Posts Tagged ‘passions’

Emotions and Mood in Dreams

Dreams often involve intense emotions. This feature examines how to work with these and what part they play in our health.

Emotions and Mood in Dreams

There is a level of human experience which is typified by intense emotional and physical response to life. Such emotions and bodily drives may remain almost entirely unconscious until touched by exploring your dream content in the right setting, or by being revealed by dramatic events in your life. When such feelings and bodily movements arise, as they do in dreams, we may be amazed at their power and clarity. See: processing dreams; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – movements during sleep.

We are all unconsciously aware of how emotions and mood flow into physical movement and actions as well as influencing our personal response to life. We recognise how someone who is vivacious is expressing lively emotions. Similarly someone who is depressed physically is obviously withdrawn emotionally. In fact emotions are not only what energises us, but also what can pull us down, cause us to withdraw or give up. The feelings we have about people and events are also sensors telling us how we are responding, what frightens us, what excites us. So any means used to deaden emotions such as nicotine, alcohol and pain killers also deadens these sensors.

It is now well known that emotions can have very destructive effects on the body, as in grief and anxiety. Also the healing effects of laughter and pleasure are equally marked. Dreams help us see how our moods and emotions are influencing our health and general responsiveness in life.

If we take away the images and events occurring in a dream and simply look to see what feelings or emotions are evident, the dream is often more understandable than if we try to interpret the symbols. Feelings in dreams are nearly always undistorted. We therefore do not need to interpret them, simply to recognise them and see if we can recognise where they occur in waking life.

The images in a dream may be the way we unconsciously pictorialise our flux of feelings and the play of internal energy flows. For instance love or sexual drive can give rise to physical movement – as in sexual intercourse. Repression of sex or love also represses such physical movements, leading to tension and conflict, which might be presented in the drama of a dream.

Example: ‘I was with my wife, walking along a street, on holiday with her. But I felt awful tension. It was the sort of stress I feel when I have turned off my sexual flow – as I have at the moment.’ Brian V.

Brian can easily see the connection between the dream feelings and his everyday life. Making such connections may take practice. But the situation could as easily be expressed as a dream image of a blocked river. The underlying feelings would then be less easy to grasp.

Example: ‘I was in a very ancient crumbling building, confronted by a large stone door, deeply engraved with many designs and creatures. I began to open the door and felt high feelings of anxiety. I realised this was an initiation and I must calm my feelings in order to pass beyond the door. i.e. if I were controlled by my feelings I would run away.’ Derek F.

How we meet the emotions in our dreams illustrates our habitual method of dealing with them. The feelings of anxiety in Derek’s dream were met and moved beyond, but this is unusual. This is because most of us change our direction as soon as there is a hint of fear. The amount of nicotine and alcohol human beings consume suggests how poorly we meet anxiety, considering that both these drugs inhibit feelings, and thereby deaden anxiety. Going beyond fear or pain is an initiation which opens doors for us. We might now apply for the job; ask for the date; raise the issue; express the creativity; make the journey abroad, which anxiety previously kept us from. We see this in the next example.

Example: ‘I had a ring on my marriage finger. It was a thin band of gold. I woke up frightened. Angela LBC.

Angela is not married and feels obvious anxiety about the commitment.

Dreams give us a safe area to express emotions which might be difficult or dangerous to release socially. Anger in a dream may be expressing what we failed to discharge in a waking encounter, or it might be our habitual response. It may also be directed against oneself, causing illness or tension.

Dreams also contain many positive emotions. Sometimes they present a new aspect of feeling which is life enhancing. In the example below the dreamer overcomes the feeling of defeat and death, and in imagery expresses a sense of rebirth.

Example: While heavily pregnant 11 years ago I dreamt I and thousands of Japanese-like soldiers had been at war and lost. Our punishment was beheading. Not wanting to see my comrades killed I went to the front. I felt the cold blade hit my neck, then was dead, outside my body. Dressed in golden armour with a lion symbol I told my comrades they outnumbered the enemy. They won and took my baby from my dead body. BMW – Southport.

Some feeling states in a dream are subtle, and may be more evident in terms of the symbols than the feelings. A grey drear environment suggests depression and lack of pleasure. A sunny light environment with flowers and colour shows pleasure and good feelings. A country landscape depicts quite a different feeling state to a smoky busy city street. We can define these for ourselves using the techniques described under Secrets of Power Dreaming

Whatever feelings or emotions we meet in our dreams, many of them are bound to be habitual responses we have to life. Where these habits are negative we can begin to change them by working with the dream images.

Here is a man’s description of the sort of emotions felt in exploring a dream.

As this came out I started crying from a deep emotion. But right away the feeling was so deep only deep agonised groans of pain could come out. So much agony came out my body was paralysed into silent paralysis with it. I have had a lot of sessions where I have exploded with pain. But this was deep, silent, struggling with pain. My body flayed and contorting with it, my nose clogged with mucus. Gradually it broke up and I cried out with it, deep, sobbing, long held pain. The words came out of me, “I did it. I did it. Love. I killed it. So much pain. So much of it, because I killed love.”

