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What Dreams Seem
to Be
next page: typical dreams & symbols after that: dream journal |
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What Dreams Seem
to Be
next page: typical dreams & symbols after that: dream journal |
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Everybody sleeps
and almost everybody can recall their dreams. Every other night some of us
are stalked to the ends of the earth by nightmarish ghouls threatening to
eat us alive, others meet friends and family who are too far away to even
risk an expensive phone call while a precious few walk the plank on a
pirate ship off the coast of Barbados while asleep in Greenland. We all know what
dreams are, and we all accept them as a part of life even if we accord
them no further importance and significance in the scheme of our lives.
Most people do not think that dreams are important or worth consideration
at all. Part of the reason for this is that there is little scientific
data that sheds light on what dreams are, if they mean anything and what
they represent if they did. The result is that many people who believe in
the importance of dreams are seen as eccentric, foolish or both.
You must have seen at least one dream theory book or other promising to
unlock the secrets of your soul by giving you the cracked code of
universal dream symbols and their respective meanings, neatly compiled
into a long list arranged in alphabetical order. While a complete
disregard of the importance of dreams shows narrow-mindedness, going for
the extreme opposite by believing what everybody or anybody tells you
about the ‘true’ meaning of dreams is certainly not the answer either. While there is a lot of solid evidence about the nature and stages of sleep, the realm of dreams is uncharted ground subject to the superstitions, fancies and whims of naive people and learned psychologists alike. Even Freud, probably the most famous psychiatrist the last century has ever known, did not give substantial evidence for his theory of dream interpretation. The merit of his claims has been repeatedly questioned and in some cases completely renounced over the past century by some of the most learned circles in the world. Dreams are an enigma even to the person who dreamed them. Frequently people wake up from their dreams and wonder "What was that about?" because the language of dreams is so alien and seemingly impenetrable. Later in life we get used to the idea that we don't always understand our dreams and slowly stop bothering about them. When we think we do understand what a dream is about, it's usually because we attribute the dream to eating too much pizza at night or the result of a specific anxiety we are already aware of, including worrying about examinations, thinking about a loved one or feeling excited over a new business venture. While one's conscious anxieties are certainly part of the cause and content of dreams, I would hesitate to believe that dreams are only all about what we already know. |
The Interpretation of Dreams
| Freud wasn't the first to write a book about dreams, in fact the title of Freud's most famous work was taken from a Greek writer and philosopher's work of the same title and subject. Dreams have been the subject of controversy and interest for thousands of years, and even though we still know little about dreams there are some theories that help to uncover some of the enigma of our nightly travels. Don’t believe everything you hear, but it won’t hurt to give your dreams a chance. What I recommend is that you start a dream journal chronicling all the dreams you think are worth the trouble. Then decide for yourself if your tubifex worm dream has anything to do with your fear of pubic hair or if it’s merely a reaction to your Marine Biology professor’s fishy sense of humour. Below is a list of the different dream theories alive in the world today. Have a look-see, and feel free to explore the rest of this website. |
Freud’s Theory (1900)
| Freud, the founder of
the psychoanalytic method and the man that coined the terms
"id", "ego" and "superego" to describe the
subconscious mind, postulated that dreams are unconscious wish fulfillment
strategies, in that they fulfill repressed desires; most importantly, sex
and aggression which cannot be expressed during waking hours. So all
dreams have one aspect or other that can be boiled down to the unconscious
articulation of sexual anxiety, repressed aggression or a combination of
both. He also strongly asserted that dreams contain potent memories of
childhood experiences, especially those associated with parents, as well
as information collected within a day or so preceding the dream. So you
might dream about the tuna salad you ate for supper yesterday when you
were alone and feeling a little down and after the same dream trace the
sensation of being lost down to your childhood issues of abandonment. The
phrase ‘wish fulfillment’ does not suggest that all dreams are by any
means pleasant, some reflect fears. We successfully disguise our dreams'
real meaning to shield ourselves from the horrible truths we wish not to
face. Because sometimes you don’t want to know that you’re a spineless
backstabbing sexually deprived jerk, but your guilt won’t stop your lack
of self-esteem from resurfacing in your dream. Freud stressed that the
latent and manifest content of dreams differ significantly and must be
decoded and separated while attempting to analyze or understand the dream.
