Posts Tagged ‘sex in dreams’
The New Dream Dictionary
The New Dream Dictionary
On the 11th of April 2013 I published a revised version of The New Dream Dictionary. It is a much fuller and comprehensive book and is wonderful and full of information. It is not the Dream Dictionary Ultimate that I am in the middle of working on, but was produced for the US cell phones. Please note: The New Dream Dictionary is currently unavailable, pending re-working (June 2017)
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RECURRING DREAMS and their significance NIGHTMARES – what they reveal and how to banish them OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES – Giving real insight into the subject RELATIONSHIPS – what your dreams are telling you PSYCHIC AND PROPHETIC DREAMS – Tells you what they are WORK – are you following the right career path? Your dreams will tell. FAMILY – how to resolve old hurts and gain new perspectives PROBLEM SOLVING – in your dreams – how to carry the solutions into real life GAINING INSIGHT – into your own behaviour and that of others MAXIMIZING HEALTH – recognize healing foods, danger signs and more. See what is happening in your body, in your mind, and in your most guarded self and intuitions…. Discover what your style of dreaming (color, smell, setting, and other key elements) say about you. It’s all here, and more, in the ultimate guide to your world of dreams. |
“I’ve been using Mr Crisp’s book for years and find it invaluable in my quest to understand my dreams better. Unlike many other books which seek to tell you what your dreams mean, Crisp guides you through interpreting your dreams as individual and personal stories about your own psyche.”
Sex while asleep
This fairly common dreaming experience demonstrates powerfully how dreams are an expression of a self regulatory or compensatory action in the psyche and body. Charles in the example below says he had been restraining his sexual activity. This shows the enormous gulf which can exist between what we will to do as a conscious person, and what our being needs to do or wishes to do outside of conscious decision making and cultural or religious morals. The ‘glamour and fantasy’ Charles describes are regular features of how these deeper needs make themselves known, or attempt to coerce the conscious mind, into fulfilling the need. If we reject the fantasy, the unconscious processes will attempt a more radical approach, as in actual physical movement while we sleep. This may have given rise to ideas about possession or devils in past ages, when it was not understood that we can split our mind and urges by such conflicts. Fear of the ‘possessing’ influence actually heightens its power through suggestion. Much better to understand what your needs are and seek an acceptable fulfilment. See: Abreaction.
‘Many times in my adult life I have woken to find I have made love to my wife while asleep. Or I wake to discover myself in the middle of the sexual act. At such times I have usually been avoiding my sexual drive and it has burst through to fulfill itself while I was asleep or under the sway of dreams. For instance most times this happened I have been in the middle of a dream in which there is a sense of absolute imperative that I must make love/have sex. It is like being lost in a storm of glamour and fantasy or vision in which I am totally involved. The whirl of the ‘dream’ is towards the wonder, totality of the need to have sex. As this imperative is expressed in my still spontaneous, dreaming physical action, the experience of sex is also visionary and enormous.’ Charles W.
Wikipedia reports this quite differently and treats it like an illness:
Those who suffer from sexsomnia have confusional arousals and are more often than not amnesic of the event. People who have a history of doing other sleep activities such as sleepwalking or sleep talking are more likely to exhibit sexsomnia episodes. Factors that may increase episodes of sleep sex are alcohol, sleep deprivation or even sleep apnea and other sleep disruptions.[1] Sexsomnia episodes could be triggered by the contact with bed partner.[2] In some cases sexualised movements during sleep could be caused by sleep related epilepsy which results in sexual arousal, thrusting and orgasms. Simple sexualised movements could be also associated with REM sleep disorders.
This seems to make it a difficult thing when the people like Charles and his wife find it a way to extend their experience of sex.
Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.Research into sexsomnia — making sexual advances toward another person while asleep — has been hampered as sufferers are so embarrassed by the problem they tend not to own up to it, while doctors do not ask about it.
As yet there is no cure for the condition, which often leads to difficulties in relationships.
“It really bothers me that I can’t control it,” Lisa Mahoney told the magazine. “It scares me because I don’t think it has anything to do with the partner. I don’t want this foolish condition to hurt us in the long run.”
Most researchers view sexsomnia as a variant of sleepwalking, where sufferers are stuck between sleep and wakefulness, though sexsomniacs tend to stay in bed rather than get up and walk about.
Relationship and dreams
Most dreams depict relationship in one form or another. Some dreams however, specifically show you in a particular relationship. Such dreams are usually highly significant in that they reveal aspects of what you are doing in the relationship that you may not admit or realise consciously. It can therefore be transformative to gain insight into any dreams that show you in relationship with present partners or lovers. See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Example: I was with Lorna, a woman I was having a relationship with but not committed to. She told me she was pregnant. I said to her this was impossible and it couldn’t be my child. She looked at me and shrugged saying ‘Okay, I’m not pregnant’. Neal C.
On exploring the dream Neal realised the enormous feelings involved. He had not realised consciously that Lorna had completely offered herself to him in their relationship. The dream shows him rejecting this complete offering of her sexuality and womanhood, and her turning away when he rejected her. This had actually happened, but Neal had not been conscious of what was occurring between them. The dream enabled him to realise how he pulled away from a woman’s full flow of self expression, and begin to change this. In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream. So any dream shoiwng a relationship needs to be looked at as if the drama and people, even the objects in the dreams, as if they are words in a sentence.
Example: I was in a very loving relationship in which I had developed powerful emotional links with D. We communicated many times each day while apart at work, etc. But one day there was no communication. I felt tremendous anxiety and emotional pain and shock, really frightened that she had dropped me. In fact she hadn’t, but my fears were very real and difficult to deal with. A real shock.
The feelings of being left or dropped, even if not real, are difficult ot deal with. Looking at ones dreams can give a real insight. Looking iwth the eys of truth.
Relationship is a vital part of life
Relationships in their various aspects, are one of the most vital and fulfilling parts of your life. Every dream you have has as its key theme, or as an underlying fact, an experience of a relationship. The quality of your relationships is vitally important, and determine how another person, or society, rewards or rejects you, what your dreams reveal about the hidden side of how you deal with other people can transform your life.
Relationship can be joyful of painful – but dreams can smooth the path of love
Also, love, whether for children, for a marriage partner, or a lover, can be a source of great joy. Or it might be experienced as conflict, or pain. The insights dreams can bring concerning the way your love flows or is blocked, can change conflict or pain to a feeling of wholeness and satisfaction. Relationships are made or broken by passions, pains and responses, many of which lie hidden, and arise from the very foundations of what we experienced of love, or its absence, in infancy and childhood. The present grows out of the past. The past pain of broken trust can still disrupt the trust we feel in our present love. The insights dreams give you can enable you to understand such influences, pinpoint their source, and move beyond them. Dreams do this by using mime and drama. While in a loving relationship that was sometimes painful to him, and thereby provoked doubts, Vincent had the following dream.
“I was visiting a children’s hospital for two days, and in my dream I woke in the hospital and saw a book placed carefully by me on the bed. I knew that Diane, my partner, had quietly come while I slept, and left the book as a gift. I picked up the book and the title was, ´Flaming Heart´. I felt very happy, and knew the book was about the power and fire of love”
Vincent’s pain arose from the fear of being abandoned by the person he loved. This was from childhood wounds, at times making Vincent wonder if he was really loved by Diane. In his childhood, Vincent had twice being placed ín a hospital. Each time he experienced a terror of being abandoned. So dreaming that he was in a hospital shows him revisiting those feelings. And they are feelings that had been disrupting his relationship with Diane. The book suggests that from his connection with Diane, Vincent has become aware of an as yet unexplained — unread — experience of love. There is no suggestion of hidden problems in the dream. Therefore Vincent felt he should trust the positive side of their love, and patiently allow unfoldment in himself. Through such imagery and feelings as Vincent met in his sleep, dreams guide us towards greater love and satisfaction in our relationships. See Dealing with Husband or Ex; Integrating An Ex; Beware of Love; Surviving Love and Relationships; Ages of Love; Love Sex and Desire.
