Get your own Free Home PageWhat happens when we dream? What is the meaning of dreams? These questions are impossible to answer without understanding the difference between the physiological and psychological aspects of thought. The physiological aspect relates to the brain as a physical organ, while the psychological aspect concerns the mind. These are the “hardware” and “software”, respectively, of the human computer. While the brain can be examined and studied objectively, the mind is purely subjective and cannot be observed in “black and white” terms. The two are completely different, and yet neither can exist without the other. These two aspects, the physiological and the psychological, both come into play in understanding dreams.
Most people are familiar with REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the deep slumber in which the sleeper’s eyes move rapidly back and forth beneath the eyelids. This rapid eye movement is the most obvious manifestation of physiological dreaming. When a person dreams, the following sequence of events (somewhat simplified here) takes place in the brain:
Brain cells require not only nourishment and oxygen, but also electro-chemical stimulation to stay healthy. Thus, it seems likely that the high level of activity during REM sleep is a sort of exercise for the brain. During this strenuous workout, it is necessary for motor control to be disengaged. This prevents injury to the sleeper, whose body would otherwise demonstrate the same wild activity as the brain. Since the same areas of the brain are stimulated in sleep as are used in physical activity, the frontal cortex reasons that actual activity is taking place (as opposed to random firing of neurons), and interprets the patterns of stimulation based on known phenomena. Therefore, the aspect of this process recognized by the sleeper as the dream itself is merely the by-product of physiological dreaming. A purely objective, empirical study of dreaming would end here--a strong case could be made that dreaming is no more that the consequence of random brain patterns. But do dreams have a meaning beyond this?
It is true that the firing of neurons during REM sleep is random. It is also true that the interpretation of this process by the frontal cortex is erratic and unreliable. This does not, however, mean that dreams are meaningless--far from it. When the frontal cortex interprets the neural melee, it must draw from existing memories. In doing so, it may uncover some very interesting things. Repressed memories, feelings, or other, more complex issues, may come to the surface. Many of these cannot be expressed by the frontal cortex in a simple and straightforward manner, especially since most thoughts and feelings exist on multiple levels of conscious, semi-conscious, and unconscious awareness. To keep up with the rapid-fire pace of REM sleep, these complex thoughts and feelings must be expressed in abbreviated form, as symbols. Dream analysis is the art of sorting out these symbols and determining the underlying thoughts behind them.
Here is an example of what happens, psychologically, when we dream: Suppose the dreamer is a woman who is preoccupied with a co-worker’s condescending attitude. Such preoccupation means that memories of encounters with the co-worker, along with the related emotions, are stored in several different places in the brain. The frontal cortex is therefore likely to pick up on one of these memories during a dream. There is more to this memory, however, that the objective replay of the encounter. Underlying that memory is a belief that people should not be condescending. Beneath that is a fear of the pain and humiliation of a verbal attack. Associated with that fear is the repressed memory of a verbal attack by a parent in childhood. The frontal cortex absorbs all of this at once and quickly translates it into a series of symbols that attempt to convey all of these issues to the dreamer in rapid sequence. The sleeper may dream that she is a small child again, being lectured by her father. The father may change, without warning, into the co-worker, or may assume a hideous and/or alarming appearance, signifying the underlying fear. In a narrative sense, this is gibberish, but it makes perfect sense in the dream world. The interconnectedness of psychic realities can create a confusing montage of images, as the brain tries to cram everything in at once. People and places can change instantly to other people and places, related in the dreamer’s mind on a subconscious level. In my example, we backed into the analysis, starting with the issue and working our way into the symbols. Dream analysis, of course, works the opposite way. Finding the relationship between the quickly changing images is an important key in determining the meaning of a dream.
There are some important principles to be taken into account when analyzing dreams. Dream analysis is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a simple, cut-and-dried process. Manuals describing common dreams and explaining what they mean are useless. There are simply too many variables to take into consideration. The following ideas have helped me understand dreams over the years and will facilitate in the understanding of the dreams I will describe.
Symbolism is the language of dreams, and it is the most important principle to grasp in order to understand them. Symbols in dreams are a series of metaphorical images that the frontal cortex constructs to “explain” what is going on in the brain. It is important to understand that symbols encountered in a dream are unlikely to signify an object--any person, place, thing, or event--that exists outside the dreamer’s mind. The dream world is only concerned with the mind of the dreamer. Thus, virtually all symbols describe an aspect of the dreamer’s personality (there are some qualifications to this rule, as you will see below).
