The language comes directly from observed dream images. It would be dishonest to report dreams about phalli in a way that doesn’t involve phalli.
What the larger population did is essentially saying “nah that’s uncough we’ll pretend that none of that makes sense and that we never have any dreams like that”.
Things like say the Oedipus complex are indeed better conveyed to a general audience in terms of developmental psychology, a bit removed from raw instinctual images, but that doesn’t mean that those images are false or misleading. Humans have searched for non-icky ways to express that kind of stuff for aeons, to wit, the original Oedipus story, don’t blame Freud for saying “let’s cut that BS crap for a second and admit that there’s something here that noone is daring to talk about without layers of metaphor”. A patient’s interpersonal conflict won’t surface in sanitised images, sanitised language, you gotta allow the nasty and icky or all you’re doing is forcing the patient to repress.
The language comes directly from observed dream images. It would be dishonest to report dreams about phalli in a way that doesn’t involve phalli.
What the larger population did is essentially saying “nah that’s uncough we’ll pretend that none of that makes sense and that we never have any dreams like that”.
Things like say the Oedipus complex are indeed better conveyed to a general audience in terms of developmental psychology, a bit removed from raw instinctual images, but that doesn’t mean that those images are false or misleading. Humans have searched for non-icky ways to express that kind of stuff for aeons, to wit, the original Oedipus story, don’t blame Freud for saying “let’s cut that BS crap for a second and admit that there’s something here that noone is daring to talk about without layers of metaphor”. A patient’s interpersonal conflict won’t surface in sanitised images, sanitised language, you gotta allow the nasty and icky or all you’re doing is forcing the patient to repress.