Interpretation of Dreams

Interpretation of Dreams

Everybody dreams.  Sometimes vivid and exciting, sometimes terrifying, often bizarre.  When we awaken, unless we attend to it immediately, it disappears.  We remember we dreamed but cannot recall the details. Dreams characters may be familiar to us or not Dream sequence may be jumbled, nonsensical, irrational.  Although dreams can vividly represent color, shape, depth and movement, they do not accurately measure time.  What seems like a long dream encompassing many minutes or even hours, dreams last only a few seconds. Today we know that dreams occur during a deep phase of sleep when there are rapid eye movements occurring and the body is mostly paralyzed (REM sleep) and a characteristic brain wave.  Some scientists suggest that dreams  play a role in encoding information to permanent memory.  Others suggest the dream rids the brain of extraneous information. Some people place a great deal of importance upon dream content. Some believe they are prophetic.  Many scientists believe they are merely noise in the system and not worth our time.  Many believe they are motivated and some insist they are the workings of our unconscious. More of that later.  This article suggests that they often have meaning, although perhaps not purpose, and that sometimes they are revealing about what’s knocking about in your head and even useful in gaining insights, that only you can interpret your own dreams, although psychologists can help, that they are the product of a sleeping  but not dead or inactive brain. If I didn’t believe these things  I wouldn’t have accepted the invitation to be here tonight and probably wouldn’t have been invited.


A little bit of history:  The Ancients believed dreams are divinely inspired.  Some Native American tribes still accept this idea.  Dreams are considered sacred Tribe members engage in “vision quests” during which they isolate themselves in sacred places and engage in rituals thought to encourage dream formation. The purpose is not only to achieve personal power but to improve the quality of human life. Dreams are believed to free the soul to leave the body and travel around the world at night. Dreams were thought to provide clues about the future.  The most famous dream in history was that of the Pharaoh and was interpreted by Joseph.  Seers, magicians, witch doctors, shamans professed to be able to guide persons in learning the meaning of their dreams. Dreams  may be creative.  The 18th century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is said to have composed the poem Kubla Khan in a dream. Sigmund Freud saw dreams as “the royal road to the unconscious. He believed that dreams originated in the unconscious but were censored by the ego because of the threatening nature of aggressive, destructive and sexual wishes being exposed. The ego camouflaged dreams by certain transformations as part of the “dreamwork” to allow them access in consciousness in a more socially acceptable form.  Carl Jung, Freud’s disciple saw drams as expressing a “collective unconscious” consisting of symbols representing certain inherited, universal archetypes that appear throughout history in literature, myths, and legends.  Psychologists today see dreams as having both biological and psychological determinants and as reflecting perceptions, memories, thoughts and emotional components.  Neuroscientists use MRIs and PET scans in sleep laboratories to try to identify the area of the brain active in dreams. One study reports the visual cortex active during dreaming.  The limbic system may be active providing the emotional component. One theory of dreams is that the dream rids the brain of extraneous material. At the Stanford University Sleep Research Center psychologist Stephen La Barge studies what have been labeled “lucid dreams.”
The dreamer recognizes that he or she is dreaming, apparently has some control of the dream content, and can even end the dream. 

The work of dreams.  The way to unravel the meaning of dreams is through associations to the visual image in the dream sequence.  Ideas  become associated with each other in several ways. They may occur together in time or place.  They may be associated through language or meaning.  Homonyms are words that sound alike but mean different things.  Images  may represent something quite different than they are to represent taken at face value.  Slang terms also influence dream content.  Metaphors occur frequently in dreams, not because we are writing prose or doing grammatical construction but because of common usage.  If someone eats ravenously we might be inclined to label him a pig.  If we dream of a pig it might well represent a gluttonous friend.  Does that mean that a pig in anyone’s dream represents gluttony. No.  Dream symbols are personal, based on personal experience.  Even Freud denied the use of universal symbols. Yet go on-line and you will find so-called dream experts who will analyze your dreams, for a fee, using such an approach. You can find books that purport to do the same thing. They are fraudulent.  When I was initially asked to come here the idea was people would come in,
Tell me their dream and I would interpret its meaning. Not only would that be foolish, without extensive exploration into the circumstances associated with the dream and the personal associations to dream images and sequence, it would also be unethical.  Of course it is possible that two people in the same circumstances, sharing the same language, and living in the same culture would share the same dream meaning to a symbol.  Nevertheless the likelihood of accurate interpretation using so-called universal symbols is little more than the accuracy of reading tea leaves.