Dream Meanings

Albert Einstein admitted that the earliest intimations of his Theory of Relativity occurred to him in a dream he experienced during adolescence. In his dream he was riding on a sledge.  As the sledge accelerated faster and faster it approached the speed of light and the stars began to distort. They changed their pattern and colours, dazzling him with the beauty and power of their transformation.  He said that in many ways his entire scientific career was an extended meditation on that dream.

The meaning Einstein extracted from his dream has helped shape the quality of our life today. But Einstein is not alone in having meaningful dreams. Each dream you have enshrines some facet of yourself or life. But if you fail to ‘meditate’ upon its truth, the creative impulse of your dream-genius may be lost. See – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

True, some dreams hardly need much thought to be understood.  Mary, who suffered a chronic vaginal yeast infection following the use of antibiotics, had been advised to try folic acid (one of the B vitamins). As the prescribed medical treatment had not helped she followed the advice.  After a few days she experienced unusual cramping and dreamt she was in her kitchen wondering what to do with bowls and bowls of acid. A raggedy kitten came to her and she fed it brown bread with yeast and strawberries.  The kitten gobbled it up.

She looked to her dreams

She habitually looked to her dreams for helpful information and considered the bowls as referring to the folic acid.  Because the kitten (her pussy) looked a bit poorly, she felt it represented her physical health.  So she stopped taking the folic acid and added yeast tablets and more vitamin C (the strawberries) to her diet.  The cramps disappeared and within a few days the infection was on its way out too.

In most cases, however, our dreams are more obscure.  We might unwrap them from their enigma if we ignore the symbols for a while and consider what feelings are experienced.  Neal, for instance, was in his early forties and worked as a builder/decorator, a job he disliked.  His real love was writing, but he had never made enough money from this to support himself and family, and felt depressed as he saw his fifties approaching. He was- considering moving to where he might find less demanding work, and dreamt he was in a bicycle rally.  Each participant started from their home.  In the dream Neal lived near the bottom of a huge hill.  It took him till midday to cycle to the top.  Then the way was flat, and he realised he would cover much more ground in the afternoon and evening.

Stripping away the symbols, the first feeling is of a long uphill struggle.  This was exactly how Neal felt about his life.  It had been a long struggle, and even though he hadn’t given up, he didn’t feel he was getting anywhere.  The second half of the dream felt satisfying though, and this led Neal to see the dream as saying the first half of his life – the morning – had been an up hill struggle, but he would cover a lot more ground in the ‘afternoon’.  He gave up his plans to move, and within three months was offered work with a newspaper.

The Theme Is …

When the connections between the feelings experienced or suggested in the dream, and our everyday life are found, it can help understand the dream further if we consider its theme, or setting.  Neal’s cycle rally, for example, has the theme of trying to get somewhere in relationship with other people.  It is interesting that Neal is not in a race but a rally. This shows he does not feel in competition with the rest of the world.

This technique helps us understand the dream of a woman whose thirteen year old son was sneaking out when he thought his parents were asleep, to meet the girl next door.  “I dreamt my son is assembling a new bike in his bedroom.  His dad is very proud of his workmanship, but I unintentionally carry the handlebars downstairs.  His older brother carries them back though.”

The overall theme is about how the family relates to the younger son’s independent creativity.  The bedroom suggests his private sexuality, and the mother realised she was not helping him guide – the handlebars – his new sexual drive.

These two techniques – finding the underlying feeling, and defining the theme – will help understand most dreams.  We must not forget, however, that some of our dreams express a sense of humour and a love of playing with words.  Dr. Hadfield tells the story of an amorous young woman who had spent all day serving ice cream at a fete.  That night while dreaming, she talked in her sleep, ‘No, I have no more cornets,’ she said, ‘but I can let you have a trombone!’ The in and out movement of the instrument suggests what may have been on her mind.

One woman on holiday dreamt a baby pig in a dress ran to her as she sat at a table.  She recognised it as her pet, and wanted to take it home.  But she realised it would grow into a big fat pig if kept.  Her comment on the dream was that while one can safely be a ‘little piggy’ on holiday, if continued at home it could develop into a big fat problem.

10,000 Dreams Defined

Calvin Hall, who studied the content of. 10,000 dreams, is certain they reveal a truer image of ourselves than we can usually admit consciously. They also show us which habits or attitudes stand in the way of fuller relationships and creativity.  If we give our dreams a small measure of the attention we lavish on television entertainment, undoubtedly our own life would be enriched.  Perhaps, like Einstein, we might also enrich the lives of others from our dreams. See Dream Journal

The Beast in Dreams

The beast is usually an animal of extraordinary power or a creature causing great terror is a feature of many dreams or nightmares. The figure may be partly human, or an animal which has strange characteristics, or perhaps it is a figure which never quite declares itself, remaining unseen but causing or projecting great fear. In some dreams the beast takes the form of a prehistoric creature.

When explored in any depth such dream images are realised to be an expression of powerful internal emotions, responses and drives which have in most cases previously remained unconscious or repressed. The reason for this lack of expression in conscious life is varied. It may be that painful childhood experiences created a block, or fear surrounding some basic drives such as anger, sexuality or self expression. Therefore major areas of one’s potential are withheld and become symbolised by the beast. That such a beast appears threatening and aggressive, or even bent on one’s destruction, is a simple statement of the way we relate to the forces of our psyche that are bound up with it. For instance if we have been made terrified that our parents will desert us, the expression of our need for love may create this terror. So the beast, in itself, is usually not a thing of terror. The awful feelings are what we experience in connection with what it signifies.

As this terror originally occurred in early childhood at a time when our developing identity was very fragile, or during later traumatic events, the force of such feelings are often life threatening as far as our growing identity was concerned. But similar repression may surround the strength of our own sexuality or basic driving forces.

As many of us are not at ease with our emotions and irrational urges, to meet this ‘beast’ may not be easy even as an adult. This would mean feeling the intensity of our childhood emotions and fears, reappraising them, and integrating the information gathered from such an experience. The information might well include insights into why we avoided certain life situations, or why strong feelings were evoked by seemingly simple events. The example below gives some small insight into this. The information is told by a woman who helped Margaret work on her dream.

Margaret dreamt there was a whole lot of downy little feathers falling from the sky and covering her, like snow. The sky was full of them. She had been watching a baby eagle very high up in tree tops flying from tree to tree. She felt it was looking for it’s mother/ parents. Then a man had caught the baby eagle by a string around it’s leg and Margaret was appalled and said to him, ‘You can’t do that. You must let it go.’ Then the feathers started to fall and Margaret felt that any moment now the irate parent eagles would arrive. They didn’t but she was with her back to a wall sheltering as best she could.

While we explored Margaret’s feelings and memories connected with the dream symbols, she told me that her man friend prodded an old childhood pain which he didn’t know about. Margaret and her son had been with him and his mother for a good weekend camping. She told her son he could go play in the park while they packed the car and they would pick him up on the way out. They were all in the car and drove to where the son was and called him, he saw them and started to run towards them and then the man friend drove the car forward as if to make out they were leaving him behind. Margaret burst with pain and anger.

The underlying cause of this was that her own parents had split up and neither of them wanted Margaret to live with them. She had therefore been looked after by her grandparents. The event that crystallised her feelings occurred one day when her Grandfather had, on the Grandmother’s instructions, driven Margaret, who was 7 years old, to the edge of the town, told her to get out and started to drive away. This was because she wouldn’t eat her breakfast. She still carries the pain of that day. She told her father many years later and he was very angry with his own father for doing that to Margaret. She says – ‘Anyway, it came out again when we were looking at the dream. The male friend grew up with an alcoholic father who has just died, but he says he hasn’t any trauma to deal with?’

The theme of the beast is very important in women’s dreams, but may hold a slightly different theme than in men’s. This difference is illustrated by the story of Beauty and the Beast, in which a young girl meets and lives with a powerful beast. The story emphasises the girl’s relationship with her father as a counterpoint to that with the beast. It suggests that a young woman meets a different kind of love when she leaves the affection from and for her father. To become fully a woman and mother, she must discover the deeply animal urges which underlie the personality and social traits she has developed so far. These urges are not at all uncouth, but are certainly primitive. They open her to experience deep sexual longing, and the power to give herself with passion to her children and to her man. Thus she allows in herself something forbidden in her relationship with her father – an erotic and procreational love.

Overall the beast represents the forces in our personality out of which we emerge into social and intellectual life. Unless we make friends with our beast there may always be conflict in us between the rational and non-rational. We existed as a beast for millions of years before the sort of consciousness which led to personal awareness emerged. Self-awareness is still very new and vulnerable. It needs the greater depth and innate wisdom of the beast to survive. See: under animals.

Here is an extract from the dreamwork of a man exploring a dream about snakes which he feared would attack him.

As I imagine myself to be the snakes I have a distinct feeling that for millions of years I have existed as an animal. As human beings we often reject the animal in us. I see the meaning of the snakes. The snakes are so powerful. They are urges in all of us, to be felt if we are not afraid of them. The urges they depict can become a part of our everyday life. A man is somebody who has all that power there but it is under control. I have been brought up to feel one is supposed to be meek and mild or something. It was not socially acceptable to growl a bit.

I am a mixture of a beast and this awareness of self. WHY? WHY? (I feel like a wordless animal which has just got awareness). Intellect is developing and can ask these questions but there is still the powerful beast here. Why has this happened to me? Why have I woken up from being an unconscious animal and become conscious? What is this all about? It feels like it ought to be a swamp outside the window now – or a jungle.

I am a man! What is a man? What is it to be a man? I really feel this isn’t a way to be. It is too strange to be a man. I am really something odd. It is odd being a man. It is frightening. I am not like the other beasts. The other beasts haven’t got this difficulty of self awareness. The don’t carry this difficult thing – self awareness. They don’t carry the difficulty all the time. Why should I be different? I don’t like it. DON’T like it.

