Understanding Dreams
1/11/11: A lot of my clients have a fascination with their dreams, and their interpretation has a long history in psychotherapy, and an even longer history in cultures around the world. The following is a brief overview of understanding dreams from two central perspectives, and finishes with a solution to troubling dreams.
Two Perspectives
There are countless perspectives on understanding dreams, but in current mainstream psychology there are two. First, the psychoanalytic tradition of interpreting dreams as expressions from the unconscious that can be interpreted and integrated into our waking life. The other is a more recent scientific perspective that may be a less fun, but and important understanding of what dreams might really be.
Analytic Tradition
If you are someone who believes in dreams having meaning, it would be hard to not to have some Freudian influence on how you interpret them. The basic idea from this perspective, is that during the day, our ego maintains control over our intrapsychic experience (basically everything that is happening in your mind). Certain things are thought about, and other things are removed from consciousness through defenses. In sleep, the ego relinquishes control over the psyche, and therefore the unconscious material has an opportunity to enter into consciousness. The results are little films rich in personal symbolism. Freud also believed that once this material became conscious and integrated in our waking life, then we would cease having dreams with those symbols in those configurations.
Another key part here is making sense of the symbols. Some practitioners would see the actual people and things in dreams and being directly related to the people and things in real life. Another proposes that there are universal symbols that can be understood (Freud was famous for documenting a huge amount of symbols for sex). The other, which comes from a Jungian tradition, is that all the people, things, and symbols in the dreams are representing parts of the self. Therefore, the perspective interpret from can dramatically change the meaning of the dream.
Scientific Explanation
In contrast, recent scientific discoveries have finally provided some great explanations for our dreams, mainly from the labs of Robert Stickgold (Harvard) and Matt Wilson (MIT). So far what we know is that in the early stages of sleep, we are replaying and processing events and experiences from the day. As this progresses, our brains start including any material from our memory that is associated at all with the material from our day. So for example if you went skiing today, you will dream about that first, then have dreams about past ski trips, walking on snow, or building a snowman as a child.
Then, as sleep advances into REM (deep sleep where our more unusual dreams occur), two things appear to happen. First, there begins to be a layering of these memories and the events of the day that start to produce more unusual combinations in our minds. Like skiing down a mountain as a child and crashing into a snowman. When you start to layer in many things from the day and memories associated with features of them, some very unusual combinations and images can be experienced. The main idea with all of this is that it can be seen as a form of learning about what happened during the day, encode those experience into memory, and linking them to other memories and information to be able to apply them during similar situations in the future.
I generally try to blend of these perspectives by acknowledging the scientific explanation for dreams, but still looking for personal meaning within them if it is there. I was a skeptic of dreams being meaningful until I had two in particular that were so striking that they changed I how viewed the people and situations involved, and some of those that my clients have discussed have had incredible relevance to making larger life changes and gaining new understanding.
Bad Dreams
Researchers are also showing that some of the more frequent content of dreams is unpleasant. In these cases there is a new therapeutic technique that seems to be helpful in reducing the likelihood of these dreams reoccurring. The idea is that before you go to bed, imagine the bad dream again, but this time add on a more positive ending of your choice. This should either help you have a better ending in the dream if it occurs again, or you will cease dreaming about it. This to my knowledge has not been tested for people with PTSD, but could possibly be effective.
In conclusion dreams can be fun and interesting to explore, but sometimes may not mean much at all beyond us trying to learn some new things. In any case, processing dreams in therapy can be a rewarding process.
Two Perspectives
There are countless perspectives on understanding dreams, but in current mainstream psychology there are two. First, the psychoanalytic tradition of interpreting dreams as expressions from the unconscious that can be interpreted and integrated into our waking life. The other is a more recent scientific perspective that may be a less fun, but and important understanding of what dreams might really be.
Analytic Tradition
If you are someone who believes in dreams having meaning, it would be hard to not to have some Freudian influence on how you interpret them. The basic idea from this perspective, is that during the day, our ego maintains control over our intrapsychic experience (basically everything that is happening in your mind). Certain things are thought about, and other things are removed from consciousness through defenses. In sleep, the ego relinquishes control over the psyche, and therefore the unconscious material has an opportunity to enter into consciousness. The results are little films rich in personal symbolism. Freud also believed that once this material became conscious and integrated in our waking life, then we would cease having dreams with those symbols in those configurations.
Another key part here is making sense of the symbols. Some practitioners would see the actual people and things in dreams and being directly related to the people and things in real life. Another proposes that there are universal symbols that can be understood (Freud was famous for documenting a huge amount of symbols for sex). The other, which comes from a Jungian tradition, is that all the people, things, and symbols in the dreams are representing parts of the self. Therefore, the perspective interpret from can dramatically change the meaning of the dream.
Scientific Explanation
In contrast, recent scientific discoveries have finally provided some great explanations for our dreams, mainly from the labs of Robert Stickgold (Harvard) and Matt Wilson (MIT). So far what we know is that in the early stages of sleep, we are replaying and processing events and experiences from the day. As this progresses, our brains start including any material from our memory that is associated at all with the material from our day. So for example if you went skiing today, you will dream about that first, then have dreams about past ski trips, walking on snow, or building a snowman as a child.
Then, as sleep advances into REM (deep sleep where our more unusual dreams occur), two things appear to happen. First, there begins to be a layering of these memories and the events of the day that start to produce more unusual combinations in our minds. Like skiing down a mountain as a child and crashing into a snowman. When you start to layer in many things from the day and memories associated with features of them, some very unusual combinations and images can be experienced. The main idea with all of this is that it can be seen as a form of learning about what happened during the day, encode those experience into memory, and linking them to other memories and information to be able to apply them during similar situations in the future.
I generally try to blend of these perspectives by acknowledging the scientific explanation for dreams, but still looking for personal meaning within them if it is there. I was a skeptic of dreams being meaningful until I had two in particular that were so striking that they changed I how viewed the people and situations involved, and some of those that my clients have discussed have had incredible relevance to making larger life changes and gaining new understanding.
Bad Dreams
Researchers are also showing that some of the more frequent content of dreams is unpleasant. In these cases there is a new therapeutic technique that seems to be helpful in reducing the likelihood of these dreams reoccurring. The idea is that before you go to bed, imagine the bad dream again, but this time add on a more positive ending of your choice. This should either help you have a better ending in the dream if it occurs again, or you will cease dreaming about it. This to my knowledge has not been tested for people with PTSD, but could possibly be effective.
In conclusion dreams can be fun and interesting to explore, but sometimes may not mean much at all beyond us trying to learn some new things. In any case, processing dreams in therapy can be a rewarding process.
