Biomedical subjects

Eugene J Mahon

Publications and source records attributed to Eugene J Mahon.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

A parapraxis in a dream.

When a parapraxis is put on display in a dream, one can only wonder what service the willful mistake is rendering to resourceful dream work. Freud taught us that anything that appears in the manifest content of a dream may well be a disguise or a distortion of a subject that originally made an anxiety-provoking, and hence short-lived, first appearance in latent dream thoughts. Dreams in dreams and jokes in dreams have been examined from this perspective (Mahon 2002a, 2002b), and this paper focuses on the appearance and meaning of a parapraxis in a dream, with the argument that seemingly casual "mistakes" are highlighted in the manifest display to cover up some latent, much more deliberate subject matter.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

To repress: a note on an ambiguity of meaning.

An analysand used the word repress in a dream in an unusual way. In the dream, a record had been re-pressed: it was not the original disc but a copy. This manifest meaning of the word led associatively to more latent meanings. A kind of dialectical process ensued whereby, whenever the concept of repression came up, several meanings had to be considered to set the record straight. The classical way of thinking about repression had been augmented a little by this novel meaning that the analysand had stumbled on in his dream. Psychoanalytic process was enriched by this ongoing scrutiny of repression in theory and practice.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

Playing and working through: a neglected analogy.

The author proposes an analogy between certain features of playing and aspects of working through. Conceptualizing psychoanalysis as the process whereby unconscious fantasy is uncovered and then subjected to rigorous scrutiny, and building on Freud's (1908) insight that play is the same as fantasy--with the essential difference that fantasy links itself to real objects in play, such as toys and playthings--the author proposes that play can be thought of as not merely symbolic, as a fantasy bearer, so to speak, but as a fantasy tester as well. In the process of working through, some analysands attach their unconscious fantasies not only to a transference object, a primary libidinal object, or a significant loved one, but also to actual props within the analytic setting (a Kleenex box, for example), making the analogy with play even more obvious and palpable.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Dreams within dreams.

The concept of a dream within a dream is studied intensively. The illusion created by the dream work portrays one portion of a dream enacted within the envelope of another. Freud (1900) emphasized that the function of placing a piece of reality in a dream within a dream is an attempt to rob it of its significance and obliterate it. However, he seemed curiously disinterested in the fact that segmentation of a dream text into two seemingly discrete fragments does offer a dream investigator the opportunity to explore the dynamic relationship between the two fragments and the multiple meanings of the illusion created during sleep. In this study the linkage between the two parts of the dream sequence is highlighted. While Freud's intuition is corroborated, his lack of interest in the duality of the dream events is puzzling, as if he believed that only the dream within a dream is meaningful and the complementary and contextual dream sequence can be ignored. This paper suggests that both portions of the dream within a dream are significant, the one helping to explicate the other as the free-associative process of dream interpretation gives equal democratic time to both.

Dreams↗

PubMed2002

A joke in a dream. A note on the complex aesthetics of disguise.

It was Freud's belief that while jokes and dreams have much in common, the comic elements that appear in dreams are not truly funny: unlike "real" jokes, they leave us cold. What, then, are we to make of the appearance in a dream of a well constructed joke that would produce laughter in and of itself even beyond the context of the dream? Such an example is cited and the reasons for the rarity of the phenomenon, as well as its multiple meanings, are explored.

Dreams↗