Freud's theory is groundbreaking in that he established and gave credit to
the idea that people do not really know everything about themselves. He
did not really invent the idea of the unconscious mind (this idea had been
floating around since the second half of the 19th century) but he
certainly gave us the words to describe the mind along with the potential
for a deeper understanding of the intricacies of the psyche. It is no
secret that Freud’s theory that the unconscious is made up of
predominantly sexual and aggressive traits that were once conscious and
then repressed may have developed from his own personal experiences and
unique personality and has little basis in scientific and empirical study.
The fact that his theories are extremely hard to even attempt to verify is
another weakness, which further suggests that his dream theory may not
reflect the truth for the entire human race.
for more information, read The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. |
Jung's Theory
| Carl Gustav Jung (pronounce the "Ju" in Jung as "you") was a once student of Freud's, before irreconcilable differences forced them both to stop speaking to each other. His ideas are much less famous than Freud's because they are relatively more esoteric, more difficult to digest and certainly less sensational than that of Freud. His overwhelming contribution to psychological understanding is his concept of the unconscious - not (like the subconscious of Freud) merely a glory-hole of repressed desires, (Freeman) but much, much more. Jung saw the unconscious as a complex, wide and rich structure that includes the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is like a resource common to all humans that provides the creative and healing forces which are so important to meaningful human life. In this way Jung was a humanist, who believed that humans are intrinsically good and can get better, principally by achieving self-understanding through the interpretation of dreams. Freud and Jung also disagreed over which 'content' of the dream should be interpreted and given supreme attention: the "manifest" (the dream images as they appear to the dreamer) or the "latent" (the dream thoughts underlying the images) content. Freud believed that the meaning of a dream lies in the latent content and believed that the manifest content of dreams disguise the true meaning of dreams because of the dreamer's tendency toward repression and unwillingness to face the truth. In contrast, Jung believed in the interpretation of the manifest content - the images themselves - because, he insisted, the dream is not a disguise. "As a general rule, the unconscious aspect of any event is revealed to us in dreams, where it appears not as a rational thought but as a symbolic image." (Jung) One of the most distinctive elements in Jung's psychology is his hypothesis that some dream images derive from collective or archetypal (elementary ideas) contents rather than from the dreamer's personal experience. But "Jung believed that the dream is not a kind of standardized cryptogram that can be decoded by a glossary of symbol meanings, either. The dream is an entirely personal and individual business, offering insight to the dreamer that could not be obtained from any other source". (John Freeman) |
For more information, read Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung & Associates.
Cognitive Theory
| Cognitive theorists believe that the mind functions as a problem-solving strategist during the night just as it does during the day. This means that the brain is constantly trying to process, interpret and output relevant information based on its surroundings and that it does not stop doing that at night just because the rest of the body is asleep. Thus dreams are a realm where the dreamer can think uninhibitedly and creatively to solve the problems of his waking life. Robert Louis Stevenson claimed that he got the idea for his acclaimed novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in a dream. The inventor Elias Howe reportedly dreamed that he was captured by savages carrying spears with holes at their tips. Upon waking, he realized that the sewing machine he was trying to create should have the hole for the thread at the end of the needle and not in the middle. |
Activation Synthesis Theory
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“Dreams are just a glitzy side show, not the main event.” (Hooper & Teresi, 1993) This theory holds that dreams are meaningless sensations caused by the random and spontaneous firing of the brain’s cells (neurons) during sleep. This theory explains the shifting, dissolving and truncating nature of dreams. (Santrock) When one set of neurons fires one type of landscape most suited to this sensation arises, and as soon as another set fires the whole landscape has to reshape itself too. So this theory says that dreams are meaningless. But it’s a lot more interesting and pretty constructive to think that dreams do mean something, even if you do believe this theory. At the very least, you can believe that dreams are important because when we wake up and try to make sense of our dreams, we actively create meanings that are relevant and useful to ourselves. Sometimes you can get a fresh perspective on your life from reading a poem that obviously had nothing to do with you when it was written. Dreams can be like poems, they're subjective and you'll probably be most sensetive to the aspects of the poem that have something to do with you. Since you made them yourself and have access to them all the time, they probably do have more insights to offer you in the long run. |
