Dreams And Desire Synthesizing, The Interpretation Of...

Dreams and Desire: Synthesizing â€Å"The Interpretation of Dreams† and â€Å"The Birthmark† Which comes first, the dream or the desire? Does a dream inspire a desire, or does a hidden desire leak from the subconscious and surface during a dream? Sigmund Freud’s, The Interpretation of Dreams, theorizes that dreams can unveil deep desires that would not otherwise be realized. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, The Birthmark, illustrates the claims made by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams. The Birthmark supports Freud’s idea of uncensored dreaming, the theory of anxiety dreams, and the idea that dreams are related to nature or destiny. First, Freud claims that our dreams are an uncensored outlet for repressed wishes or desires. He states, â€Å"In these dreams we find the highly unusual condition realized of a dream-thought formed by a repressed wish entirely eluding censorship and passing into the dream without modification† (760). During the day while fully conscious the mind does not allow certain undesirable thoughts to be entertained but the sleep state allows for a genuine expression of a person’s deepest wishes despite being inappropriate. The narrator of The Birthmark echoes this sentiment. After Aylmer remembers his dream about removing Georgiana’s mark, the narrator explains, â€Å"The mind is in a sad note, when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets