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Freud --repressed desires and dreams (please don't answer if you're on the spectrum but not 'completely ace'))


Jea

  

15 members have voted

  1. 1. If you are a libidoist asexual, do you have dreams you don't understand?

    • Quite often
      3
    • Sometimes
      17
    • Rarely
      7
    • Never (or nearly never)
      11
    • I am a non-libidoist asexual
      41
  2. 2. If you are a non-libidoist asexual, do you have dreams you don't understand?

    • Quite often
      2
    • Sometimes
      19
    • Rarely
      9
    • Never (or nearly never)
      12
    • I am a libidoist asexual
      37

This poll is closed to new votes


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According to Freud, people repress their desires in their unconscious. Those desires (mostly sexual-related, it's Freud we're talking about here) resurface when we don't expect them, in art, in things we do or say, and mostly in our dreams.

I learned about this when I was 17, and I was completely confused, because that didn't seem to apply to me. I always understand the dreams I remember. I sometimes dream about my squishes...well being friends with my squishes isn't a repressed desire! And I never have those colorful dreams that make no sense, or those dreams with a lot of nonsensical stuff, as most people seem to have. So I didn't believe in Freud's theories.

But since I found out that asexuality is a thing, and since I started identifying as asexual, I've been wondering if that was why. I'm still strongly sceptic about Freud mind you, but there is this possibility.

To be on the safe side, I'd like only answers from 'total' asexuals, not grey-a or demi people, because that may make a difference.

Thanks a lot! ^_^

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Autumn Season

According to Freud, people repress their desires in their unconscious. Those desires (mostly sexual-related, it's Freud we're talking about here) resurface when we don't expect them, in art, in things we do or say, and mostly in our dreams.

According to me all human desires are cat-related. When we do something, then it is usually influenced by the desire to be with a cat or to be a cat. When we for instance cuddle with our friends, we live the dream of being a house cat, whose human pets them. When we avoid meeting other people, than we display a stubbornness, commonly found in cats. This shows that we are unhappy with the way the other people treat us. Instead of serving us and reading all of our wishes from our eyes, even though we only pout and don't say anything, they expect us to take over responsibilities and help THEM. Since all humans want to be cats, there tend to be a lot of conflicts. But only the most stubborn ones live the dream of being almost completely cat-like. (As Nietzsche said, in a world of perfect cat-like humans, the people will fight, until only one remains and becomes the super-human.) Those who give in and behave altruisticly, repress their own desire. This leads to confusing dreams, in which they scratch the people they say they love and phases in which their behavior becomes unusual in comparison to how they usually act. These are all their suppressed desires coming to the surface. This is why being a human sucks and only being a cat can bring complete pleasure.

(Sorry a_fox, but Freud always brings out the hissing cat in me.)

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I didn't vote because I don't really describe myself as "libidoist" or "non-libidoist." I occasionally masturbate, however, I'm not sure if that's what you mean. I do have extremely vivid dreams and I think that's because I have a very vivid and active imagination. I think some dreams have deeper meanings and I think others are a mish-mash of things from the day or week and so on. I generally enjoy my dreams and like to try and interpret and make sense of them. Of course, there are those I'd rather not think about (the nightmares). With that said, I don't think sexual orientation has any effect on the dream state or whether or not someone has vivid dreams or dreams that do or don't make sense.

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I very rarely remember my dreams, though presumably I do have them. I wake up "unassisted" without an alarm clock, which means I typically emerge from sleep out of a lighter non-dreaming state. Generally, only when some unusual event/noise awakens me in the middle of a dream do I retain any memory of it (which often means going for weeks at a time without any dreams emerging to consciousness). Given my small sample of known dreams, I don't have much to work with for generalizations.

From the few that I do wake up with (fleeting) memory of, my dreams are typically fairly incoherent/"random," but I can usually identify some theme/word/event from the previous day that could have "seeded" it. Generally, nothing that seems like a "deep" look into the long-term inner life of my psyche, but rather some trivial and arbitrary fragment of something I heard/thought/talked/read about over the preceding day. The sort of things that I have trouble getting to sleep while worrying over don't seem to be what my brain cares about in dreams.

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Anthracite_Impreza

Not sure what you mean by not understanding, but I presumed you meant in a subconscious desire kind of way. I have no idea what most of my dreams mean, they just happen and I usually just sit back and enjoy the weirdness (my dreams are generally of the being chased off the edge of a cliff by a Triceratops/mining meerkats/racing my mate in a Bugatti Veyron vs her Honda CBR Fireblade variety) ;)

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According to Freud, people repress their desires in their unconscious. Those desires (mostly sexual-related, it's Freud we're talking about here) resurface when we don't expect them, in art, in things we do or say, and mostly in our dreams.

