Leseprobe aus
Frequently asked
Questions from: www.traumonline.com
Frequently
Asked Questions On Dreams and Dream Interpretation:
Dream
interpretation – what is it all about?
Why
is it useful to concern oneself with dreams and their possible meaning?
Does
everybody dream with the same frequency and intensity?
Why
do we remember some dreams very well, others hardly at all?
Why
do some people have frequent nightmares and what is their cause?
Is
there a general meaning to some particular dream symbols?
Is
it useful to check encyclopaedias of dream symbols for individual dream symbols?
Basically
dreaming is a way of maintaining our psychological health.
In an
experiment done in a sleep research laboratory subjects were kept from dreaming.
To do so they were attached to an EEG and woken up every time the scientists
could read from the EEG graph that they were dreaming. It did not take long and
the subjects became psychologically unstable that is to say they developed
depressive or even psychotic symptoms.
The
reasons may be found in the fact that while dreaming we work out perceptions,
emotions etc. we are preoccupied with. By daytime we may not wish or be able to
confront them because we may not be consciously aware of them or if so reject
them. The sheer multitude of impressions flooding our minds day by day may be
another factor that impedes conscious confrontation; at least we are forced to
make choices and focus on what we think is necessary to make a living.
Dreams
are triggered by stimuli from the outside world and processes within body and
psyche. The former are perceptions made with our daytime consciousness. The
particular stimulus can be a completely marginal one like seeing somebody
standing by the roadside for instance. We may not even know the person but he or
she may remind us of somebody important in our present or past. On the other
hand, a very consciously perceived situation or emotion like anger at our
superior or mate which we couldn’t act out may also serve as a stimulus for
our nightly dreams. It re-appears in the dream and thus is vented or with its
very clear imagery tries to point out that we need to confront this person. The
former example also shows the virtual impossibility to consciously turn to all
the daytime stimuli instigating emotions.
Psychological
and physical processes within ourselves generally work no different from outside
stimuli. On the inner too the sheer number of conflicts we face, especially in
times of change (like adolescence etc.), can make it impossible to consciously
deal with every single subject without affecting our daily lives. This is why we
work them out in the countless dreams we have each night. Particularly dreams
influenced by organic stimuli show the dream’s function as “the guardian of
sleep”: maybe we actually need to go to the bathroom and dream of desperately
looking for one. Tooth dreams too can be instigated by pain. It is always wise
to see your dentist if you dream of toothache repeatedly because these dreams
may be influenced by the organic stimulus of actual pain with an underlying
physical cause.
In
summary one can say that dreams are a useful tool to maintain our psychological
health because it is impossible to consciously work out all the inner and outer
experiences we make by day.
Dream
interpretation – what is it all about?
Freud marks a clear turning-point in dream-interpretation. Before Freud dream interpretation mainly meant predicting future events from dreams or dream symbols or advising people on how to behave in a given situation. The stunning accuracy of these predictions – as documented in the Bible for instance – may be due to empirical observations people made. Century-old experience told those interested in dream interpretation which events usually followed in the wake of certain dream symbols, especially if they referred to the dreamer’s personal well-being.
To some
extend this method of dream interpretation still exists today and makes it easy
to comprehend how a certain symbol was assigned a particular event. An aunt of
mine for instance used to dream of floods whenever a severe headache was to
strike. So without ever having checked a dream symbol encyclopaedia or delved
deeper into the meaning of dreams she knew that whenever the dream symbol
“flood” appeared she would not be fine the following day.
Our
modern view of dream symbols offers an explanation: “flood” can symbolise
strong emotions. If suppressed these emotions can manifest in the shape of
psychosomatic pains. A contributing factor to the tendency of interpreting
dreams as the foretellers of future events may be our ability to develop
extra-sensory perception in the dream-state. Even such rationalistic scientists
as Freud and Jung recognised this fact. After some time of intensive studies you
won’t even wonder at the fact that the space-time-continuum seems to be
suspended in dreams.
