Dream analysis

[marydell]

Someone in bloglandia mentioned having a dream that's bothering her, and I thought I'd email her to say how I generally interpret dreams. Then I figured it'd be better if I wrote something in my LJ about it, in case anyone else is ever interested. Also because unsolicited advice is frequently obnoxious, although I will probably send her a pointer to this.

I have vivid, symbol-saturated dreams--less as I get older and mellower, but I still have them. What I find is that if I pay careful attention to the symbolism of every single dream, the narratives kind of end up explaining themselves, because my subconscious uses the same symbols over and over.

I have a couple of re-occurring dreams about houses. I read, a long time ago, that if you dream about your house, you're dreaming about your mind or your personality. The act of reading that interpretation made it true for me--ever since then, houses have appeared in my dream as an obvious stand-in for the space in my head. For example, during a time when a family member was sick with cancer, she was on my mind more than usual. I had a dream that she was living in my house (in fact, I woke my husband up to help find her, because I was still kind of dreaming when I woke). In later years, when I started having to make some medical decisions about my aging parents, I dreamed that they moved everything from their house into my house. I've had dreams about secret rooms, dreams about water seeping in through the roof, dreams about water filling the basement. They all had clear equivalents to things going on in my life, considering, anyway, that water is a symbol for emotion, in the vocabulary of my subconscious.

It's not that dream symbolism is necessarily consistent across humanity, although Jung would say that it is. But I really believe that dream symbolism is consistent within a single mind. And my experience has been that as I've worked on mapping the symbols in my dreams to their meanings, my dreaming makes clear, obvious use of those symbols--usually within a couple of nights--to show me more of what I need to see.

For me, the whole point of dreams is that they allow me to have an internal dialogue without having to open my eyes to all of the implications if I'm not ready. How many of us have soldiered on through a bereavement or trauma without letting ourselves feel too much, and had bizarre, showy dreams every night as a way of coping? When I am ready to understand or change something about myself, though, I find that dreams give me an easier way to grapple with life--a way that's creative and emotional, when I'm sleeping, but safely analytical when I'm awake.

So, in practical terms, what I do is write down my dream(s) as soon as I wake up, without analyzing, and then when it's all written down, I step through the dream and look at each symbol, thing, person, etc. And I just ask "what is that, really?" without trying to figure out the meaning of the narrative bits until later. A lot of times the answer is intuitive; sometimes I fall back on things I've read over the years, or I use context to figure it out. Nowadays, for the majority of symbols in my own dreams, I can fall back on what I've gleaned over the course of 20 years of paying careful attention and mapping things out as they crop up. And once I've identified the symbols in a dream, I can often understand the narrative that my subconscious has placed them in.

Yes, this is a completely made-up system, but it's not woo-woo; dreaming is a creative process like any other, and just like writing or painting or dance, if you engage with it analytically you can begin to control it. It's no different than deciding that poppies are a symbol of addiction and throwing them into all of your paintings to make a private statement to yourself about addiction. But instead of throwing them into paintings, you throw them into your dreams. Your mileage may vary, but this works like clockwork for me.

Comments

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

My dreams usually turn out to be lucid ones, but that doesn't keep them from being pretty boring. I did dream a lot about my dad after he died, in 1993. Interestingly, I never did again after one dream where I gave him a hug and said goodbye.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I've had those dreams of saying goodbye to departed loved ones...they're very comforting, although mine have been predictably odd. In one, I was working in the financial aid office at my college and was doing an exit interview with my friend who had just died in RL. I kept asking him financial questions and he kept laughing and explaining that it didn't matter and that it was going to be fine.

That's really nice that you had that dream about your dad.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

That dream was indeed very nice because it was the only I ever got to say goodbye to him. I was living in California, he was in Québec, and it had been almost two years since I had gone there and I felt quite guilty over that. Sure, I frequently called, but it wasn't the same. When he died of that heart attack, they were able to ressucitate him, but it had taken so long that he was basically brain-dead so they took him off the machines. He truly died the next morning, never waking up, then I flew over for the funeral.

Better a dream's goodbye than none at all.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you didn't get to see him before he died...it's hard when you live far from loved ones. My siblings and I are scattered all over the country--I live fairly close to my parents but not close enough to just pop over. But they're glad all of their children are living exciting lives. I hope your dad was happy for you and the life you built away from home.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I think so.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

those dreams of saying goodbye to departed loved ones...they're very comforting, although mine have been predictably odd

Odd? Not really. After all, one of your main activities in the 'waking' world is that you are a manager. That's got to affect how you think. (Hmmm... That didn't come out right, did it?)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Actually, at the time I had that dream I was working in the financial aid office in RL, but I didn't know what an "exit interview" was--I just would hear other ppl in the office throwing the term around. It seemed odd at the time because it was before I had a career as such, so I never really identified myself with the work I was doing--I had as many jobs as Homer Simpson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Homer_Simpson's_jobs) before I came to my current company (where I've just passed the 10-year mark).

Being a manger definitely affects how I think, though! And probably not in a good way.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Being a manger is a trough job.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I suck at puns, so there's no point in trying to entice me! :)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't trying to tempt you into that world of perdition. I just couldn't resist making a pun. Actually, I could have resisted, but I chose not to as my moral fiber is very frayed.

It's getting late and I'm about to turn in, but I wonder if your dreaming that dream in terms of an exit interview, even though you had never given one, even though you had only heard others talk about those, might be a sign that you are good at picking up and internalizing information into knowledge.

As for your going from being Homer Simpson to IT manager at a financial institution... Since you've been there for 10 years, I guess you're not quite Homer. Had you been he, the world would probably have ended, like in that episode where he was put in charge of the nuclear power plant's Y2K compliance.