Freud’s book “Interpretation of Dreams”

Sigmund Freud manages to come up at least in everyone of my art graduate classes at some point. To have actually read translated Freud in contrast to what people regurgitate of what they understand of Freud was quite eye opening. The different passages from Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” stirs my thoughts on my own past experience of dreams. For example, Freud claims there is several different ways dreams can be created. One way dreams can be created is through external and internal stimuli from the environment you are sleeping in. An example of external stimuli is a cat’s tail brushing the exposed foot while someone is sleeping, may result in a dream of someone tickling the person's foot in an environment outside of the bedroom. The person could be dreaming about a lover tickling their feet on the beach and the person will awake to realize the cat’s tail brushing their foot. Or in an internal stimuli way of dreaming is to go to bed hungry and dream of a fancy feast with loads of food and to awake to your stomach growling and realizing you’re hungry.

            The other way dreams can be produced is through the common activities, situations, fears, and wishes of our conscious. I have definitely had dreams agreeing with Freud’s theory. Such as the dream I had last night of my wife and I having a baby boy that looked exactly like her 70-year-old uncle. It was awfully scary. I can root the symbols of the dream to the anxiety of all my college friends beginning to have babies and the slight pressure from my family and myself. And also prior to going to bed I looked on Facebook at my wife's uncles web page. Maybe because I looked at someone in their 70's made my sub-conscious think that I was getting older and need to start having babies. My mind made some incredibly weird connections to both my sub-conscious and past day occurrences. 
        I challenge Freud's theories on how people receive psychic messages in their dreams that end up happening in reality. My wife has had several psychic dreams that have became realities such as events happening to others. Something bad occurred to her friend happening the day after my wife had her dream premonition.  How could have Freud explained the psychic predictions people receive while sleeping? Or lucid dreaming where people are aware they are dreaming and can consciously control their dreams.  
      Salvador Dali was said to have sat up right with a spoon in his hand at a table and gone to sleep. As soon as he fell asleep the spoon would fall and hit the plate on the table and wake him up. In the matter of seconds of falling asleep he would come up with ideas to create his dream like paintings and surreal subject matters. During the day when awake, most of our minds do "spacing out" or wonder from reliving memories or creating scenarios unless we are hardcore Buddhists constantly living in the moment. The "spacing out" thoughts tend be somewhat realistic for most or at least for me verse my dreams. My daydreams are always practical. What interests me most about dreaming is the state of creativity my mind can create while asleep. My mind never during the day when awake can create the surreal dreams I create when asleep. I would love to tap into the subconscious and unconscious creativity I do not have access to when I am awake. 
Here are a list of tips to reach the Dali state of brainstorming from Michael Michalko the author of Thinker Toys (a book on becoming more creative), from an article on “The Creative Post” website:

• Think about your challenge. Consider your progress, your obstacles, your alternatives, and so on. Then push it away and relax.
• Totally relax your body. Sit on a chair. Hold a spoon loosely in one of your hands over a plate. Try to achieve the deepest muscle relaxation you can.
• Quiet your mind. Do not think of what went on during the day or your challenges and problems. Clear your mind of chatter.
• Quiet your eyes. You cannot look for these images. Be passive. You need to achieve a total absence of any kind of voluntary attention. Become helpless and involuntary and directionless. You can enter the hypnogogic state this way, and, should you begin to fall asleep, you will drop the spoon and awaken in time to capture the images.
• Record your experiences immediately after they occur. The images will be mixed and unexpected and will recede rapidly. They could be patterns, clouds of colors, or objects.
• Look for the associative link. Write down the first things that occur to you after your experience. Look for links and connections to your challenge. Ask questions such as:
                What puzzles me?
                Is there any relationship to the challenge?
                Any new insights? Messages?
                What's out of place?
                What disturbs me?
                What do the images remind me of?
                What are the similarities?
                What analogies can I make?
                What associations can I make?
                How do the images represent the solution to the problem? –

See more at: http://www.creativitypost.com/create/salvador_dalis_creative_thinking_technique