Posts Tagged ‘meaning of dream symbols’

Example 12

A way of finding out what your dream means by using the questions included in some dictionary entries.

Hi Tony,

Deborah – Sorry for the delay! Here are my responses:

Tony – What feelings are connected with my dream animal – fear, anger, love, wisdom

– and in what way is that entering my life?

Deborah – Annoyance and a sense of invasion. In the dream the skunk had made its nest in a one-room house which I had found and rented. When I moved in I was very inspired by and in love with my beautiful new home–until I realized there was a skunk already living there. I think it is related to my anxiety about searching for a living space and also about my new job. In the past I have found myself in many “ideal” situations only to be let down later by unsettling realizations about the circumstances.

Tony – Is this an animal I know in life – if so what are my feelings or experience

of it?

Deborah – A couple of years ago I lived in an apartment on the second floor. A skunk had a made its nest on the ground outside, directly below the bedroom window. In the summer in Los Angeles with no air conditioning and the windows open, there were some terrible nights. That’s the only skunk experience I have had and it was pretty bad.

Tony – What is the dream animal doing, and metaphorically, what is that suggesting?

Deborah – The skunk had made its nest on the perch of a window about 12′ feet up, where I couldn’t reach. It could go in and out of the window, like a doggy door, but in the dream I only remember being inside this one-room house, which had a very high ceiling–maybe 30 feet. The skunk wasn’t bothering me, it was just living there, doing it’s own thing. I suppose it had access to an outside world and heights which I wasn’t visiting, however I was so inspired by the beautiful space and the soaring ceilings I didn’t desire any more than to be left alone there.

Tony – Is the animal asking anything of you, or seeking something?

Deborah – The skunk didn’t seem to notice me or care that I was there. It seemed busy with it’s own little agenda.

Tony – If you feel repulsed or resentful, describe what about.

Deborah – I did feel very resentful, like the skunk had invaded my territory. This is an odd feeling when I think about it, since the skunk was living there first and had more of a right to feel invaded. But I suppose I felt that I had finally found the perfect place to live in and the skunk was just ruining the whole experience.

Tony – Is there any hint of danger or hurt in the dream?

Deborah – The skunk was not dangerous or actively aggressive. In fact it seemed to have almost a nice personality. But I knew that being a skunk it would at some point cause trouble and put up a stink ( and I suppose the pun is intended).

Alright, I hope that is helpful! Would love to hear your insights into dream skunks!

best, Deborah

Dream Symbols – What Do They Mean

By John Hodgson

Readers sometimes ask why the Dream Dictionary gives so many possible meanings for the imagery we find in dreams, and why many of the meanings are tentative and depend on the context of the specific dream. Old-fashioned dream dictionaries often give each symbol an exact meaning, and it would be reassuring – but misleading – to suggest that this is the way dreams work. But dream signs and symbols operate in the same way as signs and symbols in waking life. Their meaning depends on the way they are put together by the dreamer. Each of us combines signs and symbols in our own way, and it is by understanding this that we can come to an understanding of a dream.

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was the first person to study systematically the way in which signs work. He called this new study semiotics, or the study of signs. He postulated that experiencing the world is a matter of interpreting a language, or code. It is easy to see this in terms of traffic lights, where we obviously have to learn the meaning of red and green. De Saussure, however, went further, and suggested that everything we experience is a series of signs that we learn to “read”. The expression on our partner’s face, the clothes our neighbour wears, the shape of the door on a building – all these are a language. De Saussure prophesised that, just as we have a grammar of spoken and written language, it would eventually be possible to construct a grammar of signs, of which conventional language would be only a sub-set.

This has not come to pass, and it seems unlikely that it will ever happen. This is because de Saussure assumed that each sign has one essential meaning: what is sometimes called its denotation. Thus we all know a barking domestic animal denotes a dog. Yet, as Roland Barthes pointed out, in many cases the most important meanings of a sign are its connotations – the cluster of meanings that any sign has. These meanings are partly socially constructed, partly personal. For example, an Asian Indian village child and a British child in a middle-class suburb are likely to have different associations when they see a dog in the road: the Indian is more likely to see it as a source of danger and disease.

De Saussure’s structuralist account, which hoped to systematise the whole world of experience into an enormous dictionary of signs, has been succeeded by a post-structuralist view, in which the meaning of any sign is shifting, contingent, and highly dependent on its context. Does this mean, then, that creating a dictionary of dream symbols is a hopeless task? The answer is no, for two reasons. One is that every human culture combines signs (denotations and connotations) into what Barthes called myths – “stories” (true or false) that are meaningful for that culture. So the image of a gunfighter has connotations, in western (particularly north American) culture, that bring up associations of the frontier and the conquest of the American west. Most members of a culture will share many of the associations of a sign, and so interpretation is possible. The second reason is Jung’s theory of archetypes. This suggests that humanity carries certain archetypes in its collective unconscious – a common repository of signs and meanings that may transcend culture. Thus every sign and symbol contains meaning for the individual and for humanity at large. De Saussure was right to point out the affinity of signs and language. Both are at the same time personal and social, and both can be interpreted in the same way – by understanding what an individual’s combination of words, signs or symbols has to say about that person’s life.

The following is quoted from David Lodge’s novel Nice Work – It can be found at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem07.html

A typical instance of this was the furious argument they had about the Silk Cut advertisement… Every few miles, it seemed, they passed the same huge poster on roadside hoardings, a photographic depiction of a rippling expanse of purple silk in which there was a single slit, as if the material had been slashed with a razor. There were no words in the advertisement, except for the Government Health Warning about smoking. This ubiquitous image, flashing past at regular intervals, both irritated and intrigued Robyn, and she began to do her semiotic stuff on the deep structure hidden beneath its bland surface.

It was in the first instance a kind of riddle. That is to say, in order to decode it, you had to know that there was a brand of cigarettes called Silk Cut. The poster was the iconic representation of a missing name, like a rebus. But the icon was also a metaphor. The shimmering silk, with its voluptuous curves and sensuous texture, obviously symbolized the female body, and the elliptical slit, foregrounded by a lighter colour showing through, was still more obviously a vagina. The advert thus appealed to both sensual and sadistic impulses, the desire to mutilate as well as penetrate the female body.

Vic Wilcox spluttered with outraged derision as he expounded this interpretation. He smoked a different brand himself, but it was as if he felt his whole philosophy of life was threatened by Robyn’s analysis of the advert. ‘You must have a twisted mind to see all that in a perfectly harmless bit of cloth,’ he said.

‘What’s the point of it, then?’ Robyn challenged him. ‘Why use cloth to advertise cigarettes?’

‘Well, that’s the name of ’em, isn’t it? Silk Cut. It’s a picture of the name. Nothing more or less.’

‘Suppose they’d used a picture of a roll of silk cut in half – would that do just as well?’

‘I suppose so. Yes, why not?’

‘Because it would look like a penis cut in half, that’s why.’

He forced a laugh to cover his embarrassment. ‘Why can’t you people take things at their face value?’

‘What people are you referring to?’

‘Highbrows. Intellectuals. You’re always trying to find hidden meanings in things. Why? A cigarette is a cigarette. A piece of silk is a piece of silk. Why not leave it at that?

‘When they’re represented they acquire additional meanings,’ said Robyn. ‘Signs are never innocent. Semiotics teaches us that.’

‘Semi-what?’

‘Semiotics. The study of signs.’

‘It teaches us to have dirty minds, if you ask me.’

‘Why do you think the wretched cigarettes were called Silk Cut in the first place?’

‘I dunno. It’s just a name, as good as any other.’

“Cut” has something to do with the tobacco, doesn’t it? The way the tobacco leaf is cut. Like “Player’s Navy Cut” – my uncle Walter used to smoke them.’

‘Well, what if it does?’ Vic said warily.

‘But silk has nothing to do with tobacco. It’s a metaphor, a metaphor that means something like, “smooth as silk”. Somebody in an advertising agency dreamt up the name “Silk Cut” to suggest a cigarette that wouldn’t give you a sore throat or a hacking cough or lung cancer. But after a while the public got used to the name, the word “Silk” ceased to signify, so they decided to have an advertising campaign to give the brand a high profile again. Some bright spark in the agency came up with the idea of rippling silk with a cut in it. The original metaphor is now represented literally. Whether they consciously intended or not doesn’t really matter. It’s a good example of the perpetual sliding of the signified under a signifier, actually.’

Wilcox chewed on this for a while, then said, ‘Why do women smoke them, then, eh?’ his triumphant expression showed that he thought this was a knock-down argument. ‘If smoking Silk Cut is a form of aggravated rape, as you try to make out, how come women smoke ’em too?’

‘Many women are masochistic by temperament,’ said Robyn. ‘They’ve learnt what’s expected of them in a patriarchical society.’

‘Ha!’ Wilcox exclaimed, tossing back his head. ‘I might have known you’d have some daft answer.’

‘I don’t know why you’re so worked up,’ Said Robyn. ‘It’s not as if you smoke Silk Cut yourself.’

‘No, I smoke Marlboros. Funnily enough, I smoke them because I like the taste.’

‘They’re the ones that have the lone cowboy ads, aren’t they?’

‘I suppose that makes me a repressed homosexual, does it?’

‘No, it’s a very straightforward metonymic message.’

‘Metawhat?’

‘Metonymic. One of the fundamental tools of semiotics is the distinction between metaphor and metonymy. D’you want me to explain it to you?’

‘It’ll pass the time,’ he said.

‘Metaphor is a figure of speech based on similarity, whereas metonymy is based on contiguity. In metaphor you substitute something like the thing you mean for the thing itself, whereas in metonymy you substitute some attribute or cause or effect of the thing for the thing itself’.

‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’

‘Well, take one of your moulds. The bottom bit is called the drag because it’s dragged across the floor and the top bit is called the cope because it covers the bottom bit.’

‘I told you that.’

‘Yes, I know. What you didn’t tell me was that “drag” is a metonymy and “cope” is a metaphor.’

Vic grunted. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘It’s just a question of understanding how language works. I thought you were interested in how things work.’

‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with cigarettes.’

‘In the case of the Silk Cut poster, the picture signifies the female body metaphorically: the slit in the silk is like a vagina -‘

Vic flinched at the word. ‘So you say.’

‘All holes, hollow places, fissures and folds represent the female genitals.’

‘Prove it.’

‘Freud proved it, by his successful analysis of dreams,’ said Robyn. ‘But the Marlboro ads don’t use any metaphors. That’s probably why you smoke them, actually.’

‘What d’you mean?’ he said suspiciously.

‘You don’t have any sympathy with the metaphorical way of looking at things. A cigarette is a cigarette as far as you are concerned.’

‘Right.’

‘The Marlboro ad doesn’t disturb that naive faith in the stability of the signified. It establishes a metonymic connection – completely spurious of course, but realistically plausible – between smoking that particular brand and the healthy, heroic, outdoor life of the cowboy. Buy the cigarette and you buy the lifestyle, or the fantasy of living it.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Wilcox. ‘I hate the country and the open air. I’m scared to go into a field with a cow in it.’

‘Well then, maybe it’s the solitariness of the cowboy in the ads that appeals to you. Self-reliant, independent, very macho.’

‘I’ve never heard such a lot of balls in all my life,’ said Vic Wilcox, which was strong language coming from him.

‘Balls – now that’s an interesting expression…’ Robyn mused.

‘Oh no!’ he groaned.

‘When you say a man “has balls”, approvingly, it’s a metonymy, whereas if you say something is a “lot of balls”, or “a balls-up”, it’s a sort of metaphor. The metonymy attributes value to the testicles whereas the metaphor uses them to degrade something else.’

‘I can’t take any more of this,’ said Vic. ‘D’you mind if I smoke? Just a plain, ordinary cigarette?’

John Hodgson

jhodgson@bigfoot.com

Babylonian Dream Beliefs

Babylonian civilisation lasted from 1800 till 600 BC. It was an urban society with twelve or so cities in the nation, resting upon the agricultural land surrounding the cities. The social structure was headed by the king as absolute monarch. Under him were a group of appointed governors and administrators. Beneath this were freemen and then slaves. The culture lasted for about 1200 years.

The world ancient people’s lived in was one filled with spirits and demons, gods and goddesses, good and evil forces. This is understandable when we realise our forebears had no clear conception of how natural forces, illness, the mind, worked. The many intangibles they were surrounded by, the immense uncertainties they faced, were quite usefully called spirits – invisible/mysterious yet potent powers that could act upon one for good or ill. Their beliefs and observations regarding dreams were therefore deeply coloured by their world view.

