" (Jacobus, 328) In this part of Freud's book the "specimen dream", one of his own endeavors to explain the nature of a dream, he rationalizes his frustrations in his inability to cure Irma. One of Freud's more important discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious seem to surface during dreaming, and that the remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover buried feelings. This breakthrough is a pure example of how an individual strives to understand meaning and interpretation of oneself and in this can help others with issues, thus contributing to the whole of society, a main goal of both Freud and Plato.
The Platonic view is not astray from Freud's in that they both consider intrapersonality (an intelligence of Gardner's) as a key to understanding the psychology of the mind. Plato seeks to internalize our sense of ourselves, by offering an image of the psyche as a conflict between the different levels and by stressing that a virtuous life depends on achieving a psychic harmony between the competing elements, in which there is a clear authority over the destructive elements. In this he describes a vivid picture of internal conflict in the Allegory of the Cave. Plato likens people untutored to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a stockade, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, which pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see. Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows.