Archetypes are symbols popularized by Jungian psychology. They are universal symbols that are common to all dreamers, although their meaning in a dream will vary depending on the person and the circumstances. The major archetypes are the Self (one’s higher being, or soul), the anima or animus (a personification of the subconscious whose gender is opposite that of the dreamer), the shadow (a personification of the subconscious whose gender the same as the dreamer), and numerous other symbols representing wholeness or totality (the mandala, the number “4”). It is not particularly helpful to simply identify these archetypes in dreams (this represents the anima, that represents the Self, etc.). The way these symbols are interpreted depends on the relationship between the dreamer and the things these symbols represent.
The part of our psyche we each identify as being "me" is actually a relatively small part of the whole. This is called the “ego”, or conscious mind. It is, of course, the most important part of our mind as far as dealing with the realities of the outside world. However, the major part of the psyche is the unconscious mind. This makes up the whole of our thoughts that exist beyond our awareness. The human brain involuntarily creates many thoughts per second. Obviously, we cannot be aware of all these thoughts, and so the balance is unconscious. When we dream, the ego descends below the threshold of consciousness and is exposed to these unknown thoughts. Thus, through dreams, the subconscious mind can be made known.
Compensation is the major function of the unconscious mind. Every conscious thought that throws off the equilibrium of a person is compensated by a unconscious thought that embraces the opposite of that thought. This “opposite thought” may appear in the dreams of the person. Thus, the unconscious becomes a sort of devil’s advocate, showing the dreamer the problem from another angle. For instance, if a man has an inflated opinion of himself, he may dream that he is a peasant or a slave. The unconscious mind is opening the door for this man to return to reality. It should be pointed out, however, that the unconscious probably does not do this purposefully. By all indications, it is an automatic mechanism, and so the unconscious mind will not necessarily press the issue. It is up to the dreamer to heed what the unconscious is saying.
Internalization is perhaps best understood in comparison with a common neurological phenomenon, phantom pain. Phantom pain, as you may know, is pain sensed in an absent limb that has been amputated. This pain is not imaginary, rather, it exists in the brain in the area that once received sensory feedback from the missing limb. This indicates that limbs not only have an objective existence, but also a subjective reality within the mind. Internalization is a similar principle. Any person who is significant to us, for one reason or another, is inevitably internalized within our minds. They exist in the real world, but they also exist within our minds. If they cease to exist in the real world, through death or physical separation, they will remain in our minds. This existence can go much further than mere memory, especially if the person is a caregiver from childhood. Our parents exert a tremendous influence over our lives, even after we no longer have contact with them. This is because the internalized parent is still in there, reinforcing the belief systems that the original parent helped create. Because this internalized persona can be so influential, it is likely to appear in dreams. We now have a symbol that can actually signify an external reality to some extent, that is, a significant other. However, it symbolizes the other person only to the extent that this person exerted a significant psychological influence, and thus became a part of the dreamer. In this sense, the symbol does reflect a part of the dreamer’s own psyche.
Ego defenses are mechanisms that protect the ego from unpleasant realities that it lacks the mental discipline to handle. These are particularly important, and prevalent, in childhood, when mental discipline is virtually nonexistent. Since childhood represents the formative years of the psyche, most ego defenses set up then are carried into adulthood. The most easily recognized ego defense is denial Confronted with a shocking piece of bad news, the first thing a person usually says is “No!” Usually, they will accept the news in spite of this initial denial, but this particular ego defense varies in intensity depending of the person and the circumstance. For instance, a news report will occasionally surface about someone whose spouse or parent has died, but they will not report the death and continue to treat the body as if the person were still alive. In such cases, denial has totally overcome the person’s grasp on reality.
Ego defenses can also be incorporated into person’s belief systems. Perhaps the most important, and universal, example of this is the belief that one’s parents are infallible. This ego defense is created in early childhood. It is necessary to maintain equilibrium in the mind of the child, whose very existence (in the child’s mind) is dependent on the parent’s infallibility. However, since this belief is formed so early, it is very powerful and cannot be contradicted by even the harshest evidence to the contrary. The ego defense is carried into adulthood, and is intricately woven into the adult’s belief system. These types of ego defenses can sometimes distort symbols seen in dreams. For instance, if a person’s dream focuses in on a childhood issue involving parental abuse, then the persona of the offending parent (the internalized parent) will be “disguised”. As the frontal cortex attempts to create an image signifying the internalized parent, it comes up against this powerful ego defense, which prevents it from revealing the parent in a bad light. Thus, it must substitute another symbol.