The peoples of Assyria and Mesopotamia were animists-that is, they saw themselves surrounded by natural forces that represented gods to be propitiated and spirits and devils to be feared. Anxious in the present, fearful for the future, feeling themselves the prey of powerful forces beyond their comprehension or control, they turned to a whole armoury of devices for protection and reassurance-amulets and magic spells, prophecy, divination, and dream interpretation.

But this view should not be seen a superstitious or from ignorance. The words devil and spirit simply meant an unseen and powerful force. Before the invention of the microscope disease was in fact an ‘unseen force’ that could kill you. The devil was a destructive force and spirits could be helpful or destructive. They discovered that people could be helped or even healed by what today we call placebos. The magic rituals and amulets were just that.

There seems to be little doubt that in Assyria, as in Egypt, dreams were used in therapeutic processes. There are many rituals for dispelling the effect of evil dreams: about 1700 BC., a poem from Babylon describes how a noble has been made ill by demons coming from the nether world, and how three dreams lead to his recovery. This is why the interpretation of bad dreams was more important than the deciphering of pleasant or obvious dreams-some thing had to be done about them. Anticipating contemporary psycho-analysis, the Assyrians believed that once the enigma presented by the dreams had been worked out the disturbing symptoms or the affliction would pass. But whereas modern psychoanalysis uses the dream to illuminate the hidden conflicts and repressed anxieties of the patient, the Assyrians believed either that a demon must be exorcised, or that the appropriate deity would reveal the means by which the sufferer could be treated.

The Assyrians certainly depended on dream books for help. This much we know from clay tablets found at Nineveh, in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who reigned between 669 and 626 BC. This library, the oldest directly known to us, was a repository of learning reaching back to the dawn of civilisation-possibly to 5000 BC. The Nineveh tablets, in fact, provide the link in a chain of dream theory that stretches from the most remote past to our own time. It is believed that Ashurbanipal’s dream book was used by the Roman soothsayer Artemidorus (about AD 140), whose work has in turn inspired almost every subsequent compiler of dream books.

The Ashurbanipal tablets tell us, for example, that if a man flies repeatedly in his dreams, whatever he owns will be lost. In Zolar’s Encyclopaedia and Dictionary of Dreams, published in New York in 1963, we read, “Flying at a low altitude: ruin is ahead for you.” Another idea that persisted is that dreams go by contraries. If an Assyrian dreamed that he was blessed by a god, he expected to experience that god’s wrath; but “if the god utters a curse against the man, his prayer will be accepted.” If you are cursed in a dream, Zolar tells us in 1963, “Ambitions will be realised.” That is of course the use of placebo or suggestion.

Death was a certainty, illness, physical or mental was a possibility, love and reproduction were drives to be satisfied, and so many dreams or myths centred on the way they met these. It must also be remembered that such cultures had, according to recent theories, only recently developed personal self-awreness; only just lost direct perception of subjective gods. See: The Origins of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes.

In the Babylonian culture the attempt to find certainty amid uncertainty, to control or direct the threatening forces of nature, to find ones way through the events of life, led to a wide array of techniques concerned with prophecy, magical control or propitiation, and trying to know the will of the gods. The kings hoped that a god would be on their side in battle, or would give them confidence by telling them in a dream that they would overcome their enemies. In fact the influence of these early Babylonian beliefs is still present in modern religion where each side of an opposing army, even with belief in the same God, prays for support and victory.

The Babylonians believed that an event in one part of the world or cosmos, would cause an occurrence in another part. A comet appearing in the sky for instance, would be seen as presaging great social or personal changes. This link between the cosmos and the individual also suggested to the Babylonians that the cosmos could be influenced by human action – thus the rituals of appeasement or magic.

These beliefs led to an examination of any mysterious event in an attempt to understand its personal or wider significance. Dreams were one of the possible sources of such prophecy or enlightening information. Over a long period of time strange events such as the birth of a two headed calf, or a strange dream, were noted and following events watched. If a barren woman had a child after such an event, then it was thought that the next time the event occurred, a barren woman would again be made fertile. Of course this led to deliberate attempts to obtain or perform the first, to bring about the latter – thus magic. There were in fact magic rituals to prevent bad or evil dreams.

Dreams were classified into several types. Those of rulers and leaders such as priests were seen as one type, and those of common people of another. There was also a division between good dreams and bad dreams. If one goes into any large book-store and looks at dream dictionaries written before the advent of modern psychotherapy, it can easily be seen that most definitions are still written in the same style – that the dream will bring good or bad luck regarding money, romance or health.

