Empirical Psychology and the Vehicle Dream
Posted in Travel on 12/31/2011 08:35 am by Diana
When confronted with a recurring symbol, especially when it comes from a dream, there is something that the person is consciously avoiding, or it has a meaning that is buried very deeply and is making an attempt to come to the surface. It is impossible to really analyze any dream symbol in any meaningful way, especially given the legacies of empirical psychology which make these meaning-making systems dependent on the individual dreamer. There are some speculations, however, where the simple image might suggest larger meanings which are somewhat common. So it’s not totally off the mark to say that in general tires will have something to do with movement, metaphorical or otherwise.
It’s also common to interpret a car, or a truck, as meaningful representations of the dreamer’s body. Again, the trouble with cultural definitions does come into play, where there are many ways of thinking about the body in general. This has become particularly apparent in the past century of psychoanalysis, where experiments with subjects from various backgrounds have demonstrated that although the subconscious may have its own language, that language is particular to the culture in which it is born. This is enough so that the specific details of vehicles in dreams are also significant, and rarely incidental. If the dreamer only remembers a red truck, then the analyst can pick up from that point. But if the dreamer remembers the kind of truck, the hankook tires, and specific names of other characters in the dream, one must assume that they are also significant.
This all points to that very elemental idea that everyone is much more complex than they would first appear. The old symbol for the ego, represented by the iceberg, is an apt one. That material that is below the surface is much more than the visible tip suggests. It is easiest to access the illustrations of the complexity of the psyche through looking at dreams and symbols, because every interpretation is not only possible, but very likely to be part of the picture. Even empirical psychology, in its purest form, if there is such a thing, is capable of revealing only a shadow of the shadows
that are contained in every human subject. A car may very well only be an extension of a body, and a car crash in a dream might mean a life out of control, but there is also more to the story, and very likely more symbols that are active and apparent, but will defy any attempt at reasonable understanding.