That said let me explore with you some dream processes.  The first is condensation—the process by which two or more concepts are fused into a single image. A man had a dream in which he is visiting his daughter who lived with her husband in an apartment in a distant city. Suddenly the plumbing pipes began to knock. The landlord appeared and said: “You’d better fix your daughters pipes.”  The man replied; “It’s your house; you fix them.”  The evening of the dream the man had been to a Christmas party at a friend’s house. He was talking with a co-worker about colloquialisms in language in different locals.  The man was from New York City originally.  Most of the people at the party were from Philadelphia.  The co-worker pointed at that in South Philadelphia, growing up, if you went to a friends house to visit a buddy and his mother answered the door, you would say: “Can you knock up for Joey to come out and play?” The man replied that in New York City the term “knock-up” meant to make pregnant.  And so it is in Philadelphia but the second meaning also is used.  Associations of the dreamer made the dream readily transparent. His daughter was trying to get pregnant but having difficulty conceiving. The man wanted her to have a child. The dreamer had always been over-protective of his daughter and also controlling.  The condensation of meanings in this dream was readily apparent.  Here was a situation he could not fix. In the dream the  house represented his daughter, the landlord his son-in law, and pipes needed to be knocked up but not by him.  The dreamer in this story was me. Would you say the dream was noise or meaningful?

One type of condensation produces a “neologism,” a new word that combines two meanings.  In the dream the word makes perfect sense to the dreamer.  An eighteen year old girl dreamed she was riding an “expressolater” to a date with her boyfriend.  Her association to the word was a very rapid escalator. She was looking forward to the date and wanted the time before the date to pass quickly. She often met her date at Starbucks. 
The dream condensed her impatience with her favorite beverage, Expresso.

Freud defined displacement as the process by which feeling associated to one event is attached in the dream to another, seemingly unrelated event.  Actually there may be some perceived similarity between the two events so that the process is not random. A man dreamed he was at a vacation resort with an attractive female employee who was not his wife. In the dream the man felt guilt because he should be working and also should be with his wife. In truth the underlying feeling was guilt that he was working too hard  There was a trip planned with the female worker but it was a business trip.  There was also work that remained undone in his office. The man’s wife had criticized him for being a workaholic and not taking enough vacations.  (Of course, she meant with her, not an attractive co-worker)  The guilt was complex; it was over both working and not working. The dram was illogical.  It had contradictory meanings. Dreams may have meaning but still not make sense.

I’ve already mentioned metaphors as figures if speech and dream components.  Joe is contemplating a change in his insurance carrier. He dreams of changing trains at a subway station He worries in the dream about whether he is making the right decision.
His dream metaphor, a subway train is a carrier.  Joes has made an association between          an insurance carrier and a people carrier.  But why a subway train but not a taxi or a bus?           Joe has recently returned from Paris where he rode the subways which in Paris are the          Metro.  The contemplated new insurance carrier?  Met Life.

The dreamer is watching a person in his dream struggle to hold a cylindrical balloon on
ropes Someone known to the dreamer had served that function in a Thanksgiving Day parade.  The person the dreamer associates with the rope holder was having trouble controlling his marriage.  The balloon had a sexual connation to the dreamer.  The dreamer also felt himself being pulled in several directions, sometimes by the man holding the balloon. The balloon metaphor has multiple meanings.  Freud would say the dream was “over-determined.”  One theory is that every character represents the dreamer in some way. Again, the dreamer’s associations are the basis for interpretation.

