Logic of Dreams

The Logic of Dreams

Spring Semester
Dr. Idit Alphandary
alphanda@post.tau.ac.il
Office Hours: by appointment

 

Short description:

One third of your life is spent asleep, and the life of sleep is dreams. And yet the images, sounds, and language of waking life almost totally dominates discussions of human goals, motivations, and meaningfulness. The last century began with a different dream: that dreams, rightly understood, would give us an unprecedented view of the hidden objectives of human behavior. “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,” Freud wrote in 1900. This seminar will be a discussion about dreams and an inquiry into what they may still mean, more than one hundred years later. We will take our departure from a careful reading of Freud’s 1899 Interpretation of Dreams, which makes huge claims for the importance and meaning of dreams and proposes methods for their interpretation. Critiques and extensions of Freud’s theory will point up its strengths and limitations. Throughout the seminar we will read literature and watch films in which dreams play a central role. Students are expected to keep a dream journal to record and analyze their own dreams.

 

Assessment:

Minor assignments: Class presentations as a talk or as a short written assignment: 10%

Dream journal: 15%

Mid Term: 3-5 pages 19%

Final requirement: Final paper 6-9 pages: 36%

Attendance and Participation: Participation is mandatory: 20%

 

Academic conduct:

Plagiarism is taken extremely seriously. Any instance of academic misconduct which includes: submitting someone else’s work as your own; failure to accurately cite sources; taking words from another source without using quotation marks; submission of work for which you have previously received credit; working in a group for individual assignments; using unauthorized materials in an exam and sharing your work with other students, will result in failure of the assignment and will likely lead to further disciplinary measures.

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