So, I thought I would let you all know you can email me while I am gone and you can talk to me via this blog, facebook, twitter, any online thing.
I also downloaded skype so I will be on that occasionally. If you want to, you can download it as well and look me up, then we can chat or talk for free when we are both online.
I will hopefully be posting while abroad, a bientot mes amis!
Friday, June 26, 2009
au revoir :)
Monday, June 15, 2009
Philosophy of Dreaming: Fiss
Ready for the next mini discussion about constructive theories of dreaming? I have a lot to fit in before I leave so it will be pretty condensed. (Plus, I didn't really do the reading for this one so I'm simply referring to my notes lol).
Fiss's essential point is that "dreams are the theatre of subliminal unconscious stimuli." Fiss says that throughout our waking life, we pick up unconscious stimuli in addition to conscious stimuli. Stimuli meaning neural effects from external and internal cues. The conscious stimuli we process immediately and react to it in waking life.
Dreams process the unconscious stimuli that we get throughout the day. For example, say you meet someone you haven't seen for a while. She smiles and you talk and say how long it's been, "We should hang out sometime", etc. That night, you have a dream with that same person in it. But in the dream, she isn't happy to see you and in fact tries to run you over with her car or something. According to Fiss, your dream is revealing what your unconscious mind picked up that your conscious mind didn't: she wasn't really happy to see you and even maybe dislikes you very much. Your ucs mind could have picked this up from small clues such as a facial twinge or some body language that you didn't pick up on.
Your mind processing the unconscious data is what creates dreams. Dreams transform the unconsciously gathered data and put it into a symbolic message. In our example, the woman wanting to run you over in her car symbolizes her hatred towards you.
In this way, dreams are especially capable of bringing to our awareness facts about ourselves and the world that we normally don't notice. Dreams bring low level stimuli to our attention. This part of Fiss's theory is pretty well supported with scientific research. Some people in a test (I know this is terribly vague but I didn't write down the study so I can't reference it! Bad Ali!) were shown images faster than the eye could recognize. The test subjects were not able to describe in detail what they had seen but their dreams recorded the next morning contained details that were strikingly similar to the images that they had not consciously been able to process.
The question our class discussed here was, "Are any of the unconscious stimuli important?" What would our unconscious minds pick out as important and choose to lay out in a dream? It doesn't seem likely that we review every single unconscious stimuli throughout the day, there would be too much, so it seems likely there is a filter on what stimuli we explore in dreams. We thought perhaps emotion has something to do with emotion or cognitive significance of events, but feel free to think about that yourselves and comment if you have ideas.
Another cool thing that Fiss talks about is that unconscious stimuli can also come from within ourselves. He gave examples of dreamers who were able to diagnose illness through dreams. Some members of our class had personal experiences that supported this hypothesis. Kind of cool huh? In fact there were ancient practices were people used dreams to heal themselves and there are modern followers of that idea as well.
When doing dream work with Fiss's theory, ask yourself what you might have subliminally picked up on. Ask what your dream is trying to tell yourself about external or internal unconscious data.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
AH! PARIS, HERE I COME!
First of all HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLAKE!
And secondly, look at this: This is where I'll be staying in PARIS! I am SO EXCITED!!! EEEE It is so picturesque. I will be living with a single older woman who is a caretaker and has two grown children (who live elsewhere) but she lives in a spacious 2 bedroom apartment in central Paris and can accommodate vegetarians. I will have a female roommate also in my program. I cannot wait to go there!
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Thursday, June 4, 2009
Just for Fun - Why is it 8?
Sharon tagged me a while ago and I am bored at work and avoiding some important emails I need to send so here I am doing this little game.
8 things I'm looking forward to:
1. Paris, France! (my passport came the other day which got me even more excited!)
2. This weekend
3. Making dinner for my family tonight
4. Moving out (in the future sometime)
5. My new diet
6. Blake's birthday (lol even though he isn't excited)
7. My fall semester classes
8. Girl's night out tonight
8 things I did yesterday:
1. Used my nice new ceramic flat iron
2. Visited the Utah House
3. Watched Blake fix 'our' computer
4. Leveled my rogue on WOW
5. Watched SYTYCD
6. Bought groceries for my dinner tonight
7. Got up super early to give my dad breakfast in bed for his bday
8. Kissed Blake
8 things I wish I could do:
1. Take more dance classes
2. Play an instrument
3. Keep my room clean
4. Live in the city
5. Speak Spanish
6. Cook
7. Be lucid in dreams (I'm working on it!)
8. Dye my hair purple (ok, technically I could but I am too chicken and I don't think my employers would appreciate it)
8 shows I watch:
1. So you think you can dance
2. American Idol
4. The Office
5. King of Queens (when I'm bored and flipping channels)
6. If I had cable I would watch Say Yes to the Dress
7. and Ace of Cakes
8. and any other cake/design show
8 people I tag:
um... I don't have anyone to tag..
Tashi?
well that was fun :)
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