In fact they are derivations of the ancient Babylonian dream books. These speculations, observations and collection of folk beliefs were put into book form by the Babylonians, and are thought to have contained texts on dreams dating back to 5000 BC. These ancient Babylonian dream dictionaries were copied and taken to the library at Nineveh by king Assurbanipal. The great dream encyclopaedist Artemidorus later drew on these records for his own learning. The part of the Jewish/Hebrew Talmud which was written during the Babylonian captivity is also full of dream interpretations and ways of dealing with dreams, and undoubtedly drew on the Babylonian library.

These dream dictionaries contained beliefs and observations took note of any belief however bizarre. As an example of some of the ideas presented in this collection of works, we can read – ‘If a date appears on a man’s head, it means woe. If a fish appears on his head, that man will be strong. If a mountain appears on his head, it means that he will have no rival. If salt appears on his head, it means that he will apply himself to bald his house….If a man dreams that he goes to a pleasure garden, it means that he will gain his freedom. If he goes to a market garden, his dwelling will be uncomfortable. If he goes to kindle a firebrand he will see woe during his days. If he goes to sow a field, he will escape from a ruined place. If he goes to hunt in the country, he will be eminent. If he goes to an oxstall, (he will have) safety. If he goes to the sheepfold, he will rise to the first rank.’

Babylonian culture also produced one of the great, and certainly the oldest literary work which included a series of dreams. This is the Epic Of Gilgamesh which dates from about 2000 BC, and is the oldest hero account. It is the story of how the king, Gilgamesh, searches for immortality having lost his friend Enkidu. See: The mention of Gilgamesh in analysis of dreams.

If one had a dream, the practice in Babylonia was to have it interpreted by a priest. From descriptions of such interpretations, such as we find in the Epic of Gilgamesh, this may have been principally a form of social psychology to help reduce anxiety in people who lived in a world peopled by demons and spirits. If the dream was seen as evil, or sent by a demon, some form of cleansing ritual was often used. But dream interpretation had other aspects as can been seen in Daniel’s dream interpretations for king Nebuchadnezzar. In his interpretation there are elements showing a drive for personal survival, political insight, and psychological knowledge of what would be relevant to the king and his concerns. The priesthood and dream interpreters such as Daniel, were therefore most likely skilled in a level of counselling relevant to their times and social environment. They were healers in allaying anxiety. They were shrewd assessors and perhaps manipulators. They performed the function of helping people to deal with their concerns and fears.

Because Daniel’s interpretation is such an interesting statement in regard to dreams and how they were used in the past, the biblical verses are given here in full.

As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass. 002:030 But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart. 002:031 Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 002:032 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 002:033 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 002:034 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

002:035 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. 002:036 This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. 002:037 Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. 002:038 And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. 002:039 And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

002:040 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. 002:041 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 002:042 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 002:043 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 002:044 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

002:045 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. 002:046 Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him. 002:047 The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret. 002:048 Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon.

Considering that all present societies and the practices we find in them have emerged and evolved from previous societies and practices, we can be sure that Daniel’s method of dream interpretation was a tradition passed on from long previous ages. So it is likely he used what today we associate with ancient shamans. If this is so, Daniel would not have consciously thought about the dream, but in his terms would have prayed for insight into it. This means that he would have entered a state of mind in which his thinking was quietened and he allowed his unconscious intuitions, guided by his image of his God and his knowledge of the times and the people he lived amongst, to emerge and throw light on Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. See: LSD Hypnosis and dreams; history of dream beliefs.

Test of Analysis

From all that has been said, a whole collection of methods present themselves suggesting how we can understand a dream. I suppose one could use all these methods on a single dream, and arrive at a whole spectrum of information. But the question now arises as to whether the interpretation is correct. After all the effort, is it right? It is not just a question of whether the answer satisfies us; it must also enlighten us. It must do even more than that. What we arrive at must fit the events and symbols of the dream, and unveil the characters of our inner life that have clothed themselves in the forms and events of the dream. The interpretation should make sense to other people also, so that if explained, they too can easily see the connection between dream and interpretation. The interpretation should be able to stand the test of time as well.

