Anyone know anything about dream interpretation

Kell

.......................and no I'm not looking for the number of Irish Psychics live.

Cheers all

thedrowner

all i knwo is whatever youre dreaming, the interpretation's really far off what you expected. i think death in a dream means a big change or something. ill look it up in some of my ****ty women's magazines.

Typedef

Anyone know anything about dream interpretation

Basically if you read Freud you will realise that everything stems from an inner desire to kill your father and marry your mother.

The Oedipus complex.
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/freuds_works.html

In 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams, the book that Sigmund Freud regarded as his most important work was published.

Freud's interest in the Interpretation of Dreams led him to propose that people were often subject in an early "phallic" stage of development (typically between the ages of three and five) to a so-called Oedipus complex where individuals were erotically attached to their parent of the opposite sex and were hostile to the parent of the same sex.

So according to the most famous shrink ever the formative years of your life are spent plotting to kill your father.

Good stuff from Freud.
Then again Freud was a nut.

Nevyn

?

Nevyn

your best bet may be to get a book funnily enough i was one or two in Easons.

I have the big book of dreams and it's pretty intresting

The Death = change is also the interpation used in Tarot cards

Calibos

Yeah, its a load of new age vegatarian crystal horoscope head lump readin'.................b*ll*x!!:D

Its your brain interpretting newly formed memories in a freaky dali-esque surrealist kind of way. I can nearly always find correlations between an event in my dreams and something I was talking about that day or something I saw the day before etc etc

DadaKopf

Freud wasn't that mad and no, he didn't think that all dreams are underlain by a desire to "kill your father and marry your mother". Freud's theory of child/psycho-sexual development may have involved a lot of extrapolation and flights of fancy (which may say more about Freud himself than his patients) and are, in many places completely wrong, but he had some good ideas. And he was the first to ever take dreams seriously.

The Interpretation of Dreams is one hell of a big book but if you're interested in dream interpretation, Kell, I can't help you out. What I can tell you is why Freud thought we have them. Look up a chapter of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams called 'The Dream-Work'. In it, Freud outlines his ideas about what dreams are.

Basically, they're expressions of our unconscious desires that have been repressed by our conscious mind for many, many reasons - manners, socialisation, emotional difficulties etc. Dreams are a certain level of expression of repressed desires and an attempt to work through them to bring them to and integrate them with the conscious mind. Psychological illnesses like depression and psychosis occur, according to Freud, because of a problematic interaction between the traumatic experience, subsequent repression and their integration into conscious life. The mind, being divided into the Id (desire, pleasure principle) and the Ego (rationality, reality principle), psychosis occurs because there isn't a healthy flow between the two and dreams are expressons of this state of affairs of the mind. (An example of a repressed desire breaking through would be the famous "Freudian slip" or 'parapraxis'.

Dreams are very complex 'works' of the imagination that are never what they appear to be and involve a series of processes.

Firstly, the process of 'condensation' occurs whereby the dream's 'manifest content' (i.e. the actual content of the dream - images, sounds etc.) is constructed by your mind. However, underlying the dream's manifest content is its 'latent content' - what the dream actually means. But what dreams actually mean are often problematic for the person so the second process, 'displacement' occurs. As the manifest content takes on a more central role, the latent content (the real nitty gritty of what the dream means) is pushed to the periphery by the process of repression.

So, in fact, what is most memorable or central in the manifest content of one's dream is the least important part. It's the little unmemorable bits that you have trouble remembering, if you remember your dream at all, that you have to concentrate on.

The dream's content, though, can be confusing and appear to have a logic all of its own; they can be entirely nonsensical to the dreamer but, for Freud, every component of a dream is meaningful. But they follow their own logic so much that they may have little bearing on one's conscious reality - I mean, because you dreamed of killing your father and marrying your mother does not mean you want to do it. Which leads on to the interpretation of dreams. Dreams don't even have to have a definite meaning - they can be ambivalent.

Freud, as far as I'm aware, didn't think people were best suited to interpreting their own dreams - a patient could only interpret their own dreams with the assistance of a trained psychoanalyst, for the purposes of objectivity. The problem you lead into, then, is just that: objectivity. A patient can't objectively examine something he's repressing (he's complicit in his own psychosis) but the psychoanalyst is complicity, too, because he can't help but put his own interpretation on the dream's content. Therefore, it's probably impossible to arrive at a satisfactory 'science of dreaming'. It's just all too subjective. Dreams are very case specific.

The fact that we dream can hardly be disputed. Why we dream is still an open question but Freud's theory is still accepted as at least partly correct. The idea of the dream as 'wish fulfllment' and 'problem solver' is pretty much accepted.

But there's always the possibility that, as Calibos said, it's just you running through what you did today, or you thinking about tomorrow's shopping list.

What psychologists disagree on is what emphasis should be placed on dreaming itself when it comes to treatment. There are Freudians still out there but psychology has generally moved in the direction of behavioural science blended with post-Freudian psychologies. The best of both worlds you know? As far as I'm aware, dream interpretation is being taken a lot less seriously.

