Dream Interpretation

There is a plethora of books about dream interpretation offering many different,
and often contradictory, approaches to the subject.With so many different
ideas about what dreams mean, it is difficult to know which approach
is more likely to be successful.
A few principles increase the probability that a dream interpretation approach
will be valid. First, the more dream content recalled, the better the opportunity to understand its meaning. Most people remember only bits and
pieces of their dreams, and serious efforts to interpret dreams require serious
efforts by people to remember their dreams. Second, the more a theme recurs
in a series of dreams, the greater the likelihood that the theme is significant.
Dream repetition also helps in interpretation: Content from one dream
may be a clue to the meaning of other dreams. Finally, the focus of dream interpretation
should be the dreamer, not the dream. In order to understand
the dream, one must spend time and effort in knowing the dreamer.
There are many scholarly approaches to dream interpretation. Three
theories are particularly noteworthy due to their influence on the thinking
of other scholars and their utility for clinical application. Each perspective
emphasizes a different side of the meaning of dreams.
Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams are complementary to waking life.
His basic thesis was that many wishes, thoughts, and feelings are censored in
waking consciousness due to their unsuitability for public expression and are
subsequently pushed down into the unconscious. This unconscious material
bypasses censorship in dreaming by a process in which the hidden, “true”
meaning of the dream�"the latent content�"is presented in a disguised
form�"the manifest content. The manifest content is the actual content of
the dream that is recalled. To interpret a dream requires working through
the symbolism and various disguises of the manifest content in order to get
to the true meaning of the dream residing in the latent content. For example,
Jane’s manifest content is a dream in which she blows out candles that
surround a gray-headed man. The candles might symbolize knowledge, and
the gray-headed man may represent her father. The latent content is that
Jane resents her father’s frequent and interfering advice. Thus, blowing out
the candles represents Jane’s desire to put an end to her father’s meddling.
Carl Jung proposed that dreams could be understood at different levels
of analysis and that the essential purpose of dreams was compensatory. By
compensatory, Jung meant that dreams balance the mind by compensating
for what is lacking in the way a person is living life. For example, the timid
Christian who is afraid to speak up for his or her beliefs with atheistic colleagues
dreams of being a bold and eloquent evangelist. Jung believed that
four levels of analysis could be used to help dreamers gain insight into their
dreams. His general rule guiding the use of these levels is that recourse to
analysis at deeper levels of consciousness is only warranted if the dream cannot
be adequately understood from a more surface level of examination. To
illustrate, a man has a dream in which he steps into a pile of manure. At the
conscious level of analysis, it may be that he is dreaming about a recent experience�"
no need to posit symbolic interpretations. Looking into his personal
unconscious, an image from his childhood may be evoked. Recourse to the
cultural level of consciousness would examine what manure symbolizes in
his culture. It could be a good sign for a farmer in an agrarian world but a
bad sign for a politician in an industrialized society. In some cases, it may be
necessary to look at the dream from the perspective of the collective unconscious. Manure might be an ancient, universal image that symbolizes fertility.
Could the man be questioning whether or not he wants to be a father?
Zygmunt Piotrowski developed a theory of dream interpretation based
on projective techniques. For Piotrowski, in a dream about another person,
that person may actually represent a facet of the dreamer’s own mind. The
more the dream figure is like the dreamer and the closer the proximity between
the figure and the dreamer in the dream, the greater the likelihood
the dreamer is projecting him- or herself (seeing in others what is really in the
self) into that dream figure. For instance, a woman may dream she is walking
with her closest friend but that friend is ignoring everything she is saying to
her. An interpretation according to Piotrowski’s system could be that the
dreamer is actually dealing with the fact that she is not a good listener.
Dreams may be complementary, compensatory, or projective, useless fictions,
avenues of insight, or products of the brain. Many credible answers
have been proposed, but it is hard to believe that there is a single explanation
for every instance of dreaming. Perhaps the best answer is that dreams
reveal many different things about many different dreamers�"biologically,
psychologically, socially, and spiritually.
Sources for Further Study
Dement, William C. The Promise of Sleep. New York: Random House, 1999.
One of the pioneers in sleep research presents a comprehensive overview
of sleep for the general public. Chapters 13 and 14 specifically deal with
dreaming, while research pertinent to dreaming is also found in other
chapters.
Farthing, G. W. The Psychology of Consciousness. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1992. In a scholarly book emphasizing research on various aspects
of consciousness, Farthing examines dreaming in three chapters
and related phenomena in two other chapters.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Joyce Crick, edited
by Ritchie Robertson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. This
is the classic book that outlined Freud’s theory of the mind and revolutionized
thinking about dreams.
Hall, James A. Patterns of Dreaming. Boston: Shambhala, 1991. Hall looks at
dream interpretation from a Jungian perspective with an emphasis on clinical
application. This intellectually sound book contains excellent historical
background and well-rounded coverage of different approaches toward
dream interpretation, including a brief look at Piotrowski’s system.
Kallmyer, J. D. Hearing the Voice of God Through Dreams, Visions, and the Prophetic
Word. Harre de Grace, Md.: Moriah Press, 1998. This book is an excellent
source for a spiritual examination of dreaming.
Paul J. Chara, Jr.
See also: Analytical Psychology: Carl Jung; Consciousness: Altered States;
Psychoanalytic Psychology and Personality: Sigmund Freud; Sleep.