One of the biggest temptations in analysing our dreams, the thing that most often leads to a false interpretation, is to attempt a purely arbitrary translation of the symbols. By this is meant that because one dreams of a bag, a large key and a snake, one should not therefore immediately denominate these as ‘sexual symbols’. They may be; and we have to keep this possibility in mind. But the dreamer may be a locksmith who is having difficulty opening an important bag. In which case the symbols represent a problem and not sexual intercourse. And he may have a friend who keeps snakes, by one of which he was nearly bitten. So the snake might mean fear of death. This is why one has to be careful to find one’s own associations with the symbols. Only when we cannot find a personal association; or the dream setting does not point to the possible meaning, should we try a general interpretation. Jung has said that if the dreamer finds difficulty in arriving at an association, he would ask him to describe the symbol in his own words, as if Jung knew nothing about it. Therefore, if one dreamt of a table, one would say, ‘It is a thing usually made of wood and having four supports. Upon these a flat surface is fixed, so that one can place objects, food, books, etc., on it at a level nearer one’s hands or mouth.’ Or at least, one would describe it as one saw it.

As for how we can test the interpretation, dissatisfaction is the biggest clue to our inadequate understanding of the dream. If there are factors in the dream which we have not explained, or if the interpretation does not bring to light the inner feelings that shaped the dream, then one will always have a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is as if two parts of a puzzle have not been properly fitted together, or, although the pieces fit, the colours do not quite match. Thus arises the feeling of not having found the right solution.

On the other hand, when the right understanding is arrived at, a very profound thing happens. There is usually a feeling of thrill, a sudden pleasure of exaltation, a feeling of being on the track. This is usually accompanied by a sense of seeing deeply into yourself, sometimes into parts of your being never bared to view before. In all, there is a feeling of pleasure and achievement, of certainty. One is usually somewhat amazed at the wisdom of dreams, despite having felt the same many times before.

Another test of the interpretation’s accuracy, and a guard against arbitrariness, is to see whether it fits everyday experience. A dream nearly always deals with things one has experienced in one way or another. Therefore, if an interpretation does not fit or explain our actual experience, then it should be placed to one side. We must beware of using words we do not understand. For instance, we may read that Jung has said a dark-haired woman can represent a man’s anima, or female nature, while a dominant man in a woman’s dreams represents her animus. Or that Freud suggests that some cutting or scissors dreams might symbolise a fear of castration. But do we really, in our own experience, know what these mean? Can we see them in our own life? It is certainly not sufficient to label our dream symbols this, that or the other. If these ideas are true, then we shall see them in our own experience. We may not give them the same name even; but one that describes them to us! This is not to say that a knowledge of these ideas is not extremely helpful. It may even help us to see these things in our own experience. But we must beware of using such ideas without seeing them in ourselves. Therefore we have to look at ourselves and ask, ‘What part of me does this dream symbol represent? What experience is it dealing with?’ And when the word experience is used this does not simply mean events in the outer world. It means emotions, attitudes, ideas, response to people and events, relationships with others, with self, and with Life.

Sometimes, however, the dream deals with things that have not yet happened, but are about to happen. I am not here dealing with prophetic dreams. When a woman has a tummy ache and says, ‘Ah, my period is beginning’, she is not prophesying. She is speaking from past experience. In a similar way, the dream often sees that things are about to begin that are not outwardly obvious to us. For instance, a man dreamt that a bull broke loose and rushed into a field of cows. Shortly afterwards he was almost carried away by a release of sexual desires he had kept ‘chained up’. His inward feelings had warned of this in the dream. Yet outwardly he could see no sign of it. So with some dreams we have to see if ‘time’ reveals their meaning. Or to put it another way, we may interpret the dream satisfactorily but find no signs of it in our experience. Then it is for time to bring it into the realm of the real.

An example of arbitrary interpretation can be seen in this dream. ‘An unconventional looking postman delivered a registered package. But I didn’t open it.’ This was taken to mean that due to an Unconventional experience, the dreamer had realised something. Something had ‘registered’ on his consciousness, but he had not explored the possibilities of it. Although this seemed to fit the symbols, and no other ideas were forthcoming yet the dreamer could not, despite a lot of searching within, discover an experience of something registering that he had not explored. The registered package is a double symbol, because it also suggests something valuable contained in it. Therefore, despite a seemingly good interpretation, when it came down to testing it, no satisfaction was forthcoming. Which makes us realise that proper interpretation lies not only in reading the symbols, but in seeing the understanding applied to our life.