There is something I am looking at which is to do with how human beings got to be in the situation they are in today. Part of it is this feeling of wanting to turn back – wanting to go back to being unconscious – to being asleep. A lot of them did it. They turned back. Hundreds and hundreds turned back. That was the story of Noah. Hundreds turned back because they didn’t want to bear consciousness. Huge numbers of people attempt it today with drugs or suicide because being aware is so difficult.

Autonomous Complex

Many of the characters or elements of our dreams act quite contrary to what we consciously wish. This is why we often find it so difficult to believe all aspects of a dream are part of our own psyche. Some drives or areas of self act or express despite what we would want. These are named autonomous complexes. Recent research into brain activity shows that in fact the brain has different layers or strata of activity. These strata often act independently of each other or of conscious will. Sensing them, as one might in a dream, might feel like meeting an opposing will or being possessed by an alien force. Integration with these aspects of self can of course be gained. See Levels of the Brain; The Two Powers.

A modern view of the personality says that our mind is made up of many modules which are quite distinct. These modules, such as the sexual drive and the ability to speak, usually function in a way which is reasonably integrated. But many areas of dissimilarity are evident if we closely observe the workings of our own responses to life experiences. Because we each hold certain ideas about ourselves – our self image – things we do which do not express this self image may shock or even frighten us. Actions arising from a module of oneself which does not express our accepted self image, may give rise not only to fear, but also a sense of evil, or being possessed by evil.

An autonomous complex may be recognised by any one of four major signs. Firstly we may project enormous feelings of love, repulsion, hate or even fear upon another person we know or meet. The power of these feelings or convictions is so great they create a bond between oneself and the other person. Often these feelings lead us to feel there is a fault in the other person that is repulsive or immoral, and which we find very difficult to accept. For instance a man might see another man he knows committing adultery, and feel so repulsed by the act that he goes around criticising the man, only to find years later that he had been repressing the trait in himself. The very strength of the energy with which we criticise it in others may be equal to the strength with which we repress the urge or characteristic in ourselves.

Another way the autonomous complex may announce itself its to take over or invade the conscious personality. It may be an idealistic vision that possesses the person, a mission such as preaching or improving the lot of other people, or something that re-directs the life of the person in a manner that is not rational. This may lead to extraordinary deeds, done in the possessing influence of the vision or urge – or it may lead to foolishness or disillusionment. The apparent change, however, is that the person is under the influence of urges that were not natural, or the person was not capable of, before the invasion. The life of Joan of Arc is an example of being led to great deeds which were beyond the person prior to the invasion.

But of course the complex may express as something evil, the devil or something or someone possessing one. This can be very frightening to many people because they believe that an actual devil or evil is possessing them, rather than a repressed part of them, or the results of a traumatic experience showing itself in frightening images

The third relationship with an autonomous complex is where something happens to destroy or stop all expression or action of these inner characteristics. As much of our uniqueness and facility for variety arises out of the interaction with these various aspects of self, their disappearance leaves a person empty and without any creativeness – a dried husk without any spark of life.

The fourth possibility is that in which the person consciously attempts to find a working relationship with these disparate aspects of their personality and unconscious.

Example: “We spoke to our “primary selves” which were very well developed. They ran our lives or, as we liked to put it, they drove our psychological cars. They were the ones that made up our personalities; the selves that “knew all the answers” when we first met. Then we went on to learn about our “disowned selves.” For each primary self there were opposite disowned selves that were buried or repressed so that the primaries could keep control of our lives. The primary selves were familiar and we were comfortable with them. It was easy to get them to talk and to tell us how cleverly and successfully they ran our lives. The disowned selves were unfamiliar and threatening to our primary selves. Each primary self felt that the disowned self on the other side was a potential destroyer of our wellbeing. For instance: “What happens if you really let go and learned to ‘be’ instead of to ‘do?’ You might never want to work again!” would be the Pusher’s concern.”

As the autonomous complexes hold in them such varied and spontaneous responses to life, they have enormous creative potential if they can be met and expressed in a way that does not dominate or destroy the central personality. The characters we meet in dreams, their variety and difference to how we know and think of ourselves, present us very clearly with the enormous variety of talents, sensitivities, possible approaches to a situation, and personality types that we hold within us. If we can tap them they are an enormous resource. Although it can be very disorienting and even frightening to meet ones internal infant, and feel its explosive moods and deep instinctive longings, it can enlarge our perspective of life enormously, as well as our ability to relate more widely.