Modern
dream interpretation however does not deal with this aspect which by the way is
hardly reliable because it is only afterwards that one can tell whether or not a
dream was prophetic. Modern dream interpretation is a way to expand your
knowledge about yourself through your dreams.
This is
to say there are many methods of modern dream interpretation, but any serious
one will always aim at expanding the dreamer’s conscious awareness of him- or
herself by way of his or her dream images. Interpretation thus means to help the
dreamer find associations to his or her particular dream symbols. These
associations can be found in different ways which we will explain on our website.
Serious dream interpretation after Freud therefore means nothing more than to
help the dreamer to become more aware of himself or herself by way of his or her
dreams and the appropriate associations.
Why
is it useful to concern oneself with dreams and their possible meaning?
It is of
course not an ultimate necessity that we do so. For the major part of our lives
dreams do their job of working out psychological processes in our unconscious.
Considered the function of dreams (see Why
do we dream?) however it seems appropriate to confront them, particularly
those intensive ones like anxiety dreams or nightmares. Waking up from such a
dream can be taken as an unmistakable sign for an intrapsychic conflict that
cannot be solved by dreaming alone. Such dreams always call for a thorough
interpretation of their symbols to encourage working out of the conflict in
daytime consciousness too.
But it
also makes sense to turn to other dreams we remember. In our nightly dreams we
work out many of the things we don’t want to have anything to do with by day,
maybe because they seem awkward or frightening to us. Studying our dreams can
bring us closer to parts of our personality we may have repressed because we
used to find them embarrassing. Not only does this process of repression consume
huge amounts of our energy, it also deprives us of the chance to realise that
the very parts we dislike may influence our behaviour in certain situations far
more than we are ready to admit. On the other hand dreams often reflect
resources we may have given too little attention to. Think of all the creative
powers you may possess but for so-called rational reasons hardly ever use (“there’s
no time for that” – “I don’t think I’m really good at it” and so on
) while they could be a valuable addition to your life.
On top
of it all dreams often directly or indirectly hint at the solution of problems,
pointing to possibilities we’d never have thought of or had the
self-confidence to suggest. With its sometimes very realistic script the dream
means to show us that we actually are capable of far more than we usually think
we are.
All in
all turning to our dreams is a chance to become more complete i.e. to integrate
greater parts of our personality.
Does
everybody dream with the same frequency and intensity?
What we
can say with certainty is that everybody does dream for some hours every night.
What we cannot tell is which types of persons dream more or less than others.
The
quantity of our dreams always depends on the psychological and physical state we
are in. It is a well-known fact that alcohol and certain drugs can severely
impair our capability of dreaming. Unfortunately many sleeping pills impair
dreaming. Taken over longer periods of time they impede the working out of
inner-psychic processes in dreams. Thus drug-induced sleep lacks one of a
healthy sleep’s major qualities. You may sleep, but instead of better you
actually sleep worse.
When it
comes to assembling data about the intensity of dreams in relation to
personality types we are equally at a loss. We cannot tell whether people
experienced the dream the same way they are telling it. A more rational person
will always tend to tell his or her dreams quite matter-of-factly. Yet this does
not imply that he or she actually experienced the dream that way. It is possible
that all or some of the rationalist view was taken afterwards while remembering
or telling the dream.
Why
do we remember some dreams very well, others hardly at all?
One
reason has to do with our psychological situation at the time. If you are facing
a crisis you may remember more dreams because you are more open to your emotions
and conflicts than when experiencing a rather quiet phase of your life.
Another
crucial factor is the intensity of the particular dream and/or the dream
experience. In general one can say the more pressing the emotion and the more
open our daytime consciousness to the particular emotion or conflict expressed
in the dream, the more intensive the dream experience.
In
addition our inner (positive or negative) attitude to dreams plays an important
part in the way we remember them.
Why
do some people have frequent nightmares and what is their cause?
There is
as yet no conclusive answer to the question why some people tend to have
frequent nightmares while others don’t. It is assumed that some of these
people have a genetic disposition to react more intensely than others. Others
are more sensitive to sensory stimuli and produce more intensive cerebral images
which in return may trigger stronger reactions.
