Why do we enter a fantasy world several times a night when we sleep? Why do we perceive imaginary events and perform imaginary behaviours and what do they mean? Are they a gateway into our unconscious? Can we really interpret our dreams?
“The dream is the reflection of the waves of the unconscious life in the floor of the imagination.”
Amiel, 1989
Dreams can be frightening or reassuring. Dreams are fantastic in the sense that impossible, illogical things can and do occur. In dreams you can fly, dead people come to life and inanimate objects can speak.
REM Sleep
Most of us dream on average one to two hours each night, having a variety of dreams. Most dreams are completely forgotten and some people therefore claim not to dream. Researchers have found that if people are awakened directly after a rapid eye movement (REM) sleep episode, many can recall their dreams fairly accurately. A person awakened during REM sleep will almost always report a dream, often in great detail. These reports indicate that people are conscious during sleep, even though they may not always remember the experience. Brain wave studies show that we are very active in our sleep!
Types of Dreams
It is said that the word ‘dream’ is derived from the words ‘joy’ and ‘music’. Many people talk of various different kinds of dreams; of highly lucid but also vague dreams; of nightmares and of lovely dreams. Children between the ages of 3 to 8 years old often report having nightmares but they seem not to appear in their own dreams much before the ages of 3 or 4 years old. Many report recurrent dreams, some which they fear, others which they long for. Some believe that their dreams are prophetic, whilst two thirds of people claim that they’ve had Déjà Vu dreams.
“Dreams are meaningful only in the context of the dreamer’s life.”
Broadribb, 1987
Certainly there appears to be cross-culturally common dreams to all people at all times. The flying dream is common; people often report being able to fly like a bird, perhaps by doing the swimming back stroke! Others report the falling dream where they fall out of tall buildings or down dark pits for a very long time. Or they just fall over a lot. Many dream of suddenly being naked and hence very embarrassed in front of others. The chase dream is also surprisingly common! Most often they are being chased relentlessly by others, or perhaps you’re the one doing the chasing. Students will know of the test/exam hall dream where you have to sit the test and despite revision, you don’t remember anything, or worse you are paralysed and cant write anything. This one happened me A LOT! Sometimes it was so convincing, I would wake up and think it had actually happened. The one which is most odd but more common than we perhaps care to admit is the one where we lose our teeth…
So what do these all mean? Inevitably there are various proposed interpretations of these dreams. Does the teeth dream signal that we are very concerned with our physical attractiveness? Or perhaps it represents a loss of power and ageing, or the concern that you are never heard or overlooked. Perhaps your teeth represent oral weapons and they are falling out because you have been spreading untruths about others. It has even been proposed that it is about money; you are hoping that the magical Tooth Fairy will appear and give you buckets of money!
But how will we interpret the naked dream? It is all about vulnerability and shame? You are hiding some information, concealing a relationship, doing something you shouldn’t and you feel guilty. Or it could mean that you are feeling unprepared for some major test or task? One curious feature is that you realise that you are naked and yet no one else seems to notice or care? This has been said to potentially indicate that you have worries but that you really feel they are unfounded.
Freudian Ideas
Sigmund Freud (you know, the famous psychologist who everyone knows for his theory that all girls are obsessed with their fathers and all boys obsessed with their mothers) proposed that dreams arise out of our inner conflicts between unconscious desires and prohibitions against acting out these desires, which we learn from society. Thus, all dreams represent unfulfilled wishes, the content of which is symbolically disguised. The latent content is transformed into the manifest content (the plot), which needs to be explained to supposedly unveil the person’s unconscious desires. Dreams are symbolic, or metaphors for our true underlying feelings.
Dream interpretation was Freud’s favourite way to get to understand this conflict and so he would encourage people to talk without constraint about their dreams. In his view, dreams concern ones past and present and they arise from unknown regions within. Every dream at its core is an attempt at wish fulfilment; after all, dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious”. In dreaming, various processed occur, like condensation, where themes are reduced to single images such as an open door or a deep-flowing river. Analysts are particularly interesting in displacement, where people, things and certain activities replace each other. Then there is transformation, where people are transformed to be bigger or smaller, older or younger, more or less powerful.
Critics point out that if dreams are merely wish-fulfilment, why are so many negative? Next, Freud bases his theory on those few dreams (less than 10%) that are remembered and articulated by patients. Thirdly, there is a serious problem of reliability in the interpretation of dreams as different therapists offer very different interpretations. Fourth, as Jung pointed out, dreams seem to have similar content across time and culture regardless of whether they are deeply repressive or surprisingly liberal.
Personally, I have sometimes tried to analyse my dreams using the Dream Moods website. While I can’t say that it’s 100% an accurate science, I do believe in the fact that sometimes it provides me with some comfort. It’s like horoscopes, I read them faithfully and they provide some comfort when they discuss things which are going on, however I don’t take them as Gospel and spend the week worrying about when something random is going to pop up or happen. If you’re interested in analysing your dreams or more about the meaning of dreams, I shall provide some links below! Enjoy!
Science & Tea 