Traumatic Awakenings

In Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience chapter 5, Traumatic Awakenings, she examines the difference between Freud and Lacan meanings of the motive behind a dream and what it means to awaken. In the story about the father sleeping while his dead son's body burn in the next room, Freud states the dream the father has keeps him asleep so he can not know his son's body is burning. While Lacan states the dream awakes the father to the reality.

I feel that dreams are sometimes experienced to remind us of something in the past or let her fantasize about the future. Sometimes dreams are freaky and scary. I feel like once you awaken from a dream but you're not fully awake, you still feel like your in that dream. For example, I am terrified of spiders. So sometimes I will begin to wake up and I would see a spider. So not knowing if that spider is real or fake, I just out of my bed and check my blankets for the spider. It takes me a minute to realize the spider was in my dream. So as the father is sleeping and dreaming about his son talking to him, I think the dream is meant to wake the father.

She also makes the point to awaken is to awaken only to one's repetition of a previous failure to see in time. Like the father could save his son from the illness, so when he sleeps he still sees his son alive but once he wakes up, the reality returns. So like Freud states the dream is a wish fulfillment. That true cause we dream about things we wish would happen. I dream about my future life. We also can change the past in dreams.