According to me all human desires are cat-related. When we do something, then it is usually influenced by the desire to be with a cat or to be a cat. When we for instance cuddle with our friends, we live the dream of being a house cat, whose human pets them. When we avoid meeting other people, than we display a stubbornness, commonly found in cats. This shows that we are unhappy with the way the other people treat us. Instead of serving us and reading all of our wishes from our eyes, even though we only pout and don't say anything, they expect us to take over responsibilities and help THEM. Since all humans want to be cats, there tend to be a lot of conflicts. But only the most stubborn ones live the dream of being almost completely cat-like. (As Nietzsche said, in a world of perfect cat-like humans, the people will fight, until only one remains and becomes the super-human.) Those who give in and behave altruisticly, repress their own desire. This leads to confusing dreams, in which they scratch the people they say they love and phases in which their behavior becomes unusual in comparison to how they usually act. These are all their suppressed desires coming to the surface. This is why being a human sucks and only being a cat can bring complete pleasure.

(Sorry a_fox, but Freud always brings out the hissing cat in me.)

This is awesome XD Yes it does that to me too, I'm not much of a Freud person either :') thanks for making me laugh :p

Not sure what you mean by not understanding, but I presumed you meant in a subconscious desire kind of way. I have no idea what most of my dreams mean, they just happen and I usually just sit back and enjoy the weirdness (my dreams are generally of the being chased off the edge of a cliff by a Triceratops/mining meerkats/racing my mate in a Bugatti Veyron vs her Honda CBR Fireblade variety) ;)

Yeah I just mean it in the way that you don't know why you had that dream. Which seems to be your case.

As an example, I just dream of something I'm stressed about or afraid of, or of seeing people I care about and I miss. Which totally make sense, I understand why I have those dreams :)

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I only remember my nightmares. It's been about 2-3 years I plan to teach myself to remember my dreams better, but I never do it.

I'm non-libidoist. I have had dreams (well, nightmares) I didn't understand, but I understood most of them. I mean, most of them is "well yes, I am scared of that, makes sense it will haunt me at night". Also, most of them weren't really subtle in how they tried to scare me. There is only one dream I didn't understand. I've never been able to put a specific fear (or desire) behind it, it was just... my imagination being silly, and I still remember it vividly. My hypothesis, at this point, is that whatever I ate/drank before going to bed that night, was digested and "re-metabolised" in my body as LSD, or something close.

I'm also very sceptic of Freud. Sometimes a dream is just a dream.

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Incidentally, these dreams have completely stopped ever since I'm consciously aware I'm not sexually attracted to people.


According to me, Freud can go fuck himself since he seems to be so much into sex.

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Autumn Season

My hypothesis, at this point, is that whatever I ate/drank before going to bed that night, was digested and "re-metabolised" in my body as LSD, or something close.

^ This.

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verily-forsooth-egads

Well, I almost never have dreams I remember (on the order of months or years between dreams). When I do, coherence is very much optional, but I'd laugh in the face of anyone who insinuated that my dream about finding a secret library behind Smokey Row was the result of repressed sexual desire.

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In my dreams I'm driving a Formula One racecar straight toward the ghost of Freud.

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nerdperson777

My mind is pretty close to sex-free. I don't subconsciously think of anything sexual. I don't believe I have a libido. If I have an itch, it's just a regular itch. It has nothing to do with sex. The dreams I have can be strange but not necessarily sex related. It's just that people randomly lose and gain their clothes. Everything is pretty blurry and my brain just doesn't have a sense of what genitals should be like. Yes I know how they look like, but it's not something I really think about enough to be able to be translated into a dream. I think people in my dream generally have sex-less bodies. And according to the Ace Moments thread, under a guy's underwear is another pair of underwear in my dreams.

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I'm a nonlibidoist asexual and have crazy nonsensical dreams. I'm usually not myself in my dreams or not in the dream at all. Things that normally would only be imagine while on acid seem totally normal. I've even had sensual dreams when real me would gag.

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Having weird dreams (which I do... a lot) doesn't mean I think Freud was right about much anything. While he's certainly historically important for inventing modern psychology, almost every one of his actual theories is considered outdated to the point of uselessness by now.

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My dreams tend to be pretty weird, and sometimes the randomest people crop up in them (last night I was eating my way through a chocolate shop with a boy I went to primary school with but never actually spoke to and haven't seen in about 18 years) but really, what's so difficult to understand? When you get down to it, they're always pretty simple under all the random weirdness. I always thought all this stuff about dreams somehow representing subconscious desires was complete rubbish (there's certainly nothing subconscious about my desire to eat far too much chocolate :p ).

I voted libidoist (I don't really know what libidoist means but I masturbate plenty so I guess that's me) asexual and never :)

PS. Freud was a sex obsessed idiot

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Occasionally I can tell that certain elements of my dreams come from real life. Often, though, they are wildly imaginative. Once I had an extremely long dream involving an orphanage and a girl solving a mystery.

(Also, I was confused by what you meant by "dreams you don't understand," and whether you were talking about sexual dreams or just weird dreams unconnected to your life.)