Apart from the infant there are many beings we touch in our dreams. Everything from the deeply animal such as the dog in our dreams, or the wolf, to the sadist, the lover, the monk and the business tycoon. If we do not meet these characters and manage them in our life, they will certainly manage us, and lead us into relationship tangles, emotional responses and actions that are not what we ourselves choose to be or feel. See: examples under compensation; sub-personalities; Integrating a Parent or an ex; Unconscious; Alien

Analysis of Dreams

 

A great preoccupation of humans has always been ‘What intention does the world have in regard to ME?’ And also, ‘What do I want in regard to the world?’ If we understand that the sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’ includes all one holds dear, such as family, ‘tribe’, reproduction, hunting or business and general survival, then we have in a nutshell the essence of many dreams. We seek to deal in our dreams with the things that threaten these interests, whether they emerge from within us as urges or emotions, or from an external source. Dreams allow us to explore these difficulties of meeting our inner and outer worlds, and perhaps to find courage, resources or wisdom in facing them. The fact that the dreams of many ancient peoples included confronting gods or demons need not seem strange to us considering our present day dreams – see examples below. Whether the wisdom comes out of the mouth of a god or computer in our dream, the result is much the same. Whether fear arises out of the image of a ghost or an alien, it is still our own emotion we are meeting. See dream yoga.

All analysis of dreams rests upon concepts of what a dream is, what the events or images in the dream represent, and what we feel about them. Analysing dreams has a very long history, and this history shows the various concepts different cultures had about dreams and dreaming. But the analysis of a dream must not be confused with exploring a dream or using something like active imagination or the amplification method. Analysis is largely an intellectual approach while the other methods tend to encourage the dreamer toward direct personal experience, or allow unconscious content to emerge. See: Greece (ancient) dream beliefs; history of dream beliefs; religion and dreams; spiritual life in dreams; peer dream work.

Most societies, ancient and modern, have had professional dream interpreters. India had its Brahmin oneirocritics; in Japan the om myoshi; the Hasidic rabbis in Europe fulfilled this role; in ancient Egypt the pa-hery-tep; ancient Greece had the priesthood within the Asclepian temples given to dreams; among the Aztecs, dream interpretation and divination were the prerogative of the priestly class teopexqui, the Masters of Secret Things; in today’s world the Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysts fulfil this role – the author has worked as resident analyst for television’s channel four Teletext in the UK, New Zealand Teletext, London Broadcasting Company, as well as a major national newspaper.

Some of the most ancient written documents are about dream interpretation and are direct expressions of the attempt to understand or interpret dreams. The Chester Beatty papyrus on dreams for instance, dates from 1250 BC, from Egypt. This contains records of 200 dreams and their interpretations according to the priests of Horus.

Most social roles that survive for such long periods of time fulfil some useful purpose. The most fundamental purpose of dream analysis is probably that of reducing tension and anxiety in the dreamer. In skillful use of dream interpretation there may also be a powerful shift in the dreamer towards greater understanding of their life situation, or their internal process. With such understanding they find themselves in greater accord with themselves and their social and general environment. As with any role however, there is also the aspect of manipulation and control of ideas and behaviour that can occur when a lay person seeks the advice of priest or professional. Some such analysis of dreams, in the past and today, have most likely been ways of influencing the individual to fit present social or political norms or expectations, or to serve in some measure to maintain the role of the interpreter socially and economically.

Different cultures and ages approached dream interpretation in different ways. But one of the fundamental early ideas concerning what a dream meant has become folk philosophy. It has influenced thinking in regard to the mind and spirit to this day. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is that because many dreams place the dreamer in surroundings different to those in which they sleep, early thinkers were convinced this meant the human awareness or spirit left the body during sleep and travelled to far regions, or perhaps even to other worlds of the spirit. The idea of the personal awareness being able to leave the body gave rise to much speculation about the nature of human life. It became a fundamental belief that the mind or consciousness and the body were quite separate, but during life joined together in some way, perhaps like a letter in an envelope, or water within a tree. This view dominated the way personal awareness or consciousness was thought about for millennia, and was undoubtedly influenced by observation of such phenomena as out of body or near death experiences. In many people’s mind this duality is still a prime way of thinking about such phenomena of the mind as out of OBE’s and NDE’s. In fact, even with a much wider base of cultural viewpoints and philosophical and scientific debate and experiment with which to approach such phenomena, they are still not easily explained. There are however, completely different standpoints to approach the phenomena from. See: out of body experience; consciousness – the body mind split.

The Kalapalo Indians of central Brazil are a Carib-speaking community of fewer than 200 people. To the Kalapalo, dreaming represents an experience of life that frees the imagination and memory, and dreams must be interpreted with reference to the future of the dreamer.

The interpretation of dreams requires special linguistic resources that might be different from those appropriate for speaking about the ordinary waking life. Dreaming is believed to occur when, during sleep, an individual’s “interactive self” awakens and wanders until it achieves an experience. The dream experience begins when the interactive self stops wandering and starts to participate actively in some event.

According to the Kalapalo, the process of remembering is responsible for the experience of particular images, which can be associated with the memory of recent events. Dreaming is claimed to be a means of communication with powerful beings who visit the sleeper and are drawn to the interactive self when it detaches itself from a person’s physical body and begins to wander about. The appearance of powerful beings in their dreams allows the Kalapalo to acquire direct knowledge about them and about their properties, which can be subsequently used in waking life (in the event that the vision is not fatal). A person who experiences frequent and successful contacts with a powerful being becomes a shaman, after a period of apprenticeship. Quoted from Dream Enclopedia by R. Lewis James and Evelyne Dorothy Oliver.