Many of us get stuck in life situations
Many of us get stuck in life situations from which we may never emerge. The situation might be one of never establishing a full and satisfying sexual relationship; constantly feeling hurt by the actions of others; existing in a state of depression or anxiety; forever having to seek activity or company to deal with one’s own inner emptiness; experiencing enormous jealousy or anxiety in a relationship – the list could be endless. We need to ask our self the question as to why we maintain such an awful relationship with life. To quote a woman’s’ words, “Is your mind or awareness so tiny that you have never realised the forces and processes of your own body are beyond anything you understand? Can’t you see that your very existence is brought about by things so far beyond your knowledge that it is only a statement of your impoverishment to suggest an awareness of God is an expression of some sort of smallness and failure. Have you never understood that? Have you not seen that religion is not only an acknowledgement of what we fail to understand and yet depend upon, but it is also an opening to it, a willingness to relate to it? It can also be something far more even than that. It can be an active loving relationship with what gives you life. And such love is an exchange, a sharing, and a way of merging one with another. It is an exchange – a sharing of bodily fluids – the very substance of life. Imagine that; a glorious love affair with the very spirit of life! A love affair with the invisible and forever indefinable. Is that something you are afraid of?” I think the woman was not talking about religion as the massive organisations and often dogmatic creeds they promote, but as the human recognition that neither we, your mother or father created you. Sure you mother was a host, but she was in no way directing the intricate workings of pregnancy and the forming of your body. It was the processes of Life directing it. Of course many people feel that is all automatic and without purpose, but that is because they have never woken up to and explored the unconscious and its workings. They have never realised that they have a relationship with Life and have to do their inner housework and activities of growth. See Makes Inner To learn to relate to Life you must remember that you are a living example and manifestation of Life, so in a real sense you have to listen to Life in YOU! But most of us are so focussed on relating to the outer world through their senses, trying to earn more, watching TV or hoping for the next sexual exploit they forget how to listen to themselves. Listening to oneself is often called intuition, and to hear what Life has to share with you, you must turn your attention away from the world, quieten the noise of your thoughts and emotions, and listen. I have called it at times learning how to become a virgin – See How I Became A Virgin; Using Your Intuition Of course we often think of relationships being sexual. In that case see Sexercises – Sex and Identity – Sex and Dreams – Energy, Sex and Dreams – Tune in to the sexual power of your pelvis Also we see relationships as being about friends, relatives and our children. So see Love – Love of self – Learning to Love – Surviving Love and Relationships – Teenage Girl’s Love Dreams – The greatest love story in the world – Love Sex and Desire – Beware of Love – Archetype of the Lover
Dream Lovers
Can you imagine eating your breakfast porridge and finding something black bobbing about in it? Then discovering with horror it is a cockroach. You flick it out with your spoon onto the kitchen floor, where it clatters on the tiles. You feel nauseous and then notice there are now two cockroaches. They are copulating, and you begin to vomit.
Maybe you feel easier if I tell you I have just described a dream. With those cockroaches copulating, it is difficult not to recognise it as a nightmare about sex. It is fairly obvious too, that the woman is ‘sick’ of sex.
Some people believe a dream is just a dream – a meaningless fantasy of the night. They see dreams as akin to a kaleidoscope of images, random and without relevance. Having heard thousands of dreams from people throughout the world, I feel differently. Again and again, the outer situation and personality are directly reflected in the drama of the dream.
For instance, one woman says, “This dream has been recurring for years. In it a man is trying. to make love to me. At the last moment I repel him, as I know it will cause a pregnancy.”
The woman, who is a mature spinster, and who wishes to remain anonymous, goes on to say, “When I was about ten, I was raped. As a result I have had a horror and fear of men for years. It has spoilt my life from the sexual angle as I hate to be touched.”
The dream is recurring, which shows that Ann (short for anonymous), has an unchanging habit in her life. In Ann’s case this can be confirmed by her actual experience of avoiding sex. Her dream and her waking life are the same. So while the dream recurs, we can feel reasonably sure that she still remains stuck in her same reaction to sex because of her anxiety. She is repressing her need for love and so the dream continues. See Avoid Being Victims
However, dreams have many functions. They do not simply reflect our everyday situation or express hidden wishes. They also explore the new, state what we are unwilling to look at consciously, and consider most likely outcomes of our present activities and attitudes.
In her book Dream Power, Dr. Ann Faraday mentions a dream which sums up these various facets. Sally dreams she is presented to a Persian King in the garden of his palace. As she talks with him, a group of laughing girls arrive with a sad looking middle aged woman. Sally felt the woman was in charge of the harem, and was sad because the King no longer wanted her sexually. Then one of the girls approached Sally and said, “Don’t you recognise me? We were together in a previous incarnation.”