One common form of ego defense is the "splitting-off" of certain aspects of one's personality. This phenomenon is the result of a person's intense feelings of shame in relation to some perceived defect of mind or body. If, for instance, one is shamelessly greedy (i.e., the normal shame at his own greed has been repressed), he will fail to recognize the greed (evident to others) in his own behavior. He will, however, be quick to recognize greed in others. This is because the greedy part of his personality is still there, and still functions as before, but has descended below the threshold of consciousness through denial. He projects this personality defect onto others because he is unable to acknowledge it in himself. The principle of projection becomes important in dreams because the split-off aspects of the dreamer's personality will tend to be represented in dreams by people who display these same characteristics. In a way, projection in waking life (recognizing one's own personality defects in others) is a sort of "waking dream", in that the frontal cortex finds a symbol to represent an aspect of the personality. In this case, however, the symbol has an objective reality. Recognizing this "waking symbol" when it appears in dreams is important in attempting to understand the dreams.
While it is true that dreams can reflect highly significant subconscious issues, it does not necessarily do so all the time. Because of the random nature of physiological dreaming, psychological dreaming can be highly unreliable. The dream may uncover hidden, life-long desires, or it may simply reflect a desire for a midnight snack. It may reveal repressed memories, or it may only replay the previous day’s events. It may warn the dreamer of a serious illness, or it may merely tell him that he needs to get up and go to the bathroom. It is tempting to imagine a benevolent “dream mind” that dispenses dreams in a helpful and orderly fashion, but the fact is, the tale told by the frontal cortex is one that it does not understand. This is similar to a person reading a poem aloud that is written in a language he does not speak. He will probably mispronounce words, and his delivery will probably lack expression, but a listener who does understand the language will probably be able to piece together the meaning that the poet was trying to get across. The same is true of dreams, where the frontal cortex produces images according to what it sees in REM sleep. The meaning of the images can only be sorted out by the dreamer afterwards.
The key to separating the significant from the mundane can either be the power of the imagery, or, failing that, the “tone” of the dream. Everyone has had the experience of an extremely significant dream, either wondrous or hideous, that, when described to another person, seems commonplace and insignificant. The key here is not the imagery, but the tone of the dream. The raw feeling of wonder, fear, or other emotion gives the dream a weight that it would otherwise lack. This feeling is the analyst’s key that the mundane imagery hides a deeper meaning.
In my opinion, the principle of recurring themes is the most important. Everyone is familiar with the phrase, “I keep having the same dream”. No one actually does have the same dream more than once, it is merely the general theme that is repeated. In the neural scanning process of REM sleep, it is likely that, over a period of time, the same psychological issues will come up more than once. It is also likely that the brain will summon up similar symbols to communicate this issue. The result is a tapestry of dreams with similar patterns, occurring over a long period of time and reflecting the personal growth (or lack thereof) that takes place in waking life over the same period.
An example of this is a recurring nightmare that plagued me for several years. In this dream, I would be in the house alone, perhaps listening to music or completing some chores. In each dream my mind was furiously active; I was daydreaming or contemplating some mental conundrum. Each time, I would approach a door to the outside, either to answer a knock or make a final inspection before going to bed. Finally, in each of these dreams, I would discover a stranger outside, who would immediately force himself violently into the house. At this point I would awake in terror.
The recurring theme is that of something "outside" forcing its way “in”. This probably symbolizes something in the subconscious mind forcing its way into consciousness. Every time I woke from such a dream, I marveled that I was unable to recognize the pattern while in the dream. This, in itself, probably symbolizes something from waking life. Nightmares usually have something to do with repressed emotion. In order to repress emotion, a person must first hide it below the threshold of consciousness, then deny that the emotion exists. The feelings are still there, of course, the person just has no conscious access to them. During the time I was having these dreams, I was struggling with re-uniting myself with these split-off emotions. The reason that I did not recognize the pattern was that I had denied the emotions existed. The daydreaming and intellectual exercises helped cover my awareness, until the emotion forced itself in. As a child, I often used daydreaming as an antidote to emotional pain. Likewise, losing one’s self in a mental problem is a favorite emotion-repressing tool for adults. However, the pain can only be held back for so long, and given enough time it will suddenly explode (usually as a fit of anger). This was the situation in which I was stuck for several years.
When I was in my early thirties I finally made significant headway in my battle against emotional repression. I began to let go of my old fears of what would happen to me if I became emotionally vulnerable. As I did so, the dreams subsided. The last dreams in this series were subtly different. First, I had a dream that began exactly as the others in the series, up to the point when the knock came on the door. This time, I recognized the pattern, and declined to answer. Some time later, I dreamed that I was outside and a stranger was in the house, threatening to come out. The stranger turned out to be a harmless little girl. This dream told me that my horizons had expanded, and that I now recognized my feelings as being harmless. I never had these dreams again after this.
This example offers a small taste of what this work is all about. In the following chapters, I will present a recurring theme, list some major dreams that carried that theme, and analyze the pattern that the series of dreams creates. This process offers an astounding insight into personal growth, especially when each dream is related to what is going on in waking life.
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