The mental and spiritual world the ancients lived in can fairly easily be understood by our own present day dreams. This is because some of our dreams emerge from the primordial in us, such as ancient psychological and cultural patterns laid down over millennia. Therefore in our dreams we may meet with a rock, a tree or an animal that can speak to us. We face and have to deal with evil or benign spirits. We talk with our dead parents. We have warning or problem solving dreams. We are told by wise beings what will be the outcome of a situation. We experience landscapes or events that are awful or wonderful. All that has changed over the ages is the explanations given to such dreams, and the personal feelings involved.

We learn from this that we have an innate tendency in our dreams to portray the world around us, even if it is a rock, as having consciousness and intention. Other ways of putting it are that we project meaning onto the world around us, or that we have powerful emotional and thought associations with all that we experience. Of immense importance also is that we create an image of things we sense ‘out of the corner of our eye’ but cannot or do not have a clear concept of. In our dreams these obscure perceptions appear as definite images or beings with which or with whom we have a relationship. Therefore such things as social pressure, the collective or cultural character, are given form, as we find in cartoon characters such as John Bull representing the British, and Uncle Sam representing the Americans collectively.

A great preoccupation of humans has always been ‘What intention does the world have in regard to ME?’ And also, ‘What do I want in regard to the world?’ If we understand that the sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’ includes all one holds dear, such as family, ‘tribe’, reproduction, hunting or business and general survival, then we have in a nutshell the essence of many dreams. We seek to deal in our dreams with the things that threaten these interests, whether they emerge from within us as urges or emotions, or from an external source. Dreams allow us to explore these difficulties of meeting our inner and outer worlds, and perhaps to find courage, resources or wisdom in facing them. The fact that the dreams of many ancient peoples included confronting gods or demons need not seem strange to us considering our present day dreams – see examples below. Whether the wisdom comes out of the mouth of a god or computer in our dream, the result is much the same. Whether fear arises out of the image of a ghost or an alien, it is still our own emotion we are meeting. See dream yoga.

Example: My toddler was on the landing and he had red silk shorts on with plastic pants half pulled up over the shorts. I ask him how he got like that as he is too small to do it himself. Then behind him my husband just appeared and said he had dressed him, but I knew my husband was out and this must be an apparition or something really evil. I was extremely frightened and ran into our bedroom and saw my husband floating over the bed head. Then I woke. Mrs. H. C.

Example: There were a few strangers in a chemistry laboratory, with myself – one at each table all waiting for something. Suddenly we all looked at a large house spider on the wall. At the same time one of us, it seemed to be me, turned into some sort of evil monster-man. We all ran away terrified, while he rampaged round the building. Mrs. K.L.S.

Example: I was in an ancient room. It had the feeling of it being an old church. Then my wife and I were in bed in the room. A middle aged woman was in the room. She was a ghost. I felt afraid of her, but to confront the fear I reached out my hand to her. I was crying out in my sleep from fear. As she took my hand I was amazed and shocked to feel it as physically real. I cried out ‘I can feel you – I can feel you!’ She was also surprised. I had the impression this level or dimension was recognised by ‘them’. She said to companions ‘I do not understand, ‘He is from the fourth level.’ I then said I wanted to understand. A.T.

Example: I was with a young boy and went to his house. I believe his mother was there and a cat. The vivid part was that the cat spoke to me. It spoke in a rather female voice, very clearly. As it spoke I felt great amazement. I had lots of thoughts about how it had learned language – that it could speak because of human language – what did language do to its mind – and so on. I didn’t reach any conclusions. I noticed as it spoke that it had tiny lips, but they were perfectly formed like a woman’s. They had lipstick on – or at least were red and attractive. I cannot remember what the cat said, but this didn’t seem to be important. It was the fact it spoke that was so wonderful. I left the house and was asking people whether they had ever heard a cat talking – still full of wonder. A.T.

The major difference between the way ancient people interpreted their dreams and the way we generally approach them today is that ancient people were certain the dream was real, whereas we have a certainty of its illusionary quality. This enormous difference meant that ancient peoples generally approached their dreams with a conviction they could find help, healing or information from them. See what we need to remember about dreams.

In many cases in the past, dreams were looked to for signs of prophecy about important issues such as ones health, long life, fertility, wealth or victory in a battle. For instance an ancient Babylonian prayer reads: ‘Either let me see it in a dream, or let it be discovered by divination, or let a divinely inspired man declare it, or let all the priests find out by incubation whatever I demand of them.’

In the oldest known book, the story of Gilgamesh, it is told how Enkidu, the king’s great friend, dreamt an awful prediction of his own death. ‘There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away forever; rulers and princes, all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old. And there was Ereshkigal the Queen of the Underworld; and Belit-Sheri squatted in front of her, she who is recorder of the gods and keeps the book of death. She held a tablet from which she read. She raised her head, she saw me and spoke: ‘Who has brought this one here?’ Then I awoke like a man drained of blood who wanders alone in a waste of rushes; like one whom the bailiff has seized and his heart pounds with terror.’

