freud thought that the function of dreams was to allow the release of repressed thoughts and impulses which cause excitation in neural activity. The solo way that the wish could be subdued is by the release of the nervous energy that was caused by it. Also, Freud noted that though the number of symbols is large, the number of subjects symbolized is not large. In dreams those pertaining to sexual breeding are the overwhelming majorityThey cons ist the approximately primitive ideas and interests imagin subject. Therefore, the very(prenominal) dream symbol meant that they both had the same repressed wish. Part of what do people skeptical about Freudian theories is this idea of universal dream symbolism. That is, if two people have the same visual imagery in a dream, is it the case that it has the same meaning? Some scientists dismiss the notion ofmeaningall together. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, two Harvard University scientists stressed that the motivating force for dreaming is notpsychologicalbutphysiological.Muslims on the other hand have been paying close attention to their dreams for nearly cl0 years, and their insights and observations have many square points of contact with the theories developed by Western psychologists over the past 150 years. With the very definition of who the Islamic interpreters of dreams are, Muslims can discard the very mankind of Freuds ideas. Sunnah says that the interpreters of dreams are either Prophets or their followers. Or else, they have to be good, pious and knowledgeable people who know the Quran, the sunnah, Arabic voice communication and the culture and tradition of the people.Like Islam, even though Freud did look at the content, significance, purpose, the person, his people, state, profession and livelihood Freud limited his growth when he theorized that personality is developed by the persons childhood experiences. He was always sure about his disbelief in religious belief. He actually envisaged that as the masses of people become further educated, they would turn away from the fairy tales of religion. Carl Jung, a modern-day of Freud took an exception.He wrote, Freud has unfortunately overlooked the fact that man has never yet been able singlehanded to hold his own against the powers of darkness that is, of the unconscious. Man has always stood in get of the spiritual help which each individuals own religion held out to him. Jung ag rees with Freud that dreams may look backward to past experiences, but he argues that dreams also look forward to anticipate what the dreamers future developments may be . Jung did not mean that dreams predict the future, only that dreams can suggest what major power happen, what possibilities the future might hold.Hence, Carl Jung, a totally opposite pole of Freud and a non-deliberate support to Islam, believes in the religious man unlike to Freud who believed in the psychological man. Freuds perception of dreams seems so much influenced by secularism and so he seems to approach dreams from a materialistic point of view. To him, unlike Islam, dreams portray purely material meanings and the characteristics of dream life are a upset activity of separated organs or groups of cells in a dormancy mind. Freud took dreams to be like phobias and obsessions.He classified dreams into wishful thinking, being aggressive or sexual and considered most of the symbols that appear in dreams to b e sexual which represent the male or female sexual organs. As can be seen in the book Interpretation of Dreams, all kind of playing, slipping, breaking branches etc were all symbols of masturbation according to him and breaking of teeth was something symbolic to castration. He detect that these symbols are a sort of substitute for the thought process, full of meaning and emotion. Where he interprets a lock and key to be a sexual act, the Hadith interprets it to be a symbol of wealth, power and authority.Where he thinks of a mi to be another sexual act, a knot according to Islamic dream interpretation symbolizes grief. Unfastening of the knot symbolizes a freedom from grief. So, even though one can agree with him that these symbols defy a lot of meanings but one can also disaccord with him on the kind of the meaning that they carry. It is not always trustworthy that all the dream symbols would carry the same message of aggressiveness and sexuality. Looking at our normal life and the dreams that we get from time to time it is not true that all of them fall under these categories as Freud claims.Some dreams reveal more important messages to an individual or to society. Logically speaking, human beings are distinguishable and so they think differently, therefore, even their dreams, which may be representing another world of creation, moldiness be of different kinds and each dream by necessity mustiness have a different message that it carries. Therefore, Freuds allegation that most dreams are sexual is not acceptable. Nevertheless, his division of dreams into elementary and complex is acceptable. Islams disagreement with him lies in, among other things, the way he describes the simple dreams, which he called wish ulfillments category. In his words he elaborated this category by saying these are connected with day time life. The wishes, which are effectuate in them, are carried over from daytime and as a harness from the day before, and in waking life the y have been accompanied by intense emotion. It is also not true that all the simple dreams are carried over from daytime and it therefore follows that not all of them are wish fulfillments of a dreamer. Furthermore, his rule of such dreams coming from the day antecedent the dream is also not true to all the dreams of this kind.An example to represent this will be of a dream analyst who was sent to Africa on a government mission. He confirmed that as much as he wished in his trip to East Africa to have a dream on Africans, he was not successful in the blockage of some months he spent with them. In Islam dreams are taken to be of great significance. They are not merely a matter of wild recollections of ones activities in his alertness that may resurface to someone in his sleep rather they are a form of connection of the mind in its spirituality with the other unseen world.This can be slow observed in our daily activities or even in something as least-considered as clothes which do have spiritual connotations. For example a woman wearing silk clothes in her dream implies her getting married, getting wealth or even a ceremony of some extrovert mourning. This clearly proves how dreams, as against Freuds theory, do have religious and not just materialistic links. In Surah Al-Anam, the Holy Quran says, He is the whiz who takes up your souls at night, and knows what you earned during the day, then raises you from it (sleep), so as to complete the time fixed (for you to live).Surah Al-Zumr says, God captures the souls at the time of death as well as those whose time has not yet arrived, in sleep. then He keeps back those whose death has been decreed and sends back for an appointed time, the others. Hence, in disagreement with Freud, Islam sees a complete connection with God while dreaming. Where in Islam the dream is related to the truthfulness of the dreamer, Freuds theory proves it to be the predate days affair where Freud believed dreams to only gratify unc onscious desires and longings, Islam showcases them as a glimpse into the future, a hint or sometimes even a warning.Being irreligious, and especially a non-Muslim, Freud did very little for the dream-theory propounded by different religions. Though his Interpretation of Dreams presents an unprejudiced and almost unerring analysis of dreams, it includes only a few types of dreams. It gives us a mixture of different kinds of double-dealing dreams while totally ignores the veracious dreams because veracious dreams have almost nothing to do with ones psyche and were, therefore, totally unknown to psychologists like Freud.Also, since the future is more important than the past of a dreamer, he would by all odds prefer Islamic Hermeneutics in order to know about his future. Where Freudian Hermeneutics is the product of the researches/studies of one individual, in the Western context, in the Modern post-Renaissance period Islamic Hermeneutics represents a divinely revealed system incorpo rating the entire structure of human existence in this world and the next, which is in itself detailed, complete and traditionally busy since many centuries in various parts of the Islamic world.