Basically
there are two different kinds of nightmares:
Traumatic
nightmares going
back directly to a traumatic experience and the so-called normal
nightmares that can occur in everybody’s life from time to time. The
former always go back to particular experiences like having been taken hostage
for instance. These dreams always repeat the same hopeless situation we were
actually facing. The question that arises is: Why do we repeat this situation
again and again in dreams as if we were still facing it? In the end the answer
is the same as with every dream we wake up from. Working out the trauma that
manifests in the shape of these endlessly repeated images is too much for the
psyche. We should take such dreams for a call to turn to the particular trauma
with our daytime consciousness too and to seek support for the psyche in the
shape of a professional therapy. In most cases traumatic experiences that
confront us in the shape of repeated nightmares cannot be worked out but with
the help of a professional therapist who helps us look at the experience and all
the repressed emotions that may lie behind it. Nightmares which don’t go back
to directly remembered or experienced traumas generally have their causes in
unsolved inner conflicts. These conflicts may go back to experiences in early
childhood or an acute problem controlling our life at the moment. Because of the
special kind of dream process, the conflict surfacing in a nightmare usually
includes old and new elements, i. e. conflicts from childhood as well as recent
experiences. Ordinary nightmares just like traumatic nightmares are an urgent
call for attention so that the existing conflict can be worked out with the help
of daytime consciousness.
Is
there a general meaning to some particular dream symbols?
This is
another question one cannot answer with a simple yes or no. Many super-personal
(archetypal, as Jung would say) dream symbols can be assigned a general symbolic
meaning. Dogs for instance are often linked to particular traits like
faithfulness, dependence on man, gregariousness which most likely play a role
when we dream of a dog.
More
important however are your own experiences and the particular associations dogs
initiate in you. If for instance you were attacked by a dog in your past you may
take a dog for something very aggressive and maybe unpredictable. Faithfulness
may play a very minor role if at all. It is these very personal associations
based on your very personal experiences that matter most in the interpretation
of dream symbols.
Is
it useful to check encyclopaedias of dream symbols for individual dream symbols?
Let me
explain this with a simple comparison. If you want to buy a suit, there are two
possibilities: you can go to the shop and buy a suit off the peg or you can get
yourself a custom-made one from the tailor. You can go about dream symbols in a
similar way. A good dream symbol encyclopaedia is like a shop which always has a
limited choice of suits only. If you are lucky you’ll find one that fits
despite that “off-the-peg-feeling” remaining. This is to say, there are
meanings in the better dream symbol encyclopaedias you may find useful and
fitting in with the context of your dream. It is best if the meaning elicits a
feeling like “Exactly, this is what it is all about!”
If
you’re less lucky all you may get is a faint idea how the suit that fits you
may look like. In this case you will find that none of the meanings offered
really matches your dream context, but maybe you feel inspired to delve deeper
into the symbolism of your dream. At times you may get disappointed and drop the
idea of buying a suit all together. This is often the case if all you are after
is a quick and effortless solution to the problem i. e. a full interpretation at
first glance.
Things
like these often happen if you check the general meanings given in ordinary
dream symbol encyclopaedias. For this reason we decided to add questions and
suggestions to the general meaning of symbols given in our data base of dream
symbols. This very intensive way of dealing with a dream resembles the
tailor-made suit in our example which fits and feels great and is made for you
only. Wearing such a suit feels perfectly right. But remember it takes patience,
time and effort to get it made. In terms of dreams this means that it takes a
thorough interpretation to get that feeling of fully understanding the meaning
of the particular symbol in a particular dream. For this reason we would like to
advise you to always try and find your own ideas about your dream and its
symbols first. Having done that you can consult a dream symbol encyclopaedia or
our data base to see whether they have inspirations to offer in places you may
not have thought of at first. The perfect-fit-feeling described above, the
fulfilling experience of fully understanding a dream and its symbols always
requires a thorough, honest and open-minded approach to the dream.
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