Enkidu goes on to say – ‘The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of life is sorrow.’ Following the dream Enkidu became increasingly ill and died twelve days later.

The dreams that have come down to us in such written form are of course greatly memorable. The following is another example of this – The night before (the parents of Alexander the Great) lay in wedded bed, the bride dreamed that lightning fell into her belly, and that withal, there was a great light fire that dispersed itself all about into divers flames. King Philip her husband also, shortly after he was married, dreamed that he did seal his wife’s belly, and that the seal wherewith he sealed, left behind the print of a lion. Certain wizards and soothsayers, told Philip that this dream gave him warning to look straightly to his wife. But Aristander Telmesian answered again, that it signified his wife was conceived with child, for that they do not seal a vessel that hath nothing in it: and that she was with child with a boy, which should have a lion’s heart. From Plutarch’s ‘The Life of Alexander the Great’, AD 100.

A dream such as this is also reported by the mother of Buddha prior to his birth. (See Buddhism and dreams.) It is also much the same as Mary’s vision prior to her conception of Jesus. In fact in the Jewish and Moslem traditions regarding dreams, an encounter with God in a dream was regarded of very great importance, and was not seen as different to a vision or waking encounter with God or an angel. For more everyday dreams however, we must read those collected by anthropologists from present day tribal people. See: Native American dream beliefs; Babylonian dream beliefs; Hebrew dream beliefs; Iroquoian dream cult; Islamic dream traditions; Chinese Dream Beliefs; Mesopotamian Dream Beliefs; Australian Aborigine Dream Beliefs.

We can generalise and say that Babylonian dream interpreters tended to see dreams as being either good or bad. The good were sent by supportive gods, and the bad by demons. The Babylonians had a goddess of dreams named Mamu. The function of the priests of Mamu was to prevent bad dreams.

The Assyrians believed dreams to be mostly omens of good or ill luck. Like the Babylonians they tried to deal with the possible fate following from bad dreams. In fact this sense of an ill fate being presaged by bad dreams was common to most ancient cultures. But this was gradually extended in Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture. This development of what people expected to find in their dreams probably arose from folk wisdom arising from observation of actual events. Diodorus for instance said that ‘in Egypt, dreams are regarded with religious reverence, especially as means of indicating remedies in illnesses’; and that ‘the prayers of worshipers are often rewarded by the indication of a remedy in a dream.’ An Egyptian prayer to this effect reads ‘Turn thy face to-wards me. Tis thou who dost accomplish miracles and art benevolent in all thy doings; ‘tis thou who givest children to him that hath none. Tis thou who hast created magic, and established the heavens and the earth and the lower world; ‘tis thou who canst – grant me the means of saving all.’

This idea of dreams being a source of information that can help heal a physical illness, or as a source of inspiration in making difficult decisions is widespread in ancient cultures. The Egyptian story of Satni tells of Mahituukhit going to the temple of Imuthes in ancient Memphis, praying to the god, then falling asleep in the temple. She then received a dream from the god showing a cure for her infertility. The god said to her ‘When tomorrow morning breaks, go thou to the fountain of Satni, thy husband; there thou shalt find growing a plant of colocasia; pull it up, leaves and all, and with it make a potion which thou shalt give to thy husband: then shalt thou sleep with him, and that very night shalt thou conceive.’ It was common in seeking such dreams as the above to prepare by ritual fasting and bathing as a means of purification and then to sleep in the temple.

These early forms of dream analysis arose then out of a quite limited set of values. A dream was either good or bad. A dream either prognosticated good or ill fortune. It illuminated the way to death or to regained health. Lastly the dream may be a message from a god showing a wise decision in life, battle or politics. Therefore early analysis was limited to such views, as is show in the account of Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat kine and the seven thin kine who ate the fat cattle. The dream and its interpretation, showing the future of the nation’s fortune, was both a dream about a dire fate, and about a political or state decision.

The Huron and Seneca Indians of America had a view of the dreams which stands in the balance between the ancient world and the modern psychological concept of dreams. They saw dreams as expressing psychological tension and unexpressed desires. This was a definite forerunner of modern understanding. Nevertheless the main sources of modern dream interpretation lie in the ancient dream interpreters such as Artemidorus who wrote the Oneirocriticus – Interpretation of Dreams – in AD 200; in the commentaries on dreams of Aristotle which so influenced Western thinking; and in the early criticisms such as we find in Cicero, in which he says – ‘Even if true interpretations of dreams could exist, it is certainly not in the possession of those who profess it, for these people are the lowest and most ignorant of the people.’ He reached this view by observing that dreams were infinitely variable, and one could observe that different people having the same dream did not experience the same results. One could not therefore base any conclusive conclusion upon them. He ended by saying ‘Let us reject, therefore, this divination of dreams, as well as all other kinds. For, to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all nations, and has oppressed the intellectual energies of all men, and has betrayed them into endless imbecilities.’ However it is apparent in what Cicero says that he is talking about the interpretation of dreams which sees them all as divinatory.