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Ace-TheTimelordsCompanion

My dreams make perfect sense, they are nonsensical pieces of everyday life, fiction, thoughts, and feelings, melded together into a sensory illusion. That makes perfect sense to me. In the moment my dreams are completely bizzare, but they always came from somewhere :)

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For the majority of my life, I considered myself totally nonlibidoist asexual. Nowadays, I'm not as certain of either of those labels, so I'm not going to actually vote but I still feel compelled to respond.

Again for the majority of my life, the only "sexual" things I experienced were dreams. I point these out because, even now that I finally do understand some aspects of sexuality and its appeal (coming from being in a relationship that is having me think that I could be more along the lines of demisexual, or perhaps reactive libidoist / demilibidoist), these dreams still make me terribly uneasy. I still don't feel like myself in the dream, and they still don't reflect anything that I desire.

Nonlibidoist

Nonlibidoist

Damn, and I was hoping I could be anywhere close to helpful in this survey :P

The second question WAS for nonlibs, though!

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Libidoist asexual

Firstly I never have dreams of a sexual or pseudo-sexual nature.

Most of my dreams involve a mix of real people in atypical settings or pure fiction.

More to the point is that I also believe that a lot of Freud's work ( spellchecker came up with fraud just then, oh the irony) is heavily biased towards his own sexuality, rather than being an impartial assessment of the evidence before him

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Not voting because I do occasionally share enthusiastic sexual contact with my partner (although that doesn't make me grey or demi, I figure my attitude towards sexual contact may change things).

I do have lots and lots of weird dreams these days but that is most likely a side effect from my antidepressants.

And by weird I mean asking the King of France if I can put baby whales in his bathtub. That weird.

Dunno what it means or if it means anything but I can guarantee it's nothing sexual XD

I do have dreams that involve sex. But I recognise them. They are pretty clear.

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I rarely remember my dreams. When I do they often involve situations not far removed from real life, and are so obviously the result of my sub-conscious trying to work through day to day problems in my life. I never have vivid, unreal dreams, though I have had distressing nightmares when people close to me have been seriously ill.

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Nonlibidoist

Nonlibidoist

Damn, and I was hoping I could be anywhere close to helpful in this survey :P

Why not? The first question says 'libidoist' :p

(Also, I was confused by what you meant by "dreams you don't understand," and whether you were talking about sexual dreams or just weird dreams unconnected to your life.)

I meant it like weird dreams seemingly unconnected to your life, where you wake up and you think 'why the hell did that even come from?' XD

My mind is pretty close to sex-free. I don't subconsciously think of anything sexual. I don't believe I have a libido. If I have an itch, it's just a regular itch. It has nothing to do with sex. The dreams I have can be strange but not necessarily sex related. It's just that people randomly lose and gain their clothes. Everything is pretty blurry and my brain just doesn't have a sense of what genitals should be like. Yes I know how they look like, but it's not something I really think about enough to be able to be translated into a dream. I think people in my dream generally have sex-less bodies. And according to the Ace Moments thread, under a guy's underwear is another pair of underwear in my dreams.

I feel pretty much like you here, I don't think about sex at all. I don't get those dreams though. The most 'explicit' dream I ever had was of hugging my squish XD still one of my favorite dreams ever :3

Libidoist asexual

Firstly I never have dreams of a sexual or pseudo-sexual nature.

Most of my dreams involve a mix of real people in atypical settings or pure fiction.

More to the point is that I also believe that a lot of Freud's work ( spellchecker came up with fraud just then, oh the irony) is heavily biased towards his own sexuality, rather than being an impartial assessment of the evidence before him

I didn't mean sexual dreams though, just weird nonsensical dreams in general.

I do believe that he might not be 100% fraud, but as I said in the OP, I'm a sceptic concerning his work. Concerning some PTSD research, I think some of his work worked, I read something about soldiers who could not walk anymore although they were physically okay, and he found a subconscious fear of being sent to war against. Apparently, once that fear was aknowledged consciously, they were able to walk again because they could reason with that fear.

I've got no proof, but you know, I can believe that in a way.

I don't believe much of the rest though, this is more of a curiosity poll x)

I rarely remember my dreams. When I do they often involve situations not far removed from real life, and are so obviously the result of my sub-conscious trying to work through day to day problems in my life. I never have vivid, unreal dreams, though I have had distressing nightmares when people close to me have been seriously ill.

Same here, your post is the closest to summarizing what I'm like. Those dreams all make sense, they're all the result of what we worry about during the day. At least I'm not alone! :)

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(Also, I was confused by what you meant by "dreams you don't understand," and whether you were talking about sexual dreams or just weird dreams unconnected to your life.)

I meant it like weird dreams seemingly unconnected to your life, where you wake up and you think 'why the hell did that even come from?' XD

Oh. I think I voted wrong, then......

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  • 1 year later...

This poll is being locked and moved to the read-only Census Archive for 2015. As part of ongoing Census Forum organization, and in an attempt to keep the demographics of the polls current with the active user base at the time, each poll will last for one year. However, members are allowed and even encouraged to restart new polls similar to the archived ones if they like them.

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