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Quantum Psychoanalytic Approach to the Nature of Dreams

Student: Tsvetkova Yulia

Supervisor: Andrey V. Rossokhin

Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences

Educational Programme: Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Business Consulting (Master)

Final Grade: 9

Year of Graduation: 2021

While working with the dream, we come into perhaps the closest contact with the unconscious. The analysis of dreams using the method of free association is still an important part of the study of the unconscious in the framework of psychoanalytic work, without losing its relevance. However, the use of dreams in the psychoanalytic process can be difficult. We propose to elaborate on the existing classical psychoanalytic approach with a quantum one. In the concept of "classical", we, following A.V. Rossokhin, put the meaning defined in his opposition to the concept of "quantum". According to the quantum approach, the world is nonlinear, it is a multiverse, where different "worlds" and times-epochs constantly coexist and interact at each moment of time, there is always a place of uncertainty and unpredictability, and the observed phenomena and conditions can manifest only with some probability. We believe that the human unconscious has quantum properties, and in addition, in the course of the psychoanalytic process, the two unconscious - client’s and analyst’s - are in constant dynamic interaction at every moment of time. We formulate the purpose of the study as follows: to show that the nature of dreams has quantum properties that enrich our vision of the client’s unconscious using the example of the analysis of the client's dreams. In the course of the research, we solved the following tasks: theoretical - to describe the classical nature of dreams, based on the studies of psychoanalysts; empirical - to show the connection between psychoanalysis and quantum physics; to describe the quantum approach in psychoanalysis; to reveal the quantum nature of dreams; to describe the possibilities and limitations of this approach. Research methodology: analysis of the client's dreams with the free association method. We have shown that the nature of the dream has quantum qualities: the mechanisms of the unconscious taking place in the dream have a wave (a probabilistic) nature; associations to the dream and its interpretation also have this quality; the dream is like a multiverse: in many worlds, different time epochs of a human's personal and intergenerational experience, many of his roles, desires, conflicts, patterns simultaneously coexist, develop and enter into dynamic interaction; this quality can also be attributed to the understanding of the unconscious as a whole; the dream as a product of the unconscious does not obey the principles of the linearity of time, it is eternal; at the same time, there are such mechanisms as time compression, reliance on the present, merging the present with the past, après-coup; there is always uncertainty in the analysis of the dream; it is impossible to know exactly what thoughts hide behind its manifest content; for a more satisfactory analysis and interpretation of the hidden thoughts of the dream, consideration of the principle of complementarity (a combination of classical and quantum approaches) contributes. Based on quantum logic, the analysis of the dream as a whole, its fragments or images can not be right or wrong. With its probabilities, there are simultaneously many hidden meanings, associative connections, and many potential interpretations. This approach allows specialists working in the psychoanalytic method to be more sensitive to the manifestation of the client’s unconscious and more careful with the use of interventions, especially interpretations.

Full text (added May 28, 2021)

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