Aristotle moved beyond this viewpoint and was perhaps the first to leave a record of careful and analytical thought about dreams and sleep that link with today’s approach in which information is gathered and sifted. His suggestions in regard to how one might analyse dreams are summed up in three short essays: On Sleep and Dreams, On Sleep, and On Divination Through Sleep. See: Aristotle on dreams.

Strangely, European history appears to have been a slide into the deeps of superstitious imaginations regarding dreams and dreaming. It was a state of mind which appears to have had no links with the clarity of past cultures, or observations of collective experience. During this period all manner of fantastic explanations of dreams arose. The ancient dream dictionaries, the first of which was written by Artemidorus, and was published in the second century BC – were slowly degraded into statements of good luck or bad luck unconnected with cultural symbolism such as was found in Artemidorus original work. The influence of these European dream dictionaries are still found on sale in book shops today. Raphael’s Dictionary of Dreams, and the like are still purchased and read, and are modern expressions of this dark period of European psychological learning regarding dreams.

During this time dreams were also linked with numerology. In 1654 The Palace of the Curious was published in France. It explained how algebra and the laws of chance are means by which we can interpret the most puzzling of dreams. This became a tradition and many dream dictionaries published today still explain dreams in this way. Alongside these there were many claiming to explain dreams according to ancient Egyptian wisdom. As Norman Mackenzie says in his excellent review of these books in his Dreams and Dreaming, these ‘modern dream books represent the most degenerate form of what was once regarded as a divine art; they lack any real religious or magical sanction, and are simply an expression of popular superstition, like the belief in lucky numbers, lucky colours or birthstones. Whatever meaning may once have lain behind the symbols and the interpretation has long been lost.’

There were however lights within this gloom. Amidst the darkness created by a repression of any attempt to explore fresh understanding, there were still groups and individuals who attempted to discover and protect what was good of ancient thought, and what might be uncovered by personal observation. An illustration is this quote of Paracelsus rediscovered by Jung. ‘That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in the man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it; for we ought to know that God has given us our own wisdom and knowledge, reason, and the power to perceive the past and the future; but we do not know it, because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourselves.’

Although Sigmund Freud is popularly thought of as the founder of modern therapeutic analysis of dreams, many other people set the scene for him by careful observation and experiment. Freud encouraged clients to relax on a couch and allow free association of ideas arise in connection with aspects of their dream. In this way he helped the person move from the surface images – manifest content – of the dream, to the underlying emotions, fantasies and wishes – latent content – often connected with early childhood. Because dreams use condensation – a mass of different ideas or experiences all represented by one dream image or event – Freud stated that the manifest content was ‘meagre’ compared with the ‘richness and variety’ of latent content. If one succeeds in touching the feelings and memories usually connected with a dream image, this becomes apparent because of the depth of insight and experience that arise. Although ideally the Freudian analyst helps the client discover their own experience of their dream, it can occur that the analyst puts to the client ready made views of the dream. Out of this has occurred the idea of someone else ‘analysing’ or telling us about our dream. See: Freud, Sigmund; latent content; manifest content.

Carl Jung used a different approach. He applied amplification, helped the client explore their associations, used active imagination, and stuck to the structure of the dream. Because what arises for the dreamer is frequently still shaped and presented according to the information and experience of the therapist, again the dream work might still be largely verbal and intellectual, rather than experiential. See: amplification; active imagination; association of ideas with dream; Jung, Carl.

In the approach of Fritz Perls Gestalt Therapy and Moreno’s Psychodrama the approach to dream analysis is almost entirely experiential. The person exploring the dream acts out or verbalises each role or aspect of the dream. If one dreamt of a house, in using the Gestalt approach, one might start by saying, ‘I am a house’ and then go on to describe oneself just as one is as the particular house in the dream. It is important, even if the house were one existing externally, not to attempt a description of the external house, but to stay with the house as it was in the dream. This is like amplification, except the client gives all the information. This can be a very dramatic and emotional because we begin to consciously reveal the immense realms of experience usually hidden behind the image. When successful this leads to personal insights into behaviour and creativity. So this is experiential rather than analytical. See: gestalt dream work.

Modern dream analysis, if not limited to the approach of one clinical school such as Freudian or Jungian, is a very rich technique. It spans the best of the ancient cultures such as the use of dreams for help in decision making or healing of physical health. It incorporates techniques that enable dreams to be accessed by any intelligent person in order to be enriched by them. Many tools are available in this modern eclectic approach, tools that enable one to mine the various treasures from ones inner life of dreams. But foremost among the additions to the jewels of understanding garnered in the past, is that of insight into ones personal psychological history and personal traumas. This I believe is unique to our times, and not fully appreciated generally. From this new skill a way is being developed to integrate the many aspects of ones own multifaceted being. See: amplification; gestalt dream work; processing dreams; psychodrama and dreams.