The Encyclopedia of Crystals, Herbs, and New Age Elements: An A to Z Guide to New Age Elements and How to Use Them - Adams Media 2016

Dream Interpretation
The Power of Insight: Divination Systems, Tools, and Practices

ORIGINS

When our bodies go to sleep at night, our minds remain active, producing dreams—whether we remember them or not. Some dreams are bizarre and otherworldly, and others feel so real that we’re surprised (and often relieved) when we wake up. But what, if anything, do dreams mean? Dream interpretation is the practice of assigning meaning to our dreams, which we then apply to our lives in different ways. A dream dictionary is a tool used for interpreting dreams that includes specific images or situations found in dreams, such as a car, a house, a school, falling, or death.

HISTORY/LORE

Humans have always been fascinated by dreams. The ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were a means of divine intervention and had priests interpret their messages. The ancient Greeks took dreams to be omens of things to come. The Austrian neurologist and “father of psychoanalysis,” Sigmund Freud (1856—1939), asserted that dreams are a form of wish fulfillment—subconscious attempts to solve conflicts and act out our deepest impulses. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote that the messages in dreams are disguised in order to get them past the “censor” of the preconscious; thus, dreams have to be decoded or interpreted for their true meanings. The Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung (1875—1961) took Freud’s theory one step further and proposed two approaches to interpreting dreams: the objective and the subjective. In the objective approach, the people in a dream represent who they actually are: Your mother is your mother, your father is your father, etc. In the subjective approach, each person in a dream represents some part of yourself: For example, if there is a mother in a dream, that person represents maternal aspects of the dreamer.

USES

Interpreting your dreams can be fun and enlightening. The first step is to record your dreams in detail so that you don’t forget them. Keeping a dream journal (see the entry in this chapter) is a great way to do this. Next, you can consult a dream dictionary (there are many available online) or a dream interpreter to discover the meaning behind a given dream. Depending on the resource or person you consult, you may get either a vague or specific interpretation. For example, falling in a dream may represent general fears or anxieties about something in your life, or it may mean that a specific part of your life—your job, your relationship—is rapidly moving in the wrong direction.