I'm just telling you what Freud said, and that's all I know on the issue. If you're interested in this stuff for personal reasons, read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. If you find anything on the web that amounts to "How to interpret your dreams" or "This is what these dream objects mean", don't treat it too seriously. For further reading, buy a very up-to-date book endorsed by telescope-eyed academics.

Kell

Originally posted by Thaed
The Death = change is also the interpation used in Tarot cards

I know about that one, in fact, I know most of the stuff that all of you have kindly replied about. Whats f***** up is something trying to kill me. It doesnt have a face, or a name, or a physical presence in the dream rather, you know it's there and it's going to F****** kill you. No, kill is too benign. I get the impression that this thing wont stop at death. I think it wants to condemn my soul to eternal writhing in hells flames. In fact, I've never experienced a greater sense of paralysing dread and the only thing that gets me out of the dream is the sound of my own screaming.

This isnt a once off either. It's a recurring thing. The last time something like that happened was years ago and I was dreaming about whole families being mutilated. Not actually seeing the event, but being there when the bodies were taken away. Those ones lasted for weeks and I was terrified of going to sleep. This is all very odd given my age too. I am far from being a school boy who has seen too many video nasties.

If anyone has any ideas, answers on a postcard to the usual address please. Cheers.

DadaKopf

It's obviously an anxiety dream. Possibly pay less attention to the images of the dream and pay more attention to the emotions that come up in your dreams. Try to work out what's making you anxious in your waking life and the nightmares will probably go away. If it really concerns you that much, see a psychiatrist or counsellor - preferable a psycho-dynamic psychologist.

Kell

Originally posted by DadaKopf
Try to work out what's making you anxious in your waking life and the nightmares will probably go away.

I would agree with you save for the fact that there is nothing causing me anxiety on any level at the moment. It's down to the timeframe as well. They dont show up every night, more so every third month or something. Maybe something is trying to keep me on my toes and make sure that i dont forget I'm fallible.

DadaKopf

Or maybe it's hormones/brain chemistry. Or the full moon!

Nevyn

hmmmm ok well it depends in what you believe personally as I hold a lot of pagan beliefs part of that is in working in/with your dreams and a lot of belief in astral travel and other stuff that most people would not give any creedance to.

You are in control of you dreams and can control what is happening to a degree, in the semiawakened state you can guide and take actions in your dreams once you have become aware that you are dreaming. Had to teach this to one of my kids
so when the under the bed monster came to get him he could wake enough to beat it up with his pillow so it left and then go back to proper sleep.

you should check out all the normal stuff first is your room too hot/cold are you going to bed overtired or too full after eating
make sure that this dread dream is not being caused by something phyical.

Buying a dream catcher could be a good move, lots of places have them and you wont be treated like a nut job for buying one.
Simply browse through them till one appeals to you for no apparent reason and if poss hang it in your bed room.

McGinty

I have had a similar type of dream, however it was to do with a past issue. I used to call it the physco nightmare or I had the devil nightmare, completely frighten the **** out of me. According to another world famous phsycologist Carl Jung, who is famous for his dream analysis interpretation, he took it one step further than Frued. He believes it is the unconscious mind attempting to enlighten the dreamer, be it a current issue or a past issue that has caused pain / anxiety.

Dreams can have an important meaning, it may help when you wake up, to write down the details of the dream, including any feelings you have. Read back over them and see if you can see what the message is. It has also been my own personal experience that people who appear in your dream are not really who you think they are, a good clue to find out who they are is by their actions in the dream, if they represent someone you know it is usually that person.

thedrowner

Originally posted by DadaKopf
Basically, they're expressions of our unconscious desires that have been repressed by our conscious mind for many, many reasons - manners, socialisation, emotional difficulties etc

eeeeek----if thats true i disgust myself!

i have loads of recurring dreams. sometimes when i dream them, and i know im having a dream so i try to change the ending, or keep it going. theyre usually mad dreams where im on the run from killers, or im the killer, or im trying to escape someone.
i had a recurring dream last night, its one where one of my friends is able to fly planes and takes me to england.(?!?!)

kell, i did go throught this period of really weird dreams a few years back, and i used to wake up from them so upset, and id walk round in a daze the day after, but they went away after a while. i've never screamed from a dream before. although i have woken up in floods of tears which was a bit weird.

have you ever been dreaming, and you must be on the point of waking up, because some object from the conscious realm (like a telophone ringing) has become part of your dream and u mistake it for part of the dream?

Silent Grape

i know this isnt exactly related to dreams, but once i woke up with my hands covered in blood. and it came from absolutely nowhere and wasnt even on the sheets... very scary....

Kell

Thanks for the PM Thaed, but they are not so disturbing that they are causing me conscious anxiety at the moment. If it does go that way, I will cetainly be in touch.