Misconceptions about dreams

Fuzzmello said:

How can a dictionary or book on what dream symbols mean have anything to do with it?

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I am not so sure I can clearly explain this, but I had a few cases of nightmares in particular that brought me to see “the trap” in personal symbology as opposed to universal symbology.

The base line is that psychologists (which is a well studied profession not deviation) are using universal symbology to understand some deep psychological underlying problems.
And it works. Please don’t ask me how I am not a psychologist (I just know a few people in this profession).

So, if it works for them and they do solve problems it should work in general. But wait…… this is not what brought me to believe this….. what did bring me to this conclusion is experience.

Like I said a few nightmares that I have interpreted “hit the nail on the head”. What actually happened was that reoccurring nightmares did not go away because the interpretations were not correct and the person did not understand the nightmares and as a result did not take action to solve the problem. I was surprised ….. because the interpretations made so much sense.

The conclusion was that the interpretations made sense to the conscious because that is what the conscious wanted to hear. But the subconscious was trying to tell and warn of something all together different, but the mind wouldn’t entertain such an idea.

I eventually turned to the classical path…. use universal meaning as a last resort. After completing the interpretations of about 10+ nightmares of the same person from another angle (and it took me 2 weeks or more to do this), I was shocked to see the result.

I stopped being surprised why the nightmares were not going away, and also not surprised why the conscious mind wouldn’t entertains such a concept. I worked for about 5 hours with the person on the new interpretations asking questions and getting to the bottom of it. The nightmares stopped, but also the person had a severe change in path, which he was supposed to do a long time ago, to avoid his detriment.

After this surprising event I did a study for 6 months and interpreted each dream both with personal symbology and universal symbology. The finding were clear. The personal symbology was something that the mind can cope with. But only 10% to max 30% was accurate, the rest was in the “comfort zone of the mind”.

So, lets say you interpret a dream both in personal and universal symbology, how do you know what is the correct message? I also found the answer to this in the study.

When the correct symbology was accepted by the conscious mind the dreams will change theme. It will basically accept that you got the message and move on to the next thing you have to deal with. If a dream or a theme or a symbol repeats itself that means that the person did not get the message and the subconscious is trying to tell you the same thing in many types of settings until you finally get it. But if it is a concept that the conscious is not willing to entertain it will continue for years and eventually turn into nightmares.

I also found that solving dreams requires accepting the unacceptable sometimes, or in other words – always look for the non-obvious. If it would have been so obvious it would not appear in a dream, because your conscious mind could have dealt with it sooner or later the subconscious wouldn’t get involved. As a result universal symbology (as funny and ridiculous as this may sound) is usually closer to the truth than conscious symbology.

But then again you need to know how to work with universal symbology the reason people find it so hard to work with it is because their mind can’t entertain those ideas / symbols. If you work with universal symbology long enough and you keep at all times a FULLY opened mind (no matter what the result will be), you will also be able to draw the fine line when universal symbology has to be slightly modified to accurately interpret the dream. It is a lot of work to get there.

I can continue giving more examples but this is getting way to long. I hope I didn’t confuse things.

I'm stepping on this conversation

when it has been well under way but that passage below has called my attention. I looked for psychoanalitic treatment some 5 years ago because I was having recurrent nightmares with death. Interpretations were made and some taught me important things about myself. But I still had the dreams after two years spending money on my treatment. *The problem* that was "precipitating" those dreams, as I have mentioned in another thread, is that my husband at the time was suicidal. I only stopped having those nightmares after I removed myself phisically from his presence. Period. I still have similar nightmares every once in a year, but that's far from a nightly routine, as it used to be.

Sometimes the dreams are an expression of external influences/events/energies in the person's life. Sometimes they dwell on past themes because the unconscious perception of certain (immagined or real) threats leads to very "primitive" or apparently "primary" associations. Sometimes it can be something as simple as a train passing nearby during the night and instead of waking up, the person just dreams of being hit by a truck. And that person happens to have lost his/her father in a car accident. I hope I'm being clear here: Interpretations are cool and helpful within a larger scheme, but they may be pretty inneficient as far as stopping the dreams themselves.

Alex.

Karenwhe said:

Like I said a few nightmares that I have interpreted “hit the nail on the head”. What actually happened was that reoccurring nightmares did not go away because the interpretations were not correct and the person did not understand the nightmares and as a result did not take action to solve the problem. I was surprised ….. because the interpretations made so much sense.

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I agree with what you are saying..... all of it.

