Why should we care about dreams?
Aren’t dreams just nonsense… just neurons firing randomly?
Evolution has selected to dream.
Sleep researchers tell us that all humans and many animals dream multiple times each night. Dream sleep is so important that experimental subjects who were prevented from experiencing REM sleep, the part of sleep in which dreams occur, began to hallucinate after only a couple of nights of deprivation. They actually start dreaming when they are awake. This that important to dream The ability to dream has been evolutionarily selected because it fulfills a vital function in human life.
Human beings of all times and places have examined dreams with interest and attention. Mythical and religious characters are depicted valuing and being influenced or changed by dreams. The ancient Greeks dedicated temples and trained priests and priestesses to interpret dreams. Sigmund Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, from which he developed most other modern therapies, called dreams “The royal road to the unconscious” and Moses Maimonides, the famous Jewish philosopher is famous for saying that “A dream without examining is like an unopened letter.
Psychoanalyst Paul Lipmann (2008) offers us the following list of what he feels dreams offer:
- They pose and solve problems.
- They express emotion… subtle and strong.
- They can express in pictures and stories those feelings and experiences that are more difficult to think about or talk about when they are awake.
- They may express hidden feelings about one’s relationship with powerful and less powerful others.
- They can both dissociate and unite aspects of experiences, traumatic or otherwise.
- They can help cover up the pain and embarrassment or they can tear away a scab of defense.
- They portray our current problems, past dilemmas, and future possibilities.
- They satisfy wishes.
- They can give expression to unlived life.
Dreams are unconscious products.
Cognitive psychologists tell us that we can have about seven (give or take two if your memory is exceptionally good or poor) “chunks” of information in our minds at once.
That’s seven digits in a phone number, seven items on a shopping list. That’s not much, and yet we have access to a vast reservoir of memories, concepts, and emotional experiences that are effortlessly and seamlessly invoked in that famous set of seven shards. And just as smoothly, those concepts not in immediate use are slipped away and put away. It’s a really amazing system when you think about it… effortless and taken for granted. But what is the mechanism that goes down and extracts the information that is needed? Most of the time it is not “conscious intention”.
Unconscious processing is a natural and necessary part of thinking.
unconscious processing forever supports and facilitates conscious thought. It is the system that receives, organizes and makes accessible all the concepts and experiences that we possess. It’s simple impossible be aware of everything we know or consciously make all the associations between facts that we must make to make sense of our experience.
It is important to note that related facts, ideas, and feelings may have accumulated throughout life, arriving at different times and from different life experiences. The conscience, which is busy deciding what to make for dinner, rarely takes the time to sniff around and explore all the potential associations… even with pressing life problems.
Fortunately we have an alternative system to make this work… psychoanalysts call this the personal unconscious . Cognitive researchers call it “automatic processing,” “implicit thought systems,” or even “deep psychological processes.” No one tries to pretend that consciousness is big enough or strong enough to do all the work on its own.
When we are worried about some aspect of our lives or relationships, the unconscious continues to work on the problem while the conscious takes care of other things. Anyone who has had an “Aha!” So far you have had the experience of things unconsciously coming together and presenting themselves as a now obvious fact or solution.
Sleep on it!!
The unconscious tries to offer us greater access to what we know.
One of the main ways in which the unconscious is affirmatively integrated into our lives is through dreams. Dreams contain attempts by the unconscious to bring us information and present arguments that elaborate or counteract the conscious attitude.
Our feelings about situations and people are often more complicated and nuanced than positive thinking, common sense, or good manners support.
We have mixed feelings about most experiences.
- The birth of a child brings joy but also a restriction of freedom.
- We love and admire our best friend, but her success makes us jealous.
- We think we want to study to be a lawyer, but is it really our father’s dream for us?
Understanding our dreams helps us understand ourselves more fully.
- When the conscious attitude to accept quite well with the unconscious, the dreams will underline, support or strengthen the belief and resolve…support a feeling of trust or “rightness”.
- when the conscience overvalues dreams of a person or situation can be reduced in size by portraying it in an unpleasant or inferior light.
- when the conscience don’t value enough a person, situation, or goal the unconscious can elevate the idea, symbolically representing it as appropriately precious.
- Dreams can add new insights to consciousness, raise questions, or suggest goals or things to avoid.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Much of the information we receive about the world is visual. Almost all important experiences have a visual memory of associated people, places, and things. Since most of life’s knowledge and ideas are tied in some way to visual images, it is not really surprising that images are the material the unconscious uses to represent its ideas.
Dream images may seem strange at first glance, but they are often shown to be extremely accurate visual metaphors of a situation that concerns the dreamer.
A very personal point of view.
- There is no “one size fits all” in dream interpretation. The images in dreams are often mysterious and strange, they can refer to other times and places or show the dreamer as someone completely different from what they really are.
- Dream dictionaries should be used sparingly and treated primarily as sources of inspiration.
- The dreamer is the only person who can tell if an interpretation “works.”
dreams in psychotherapy
A psychologist working with dreams in therapy draws on her knowledge of the client’s life situation and life history, as well as her training in typical human response patterns. She works with her clients to understand dream imagery in relation to what the client is struggling with or has experienced in life. Together they try to understand what relevance and particular associations these images have for this particular individual.
- Dream work in therapy contributes to the process of deepening self-knowledge.
- understanding of the full range of his desires and responses allows the client to invent new possibilities for action and decision… to change his life so that his desires and his actions are more congruent.
- Dreamworks deepens therapeutic intimacy and creates a collaborative atmosphere between therapist and client.
Brief dream-focused therapy
Psychotherapeutic dream work can be part of an ongoing therapy or can be useful as a short-term process that focuses on understanding a particular situation, for example:
- In normal transition periods, such as the passages of life,
- In times of crisis,
- When difficult decisions are being considered
- When you have to assimilate radically new life experiences.
- Sometimes a particularly striking dream or series of dreams to evoke a desire to question or understand a current or past situation or experience.
At these times, it may be helpful to consider working with a psychologist or therapist to provide guidance and emotional support and help ground you as you explore the questions.
that raises the sleep test.
Dreams are part of our system of unconscious reorganization and creative problem solving. They take the essence of a problem situation out of the clutter of daily experience so that we can see it more clearly. They remind us of what we have almost forgotten, or what we have tried to forget and bring together ideas that we knew separately but click and create a new understanding when put together. They help us see what we really want and point the way. path to future possibilities that arise from past experiences.
