Freud and Lucid Dreams

Last spring at the Univ of Chicago, my humanities class had a discussion on Freud and dream interpretation. I thought it was interesting how, according to Freud, a dream is the "fulfillment of a wish."

I do not see how this applies to lucid dreams because the dreamer has absolute control over the dreamworld and therefore can choose a completely different scenario other than the pursuit of a wish.

How do you think Freud would interpret lucid dreams since the "method of interpreting dreams" (which he addresses) and "method of interpreting lucid dreams" would be completely different.

I think Freud was wrong about dreaming and wish fulfillment, at least in part. LaBerge addresses this in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. He posits that dreams are influenced by both motivation and expectation (as is waking life). We will tend to dream more about the things that motivate us - wish fulfillment from the basic (dreaming about food while hungry) to the more complex (dreams with themes of social acceptance, goal achievement, spiritual enlightenment, etc.)

However, he says that Freud is "overstating his case" - for example, most people do not find their nightmares to be fulfilling desires. Although Freud might argue that people have latent masochism that is fulfilled by these dreams, LaBerge says the second influencing factor in our dreams is expectation. Even if we are not *desiring* something, if we expect bad things to happen to some degree, they can manifest themselves in dreams. (Of course, expectation is not always a negative influence on our dreams - it can be positive or neutral as well.)

That said... it seems to me that lucid dreaming is a lot *more* about wish fulfillment than non-lucid dreams. Take a look around the boards and read what people do in their lucid dreams: there's an awful lot of hedonism going on - sex, blowing stuff up, flying, traveling, etc. Also, things like contatcting dead loved ones, resolving past conflicts, addressing phobias, learning about oneself, creating and enjoying beauty. These all address our underlying needs in one way or another.

I don't know about interpretation, but perhaps this gives you something useful to think about in addressing your question.

I think freud was just plain wrong

I can't help but agree with scruffty.

I've read about his theory before I even started lucid dreaming. As far as I remember dreams would fulfill wishes for both conscious mind, ego and the id. On top of that dreams would have hidden messages or masked desires that would come from the ego and the id. Nightmares would in turn punish the conscious mind for ignoring or not paying attention to the needs of the ego or the id OR emphasizing one over the other.
Plz correct me if I'm wrong, it been a long time...

In 4 years of doing dreaming I've had at least 3 major encounters with forces that werent part of my conscious mind. So I think that Freud *may* be right on some of his points.