But we all must remember that the only way to stop them is to deal with them, external help, dream interpretation, what ever helps is good. But we are the beginning and end solution to all of our problems. Eventually they do go away, but only when they are dealt with. "Dealt with" is a very light word to what I am actually trying to say...... and I don't know how to explain, but psychological disorders don't go away in a year or two, sometimes it takes 10 or 20 years depends on the severity. Work must be done all the time, otherwise they just return with the same frequency. Also the problem must be kept in awareness the more you “brush it away” it turn into physical disorders not only nightmares. My best friend was treated for breathing problems because of severe anxiety disorders and of course her dreams didn’t look any better than her waking life.

At the end of the day, it is what helps it truly doesn’t matter what it is as long as it helps. Some people can solve their problems through dreams some with external therapy, we are all unique after all.

Edited to add: Alex did you read the whole example of the nightmares that I posed above... you quoted only the first half not the end part ? The end part was that personal symbology didn't help - ... etc., etc. - anyway I was just wondering.

Thanks for starting up this thread, Karenwhe ... I totally second the caution against taking dreams too literally. Sometimes they can be literal, but usually they're not. I've some things to add!

- that there is a fixed explanation for a dream. There's nothing wrong w/interpreting dreams, but when a dreamer immediately pins down the meaning of a dream, it loses its life. It's like sticking a few keywords onto a tarot card and then never going beyond those words. Another good analogy comes from Jungian interpretation. ie my prof warned us against seeing a forest in a fairy tale and saying, "oh, that's a mother symbol" and being satisfied w/such. All fairy tale forests are different in their own way, you have to let the forest breathe and respect its individuality, those little details.

- Trying to relate dreams to other systems can be *very* helpful, but squeezing them into other systems, forcing them, is not fruitful. Making a symbol become something that it's not trying to be often doesn't work. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar ^_~

- skipping the 'little dreams'. I'm sure we all know the difference b/w those profound, deeply numinous dreams and those where we just wake up and say: hm that was weird. It's easy to focus on the deeply archetypal dreams and forget those that don't seem so important. I had a dream once where I was in a subway station, and was picking up coins (my symbol for psychic wealth) for ride fare, but not bothering w/pennies and nickles. There were tons of pennies on the ground, they certainly would've helped me. But I ignored them, silly me. Another tarot analogy: skipping 'little dreams' is like leaving out the minors in the tarot b/c you don't think they add anything to a throw. It's no crime to do reading w/only the major arcana, but certainly those minors are useful!

However, Karenwhe, I mean no disrespect, but I'm afraid I disagree w/your disregard for personal symbology... Of course, this is only coming from my own experience... but I've found dreams are whatever you need them to be whether it be a good laugh, a deep psychological insight, a form of divination, or a message coded in more archetypal symbology. Usually, the dream is lots of things at once. I believe dreams work on many layers and can accomodate personal, sociopolitical, prophetic, archetypal etc levels simultaneously.

Also, I tend to avoid dream dictionaries b/c they can be so culturally inflected. I'm sure there are some good ones out there, but what bothers me about the ones I've seen is when a cultural symbol is touted as 'universal'. ie. moon is often associated w/women, but this is a Western concept that certainly doesn't hold true for all cultures, all time periods. Of course, I can see how they could be helpful to dream interpretation.

isthmus nekoi said:

Thanks for starting up this thread, Karenwhe ... I totally second the caution against taking dreams too literally. Sometimes they can be literal, but usually they're not. I've some things to add!

that there is a fixed explanation for a dream. There's nothing wrong w/interpreting dreams, but when a dreamer immediately pins down the meaning of a dream, it loses its life. It's like sticking a few keywords onto a tarot card and then never going beyond those words. Another good analogy comes from Jungian interpretation. ie my prof warned us against seeing a forest in a fairy tale and saying, "oh, that's a mother symbol" and being satisfied w/such.

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I don’t think I fully understand your explanation here, but in any case from my point of view as long as the person does pin down the interpretation (IMHO) this is a good thing, as the dream had a message and the person understood it – again this is a long as it makes perfect sense to the person that dreamt the dream – not to the interpreter. But then again maybe there are people who love to keep the mysticism to the their dreams, and that is very cool to, nothing wrong with that.

isthmus nekoi said:

All fairy tale forests are different in their own way, you have to let the forest breathe and respect its individuality, those little details.

