The History of Last Night's Dream by Rodger Kamenetz

Author:Rodger Kamenetz [Rodger Kamenetz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061747984
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

With Freud I can bring to a close the case of the disappearing dream. The trail begins when Joseph’s brothers introduce interpretation into the story in their reaction to the dream of the sheaf. That is the turning point. All the dreams in Genesis before that did not require interpreters. All the dreams thereafter do.

Joseph as interpreter returns images to the realm of words; the rabbis follow in this path for the most part and add the idea of amelioration; the Church Fathers also indicate that dreams are so tricky that only saints can really discern whether a dream is from God or the devil.

The overall result is that interpretation of one kind or another has become the dominant response to dreams. Interpretations may well come, as Joseph’s did, from God; but for most of us, the interpretation is just as likely to come from “Joseph’s brothers”—that is, from our blind spots.

With Freud, this same struggle between image and word, dream and interpretation, reappears, not only in his personal conflict with Jung, but also in his division of the dream into manifest and latent.

Freud adopts many strategies of his rabbinic predecessors, frequently focusing on words and language in dreams more than images, and reading the dreams “ad locum,” as the rabbinic midrash reads the Torah. He consciously assumes the mantle of Joseph the interpreter. “It will be noticed that the name Josef plays a great part in my dreams (cf. the dream about my uncle). My own ego finds it very easy to hide itself behind people of that name, since Joseph was the name of a man famous in the Bible as an interpreter of dreams.” Freud mentions Joseph three times in The Interpretation of Dreams.13 He does not mention Jacob or the ladder once.* For Freud, only interpretation matters, because only interpretation can establish the science of the dream.

So who should be accused in the case of the disappearing dream? Freud or the rabbis or the Church Fathers? Or Deuteronomy or Joseph’s brothers? All are plausible suspects. Another answer is: the butler did it.

That is, Pharaoh’s butler, who in distress begs Joseph to interpret his dreams. The butler personifies our fear of the dream’s accusation, a fear that leads to one form of amelioration or another.

The butler did it. The whole history of dream interpretation is shadowed by fear and anxiety.

But fear is not the whole story of the dream in Genesis. There are also great promises and three great gifts.

First, there’s the pointed warning of Abimelech’s dream; then, there’s the dream of the sheaf, which reveals an essential situation of his soul to Joseph; finally, there’s the dream of the ladder, which indicates an entire new realm of consciousness. Those who respond by keeping “the matter in mind,” who abide with the dream in life and dwell on its images, learn to heed the dream’s warnings and change. They come to see their essential spiritual condition, and can explore the dream life of the soul.

Dream Revelation in

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