         A teenager dreamed of a policeman wielding a large battle axe to destroy a case of beer.
He associated the term battleaxe with a popular expression meaning a forceful, domineering, unattractive but powerful woman. The woman in his dream was his math teacher who was “always on his case.”

A man was scheduled for surgery after tearing a tendon in his shoulder.  The night before the surgery had the following “worry” dream:

I am riding a motorcycle to an appointment.  I must not be late.  Now I am driving my
car.  Suddenly I cannot see.  My hat has fallen down over my eyes.  Yet I cannot remove
the hat.  I drive blind for a short distance but realize I must stop or risk hitting someone.  I
pull the car over and stop. I exit the car and find that I am in a hotel lobby.  I leave the car
and do some business at the hotel.  When I return I find that my car is gone.  The hotel
clerk explains that it has been impounded.  The hotel will not give me back my car. 

The motorcycle and car were expressions of concern about the surgery and getting to the hospital.  Motorcycles were associated with traumatic head injury due to motorcycle accidents.  There was ambivalence about having the surgery—fear of the risk and possible complications.  The hat over his eyes referred back to previous retinal surgery for a detachment which appeared like a window shade over his eye. Fear of hitting someone referred to the cause of the rotator cuff tear—pitching and hitting a baseball. The hotel was the hospital. Doing business was, of course, the surgery but the man had also noted that the orthopedic surgeon does a good business.  The disappearing car was the man’s fear that he would not drive again.  When the man told his wife he would drive even with the sling she threatened to hide his car keys.

A woman had the following dream shortly after her mother-in-law died of cancer.  The woman was on vacation at a beach resort with her own mother and daughter. 
I am walking on the beach in a somewhat remote area where I had not walked before.  My mother-in-law was sitting on a bench.  It seemed very real.  She has her real hair and not the wig she wore after surgery.  She says:  “Isn’t this a beautiful place?”

The dream was so vivid the woman returned to the same spot the next day.  She could still recall the sound of her mother-in-law.  Little interpretation is required.  The woman missed her loved one and wished that she too was in a beautiful place.

A 40 year old woman had a work related dream.
I am driving my car.  In the rear view mirror I see another car approaching from the rear.  The car is an Enterprise rental car. I see the big E on the side.  The car is weaving all over the road.  The car passes me.  I keep on driving.  The car regains control and slows down as I approach it.

The woman’s immediate work supervisor is a man named Ed. He is a large, intimidating man.  He typically rents Enterprise cars for consultants.  He has been harassing her.  The woman believes that Ed is out of control.  She fears for her own mental health and considers a job change but decides to stay (drive) on.  The dream is a wish fulfillment that both she and Ed will re-gain control.  Fred believed that to some extent all dreams were wish fulfillments.

Collecting, recording, and analyzing dreams are things that can be done by a motivated dreamer.  Collecting is the hardest part because we forget dreams almost immediately upon awakening.  You might try it with your own dreams if you are adventurous. It is not a substitute for psychotherapy for those who require treatment but it can be useful and can serve as an adjunct to therapy. Recollection of dreams will involve some degree of inaccuracy.  Only a small fragment of dreams is actually remembered.  Remember it is not the dream itself that is critical but the associations to the dream. Most dreams you do recall will be those that occur just before awakening.  A really dedicated dream collector will write them down immediately.  If not tell the dream to someone or rehearse it in your mind before it fades. First write the narrative in the first person, present tense. Then construct a chart to use in analysis of meaning. First give the dream a title that reflects the story, “Lost in the City” for example.  The first column should be a list of all the dream images –people, places, objects—in the order of appearance. Include descriptive adjective, e.g., “hairy gorilla.” The second column should be activities, e.g.,” I am being inducted into the army”. The third column should be for associations to the images. Hold nothing back and do no editing, no matter how silly it may sound.  If no association presents itself go on to the next image.  You should wind up with a string of related associations. When two ideas occur together they are likely linked in some way—they occurred together in time or place or they share some similarity.  Ask yourself pertinent question, e.g., what do sunglasses remind me of?” ”What do ice cream cones mean to me?” ‘Did anything related to soccer balls occur to me recently?” It is often the case that a dream fragment refers to some experience during the day, even trial experiences or observations. Freud call these the “day residue.”  The last column is reserved for feelings—either those you recall during the dream or what you feel in thinking about the dream imagery.  A strong emotion occurring with an insignificant dream may mean the dream was more significant than it appears at first glance.  Dream sequence may be confusing since dreams condense events and time considerations are distorted.