Sally woke feeling depressed. She had been reading The Perfumed Garden, an Eastern book on sex, and she felt the dream was in some way about her own life. Because she and her husband had grown apart sexually, she saw the older woman as herself. What she gave of herself to the relationship now, was to devote more of her time and energy to the house and family. This helped her to understand that the young woman’s reference to a previous incarnation was about her own ‘past life’, or earlier years spent in greater sexual involvement with her husband.
Although her husband worked in the film industry and had contact with many young women, she could not understand the last part of the dream. “He’s too inhibited”, she said. Some months later, however, her husband brought a young woman home, explaining she needed temporary lodging. There followed a number of affairs with girls he brought home, while Sally acted as housekeeper.
If we can accept that dreams reflect a summary of our present situation; show us what we might not otherwise see; and look at future outcomes – what do they reveal about the sexual life of women and their dream lovers?
So far, the dreams have said that a woman can be ‘sick of sex’, and that anxiety about sex can rob her of that pleasure for a lifetime. Also, in middle age a woman may lose her man sexually. But there are also less obvious issues here which need to be brought out. For instance, even though Ann remained a virgin in her waking life, why did she refuse her dream lover year after year?
The next dream gives us insight into this. Jane dreams she meets a younger woman in a street. They hug each other warmly. Together with many other women, they queue to enter a building where a creative expression activity is to be held. The women were happy. Then somebody grabbed Jane playfully from behind and said “Guess who?” It was a man, who crouched to child’s height as Jane turned, eyes closed, to guess. She felt his head, then opened her eyes to see it was Tim, husband of a friend. They walked away together, still playful. Then Jane began to feel anxious and guilty in case her husband found out and saw the pleasure she had. It begins to snow, and the dream ends in a tortuously complicated plot to meet Tim without her husband finding out.
In waking life, Jane had met Tim while on holiday visiting relatives. He was separated from his wife – her doing – and when Jane needed somewhere to stay, offered to share his flat. Jane refused. So much for her waking life, but remember, she is dreaming. Why does she need to deny harmless pleasure while she is asleep? See Secrets of Power Dreaming
It’s called ‘introversion’. Most of us take in, or introvert, into our dream and fantasy life, things that may be vital or useful in our outer life, but have no satisfying place in our dreams. While asleep, Jane is not actually in a street; she is not in reality hugging a man; she is not physically flirting with a man. The street, the man, are her own feelings and urges given form. The plot of the dream is an expression of her creative femininity and values, So, enjoying the dream lover is, in the end, only an enjoyment of her own feelings.
Part of the function of dreaming is, for our psychological self, what sweating and shivering is for our body – a means of self regulation. Sweating and shivering regulates our temperature – dreaming balances our urges by expressing in sleep what we refuse to express in waking. So if Jane denied herself the enjoyment of Tim’s company during the day, to deny it at night too, is unhealthy. When this was pointed out to Jane, she said “I see now what a tight spot I got myself into over being with men other than my husband. Also I feel my full creativity will not be available to me until I sort this out.” Because of her awareness of this introverted tension, Jane later began to have directly sexual dreams for the first time in her life. Her realisation that her sexuality and creativity are closely linked, is an expression on her part, of a statement which appears repeatedly in sex dreams.
Many women’s dreams show great reticence in allowing enjoyable sex. This also means that they are inwardly holding back their own full expression and creativity as a person. It is also a reverse of the situation in which a young wife dreamt her husband made passionate love to a blonde. The wife was furious, and on waking, confronted the husband with what he had done. When reminded that it was only a dream she said, “Yes, but if you do that sort of thing in my dreams, what do you do in your own”
Because marriage is such an important event, dreams constantly analyse one’s chances of success. As our dreams tend to consider the needs of all aspects of our nature, they give a balanced view of whether we could relate well to the man we consider marrying. Many women have told us dreams they had prior to marriage which pointed out the problems they encountered once married. Sarah, who had a strong sexual attraction for her fiancé, dreamt he was ignoring her. She then went off with a man she was sexually attracted to, but not in love with. Feeling this as unsatisfactory, she tries masturbation, but even in the dream, feels it is a poor substitute. She then decides that if she can’t marry the man she loves, she will be his mistress. On waking, however, she realises that part of her need is for security, family life and children. So although the dream has said that her fiancé does not care for her sufficiently, and has tried various solutions, it has not yet solved the problem. However, a later dream revealed how much anger Sarah had about her fiancé’s lack of real care. She realised that she had been trying to make the best of a poor situation, and left him.