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I totally agree, what I am noticing though is that people skip the details… and in dreams it is like (some said this here before) a movie and it has a story line and the details are important. Now, if you go interpreting the entire story you will quickly find out what symbolism is the right one for you and what doesn’t fit the picture at all (may that be universal symbolism or personal).

isthmus nekoi said:

skipping the 'little dreams'. I'm sure we all know the difference b/w those profound, deeply numinous dreams and those where we just wake up and say: hm that was weird. It's easy to focus on the deeply archetypal dreams and forget those that don't seem so important. I had a dream once where I was in a subway station, and was picking up coins (my symbol for psychic wealth) for ride fare, but not bothering w/pennies and nickles. There were tons of pennies on the ground, they certainly would've helped me. But I ignored them, silly me. Another tarot analogy: skipping 'little dreams' is like leaving out the minors in the tarot b/c you don't think they add anything to a throw. It's no crime to do reading w/only the major arcana, but certainly those minors are useful!

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Here I think that every person has his own preferences whether to interpret only the major once or the small once or both or which ever......and I believe this will come intuitively.

isthmus nekoi said:

However, Karenwhe, I mean no disrespect, but I'm afraid I disagree w/your disregard for personal symbology... Of course, this is only coming from my own experience... but I've found dreams are whatever you need them to be whether it be a good laugh, a deep psychological insight, a form of divination, or a message coded in more archetypal symbology. Usually, the dream is lots of things at once. I believe dreams work on many layers and can accomodate personal, sociopolitical, prophetic, archetypal etc levels simultaneously.

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Personal or universal symbols….I do NOT tend to disagree totally (I also do not totally disregard personal symbology), but I am suggesting that having extensive experience in interpreting both ways will allow the person interpreting to know the difference when to use one system and when to use the other. And from my experience there is a very good reason for this.

Like I said before it is very easy for the conscious mind to interpret a message to its convenience but the message was not the one given in the dream. In other words is like seeing in Tarot what you want and not what the Tarot is actually saying (as all cards have many sides and interpretations it is easy to pick the one that is convenient). It is hard to work with universal symbology and it also requires doing this a lot to get the "hang of it" and only then see the benefit, but it works wonders.

Basically in simple words, I believe (again from experience) that both systems must be extensively worked with to find the fine line. I don’t think that dream interpretation is an easy thing at all, and much experience must go into it.

I am not sure that I have been so clear, as I wrote this in a hurry, but if I wasn't I will clarify later.

The other thing that has not been discussed at all, is the largely advised system (saw this written in many places) how to record your dreams. With this I disagree. This also has not been discussed on this thread.

I think that significant dreams that want to be known and noticed the person will remember, and sometimes they will remember them for years. I don’t like the systems suggested to remember dreams… that is “pushing it” from my opinion.

Maybe an another analogy will help?
OK, take any work of art, and you'll find a whole slew of interpretations and theories sprouting up around the text. This is great, but in the end, no interpretation can possibly explain art. It's the art that will move and connect you, not the reviews and criticism written about the art, no matter how insightful those happen to be. It's art itself that will activate those deep emotions and suchlike. w/dreams and symbols there is the possibility of returning to them and being moved again and again, just like any good movie, or book etc. Sometimes I find ppl are too quick to 'write the review' so to speak and neglect the richness of the dream, having 'explained' it. A sort of "I've figured it all out now" attitude. I guess there's nothing wrong w/doing that though! Hope that's clearer

Oh, I misinterpreted your opinion!! Your post totally clears things up now. Yes, I agree that a base knowledge of archetypes is important in dream work. I'd say one of the greatest lessons we neglect in this society is learning to differentiate b/w the inner voice that wants to help you, and the inner voice that just tells you what you want to hear. I often find ppl have difficulty w/this.

Re: recording dreams, I think that maybe the primacy of writing when it comes to dreams doesn't work for everyone. Visuals and audio can be important dream elements, so surely drawing and playing music from dreams could be just as helpful as writing...

isthmus nekoi said:

Oh, I misinterpreted your opinion!! Your post totally clears things up now. Yes, I agree that a base knowledge of archetypes is important in dream work. I'd say one of the greatest lessons we neglect in this society is learning to differentiate b/w the inner voice that wants to help you, and the inner voice that just tells you what you want to hear. I often find ppl have difficulty w/this.

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That was my whole point, but I have this problem with writing long explanations to try to make things clear and it just confuses things I guess............ I must work on that.

Here's a website

I liked the general discussion here---I've been searching for the right thread to post a general discussion of tarot and dreams:

www.mythsdreamssymbols.com

Also, Llewellyn published a book on tarot and dreams and the author writes a long article with useful tips. The excerpt and the article are actually different and I enjoyed it:

http://www.llewellyn.com/bookstore/blurb.php?pn=K145&type=Excerpt

http://www.llewellynjournal.com/article/468

I actually think Karenwhe did a great job at opening the subject. I'm still filtering through all the posts.

Hope these ideas help

Mari Hoshizaki