Analysis depends upon your creativity and capacity for self-awareness.  Don’t worry about making false interpretations.  The process of self-discovery is valuable in its own right.  When you make a meaningful interpretation you will feel that it fits.  We call this process “insight.”  Emotions may reveal the true meaning of the dream, perhaps the direct opposite of what is being conveyed. Dreams may represent wish fulfillments.  They may merely be expressions in graphic terms of some puzzling problem you have been obsessing over during the day.  They might even provide a clue as to the solution  Images may represent more than one meaning.  Go back to the dream and your analysis of it at a later time and see if other possible interpretations fit.  Consider the dream in terms of what is currently going on in your life.  Why did you have this particular dream just now?
Dreams allow you to examine contradictions. No one is all good or all bad. Sometimes you play the role of protective parent, sometimes the rebellious child,  sometimes the clown.  Every character in the dream may be you in different and contradictory roles.
You can accept these roles, discard them or integrate them into your personality. Some dreams mean nothing.  Consider your interpretations to be tested in waking life.

A man  had the following dream:                                                                          I am at a high school.  I decide to train with the football team. I recognize that I am much older than the other players but believe I can keep up. It is not an actual football practice but calisthenics.  It is indoors in the gym. About 250 players are participating. Certain arm exercises are tiring but I manage to do them. I am thinking that the boys must be impressed that I am keeping up with them and I am pleased with myself. I must run and circle the entire room.  When the exercise session is over I can’t find my sneaker bag.
I look all over but it is gone. I tell myself that the next time I will remember to put my bag away safely.

My interpretation was as follows. I am thinking about giving this talk tonight.  I was told that 250 women might attend this event. I am going to have to perform in front of an audience that will be younger, more active than I am. I need to appear competent.  I work in  a high school and frequently observe the gym and workouts.  I work out to some degree myself doing arm exercises and walk a huge circular route.  Although I expect to be well received the dream ends in a negative. Losing something usually signifies some anxiety or concern in my dreams.  I am concerned that I will lose the audience.  I am concerned about aging and losing physical prowess/ In a larger sense I may distrust success.


So what does all of this mean?  What use are dreams to us?  Can we use fantasy and dream imagery to effect life changes?  Since Freud, therapists have made use of dreams to help patients gain insight.  One technique in psychotherapy is the have the individual recreate the dream in a waking state and provide a different, more favorable ending.  Despite all our technology the human mind is still a mysterious and largely unknown
entity.  Since dreams depend upon memory and associations, since they draw upon our concepts and the way in which we organize perceptions, an infinite number of possibilities exist.  We have the capacity to restructure our concepts to alter self-defeating views of ourselves and our world.  Planning, problem-solving, decision-making all draw upon creative energy.  Why relegate the imagery we produce during sleeping as irrelevant?  Some dreams are merely a rehashing of the same concerns we have when awake.  Some dreams are frightening or bizarre and we have learned to ignore such experiences. Some dreams probably are merely noise.  Yet, dreams may express another dimension of our personality that we have learned to suppress.  When we encounter static on the radio we first try to tune the station in better, rather than just turn it off.  Why can’t you get that promotion, hit the home run, write the novel, learn to fly, climb the Himalayas, or be the first female president of the United States?  Dream it, then make it happen.
The application of dream interpretatiobn in treatmnent by a therapist is found in the author's new noveel :Shrink: Odyssey of a Therapist (Eloquent Books.com) and avaiulable at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
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