Although Sarah’s dream is openly sexual, she realises there is a need for mutual caring and the satisfaction of the desire to have children. Dreams see sex as an energetic flow, which if denied, builds up like water behind a dam. If not expressed it flows sideways into tension and irritable or depressed emotions. As energy, it can emerge not only as the sex act, but as warm feelings, caring for others, and creative activities generally. But in relationships, it exists as the subtle emotions which flow between a couple.
Brenda’s dream shows this. She says, “Ted and I are in bed together. I am feeling hurt as he has his back to me and is masturbating. I thought to myself ‘why turn your back?’ He then turns and faces me, his legs and thighs close to me. With legs apart, he openly starts to masturbate again. This time I do not feel he is cutting me off, so I share the feeling of quiet peace and pleasure.”
This is a good example of how direct and honest sex dreams can be about a couple’s intimate feelings. The dream indicates that Brenda’s reaction to how Tim relates to her is that he wishes to feel his sexuality is not possessed by anyone else. She discovers that when she allows him this he is willing to share his pleasure with her. Tim and Brenda both felt this was an accurate and helpful summary of their situation. Brenda said she had often woke to find Tim gently giving himself pleasure while he slept. This upset her as she felt left out. For Tim, Brenda’s attitude reminded him of his mother, who seemed to want to possess his sexual pleasure by trying to stop him masturbating as a youth. He felt he needed to own his own pleasure before he could share it. Sorting out these subtle reactions to each other led to a more relaxed relationship.
Like Jane, Brenda never allowed herself sexual pleasure in her dreams. Some time after the above dream though, Tim was aware that Brenda was, as she put it, “comforting herself” while she slept. As soon as he moved softly to turn in bed, she withdrew her hand. He therefore took hold of her hand and replaced it on her vagina, and told her he felt okay about it. It was her vagina and she could pleasure it when she wanted to. Then she fell asleep and dreamt – “I was with a dark curly haired man. He was very brown, perhaps a native, but he didn’t feel a stranger to me. We began to make love, and I became aware of the pleasure in my lower body. It was very slippy, slidy and wet. There was enjoyment for us both, with very intense body feelings and a child-like quality, not passion, but pleasure and joy in my vagina.”
The dream is an obvious expression of how Brenda has relaxed her usual inhibiting of her inner sexual pleasure. The man is an embodiment of her own natural desires.
Sympathetically sharing of our sex dreams with our partner can lead to the growth of mutual caring and understanding. Sylvia dreamt she was in bed with her husband Dave. She felt close and warm, and Dave began to become more intimate, but a woman came in and wanted to ask something. Dave got up and dealt with the woman. Sylvia saw he had got dressed, and felt he had given up trying to get close, and felt alone and withdrawn. But suddenly Dave was in bed again with her, but she was still hurt and cut off from him.
At that point she woke to feel in the same situation with Dave. He got out of bed and Sylvia told him her dream. He immediately responded by saying it was almost an exact replica of the day before. He had wanted to make love to Sylvia, but friends or family had kept arriving. Then when they did go to bed she had seemed distant and unattractive. But Sylvia had been withdrawn because she believed Dave was disinterested. Realising how they had misunderstood each other, Dave got back into bed and completed Sylvia’s dream.
These dreams show how much need there is for women in general to be more honest and direct sexually. Although they may choose a particular man to share their body with, in their dreams they need to let themselves loose. They need to sizzle and writhe with their own pleasure while they sleep. Pleasure is a healing force in us. Women need to bathe in it often, not only for the sake of health, but also to discover their own creativity.
Perhaps Pat’s experience sums it up. After not making love for a month, her husband Ed came home from work one afternoon and spent a long time touching, playing with, and being with Pat sexually. The next morning Pat was cleaning the house and started singing as she arranged a vase of flowers. Suddenly, she remembered a dream. In it, Ed and she were going in the same direction and she started to sing because of their happy feelings. Then she felt she ought to stop singing because Ed would say she was happy because they had enjoyed sex. But she realised Ed knew what she was thinking. As she walked quietly, Ed himself began to sing, and Sylvia walked with him, smiling to herself.