Lesson One
Dream Interpretation
"Dreams are a conversation with oneself, a dialogue of symbols and images that take place between the unconscious and conscious levels of the mind."
David Fontana
Our daily lives are made up of living in two worlds, the waking world with its laws of gravity, logic, social behavior, and the sleep world with its mysteries, symbols, and illogical behaviors.
Historically, most of the world's cultures have believed dreams come from an outside source, as visitations from the gods. The Egyptians believed that dreams carried messages from good and bad spirits, the Greeks built special shrines to serve as dream parishes. The Bible abounds with prophetic dreams, which usually provide some worthy dream interpreter with the opportunity for spiritual or professional recognition.
Ancient Jewish tradition foreseen modern dream theory by recognizing that the life-circumstances of the dreamer are as important in interpretation as the dream content itself. Otherwise, the dreamer's life, what they do for a living, family life, and the experiences of their day.
The Egyptians understood dreams in terms of opposites; happy dreams meant disaster while nightmares could foretell better times. Dream symbols were defined either rhyming similarities between word sounds, or through the modern method of association. They thought dreams contained messages from both good and evil spirits. By ingesting herbal potion or reciting spells, a dreamer would attempt to persuade the good spirit to hinder the bad spirit.
The Chinese sages recognized that consciousness had different levels, and when interpreting dreams they took into account the physical condition and horoscope of the dreamer as well as of the time of year.
The Hindu beliefs that some symbols are universal while some are personal to the dreamer. This idea comes close to what Carl Jung found later.
For Freud the unconscious, or "id", was primarily the seat of desires and impulses, mostly of the sexual nature, that are usually repressed by the conscious mind. The Swiss born psychologist Carl Jung worked closely with Freud, but left him because he felt dreams had more to them than sexual content.
Jung's views on dreams and on the operation of the mind in general form an important counterpoint (and many agree) to those of Freud. Jung developed a theory of what he called "collective unconscious", the belief that the mind contains a large internal reservoir of symbolism drawn upon by the men and women across all cultures, in their dreams and their deepest imaginings. Otherwise, Jung believed that during sleep, the brain uses certain symbols and these symbols the brain uses are used by everyone's brain, no matter where you live or your cultural background. These symbols are universal.
Although many new techniques of dream interpretation have continued today, most still draw heavily upon the work of Freud and mostly Jung. The greatest breakthrough in dream research was the discovery in 1953 of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the most vivid episodes of dreaming occur. Much work still needs to be down to totally understand dreams.
True or False
1. You could say we live in two worlds, the waking and the sleeping.
2. Historically, most cultures thought dreams came from outside sources.
3. The Bible has no references to dreams.
4. Freud located dreams in the unconscious.
5. Carl Jung was German born.
6. Ancient Jewish tradition believed that life-circumstances effect our dreams.
7. To the Egyptians, good dreams meant bad things.
8. The Chinese did not use your horoscope.
9. Jung developed a theroy about the "collective unconscious".
10. In 1955, researchers discovered REM.
