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Dream Interpretation, Psychology


Dream Interpretation, Psychology

By ghostghost | 12872 Reads |
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Dream Interpretation; Exploring the Subconscious

In this article, I’m trying to summarize a very large book. C. G. Jung’s book “Man and His Symbols” is required reading if you would like to learn more. Try to get a large book, so that you can clearly see the pictures. Audio books and pocket-sized books will not work well, because there are so many pictures.

Hopefully by reading this article, a second part of you will awaken. Like a cat sleeping in front of a mouse hole, that second part of you will still be awake only enough to capture the ideas that appear. These ideas and symbols can not be easily gathered consciously, unless you are very in tune with your subconscious. I will be analyzing one of my dreams in a few different ways, and along the way giving you the vocabulary to analyze your own. In order to remember your dreams, I recommend you try to bring them to your conscious mind in some way. Either by talking about them as soon as you wake up, or by writing them down and dating them. The same symbolism can be found in old memories and psychedelics – anytime the subconscious wants to communicate. You should ask yourself why you have chosen to remember those memories, and what the images symbolize. The value of understanding your symbols should be obvious. Imagine not being able to access half of your own mind. If you couldn’t, could you ever be sure of yourself? You might never acknowledge that a part of you is objecting very loudly to your actions. The idea here is to play the game with a full deck.

The Dream: I am running through the forest, following a cleared out deer trail. My dad is in front of me, and my girlfriend is behind me. We leave the woods, and continue running along a sandy beach. The beach is divided by a small river. There is a narrow bridge of sand going over the river, so out path is never cut off. We cross it, and continue on a much rockier beach. My girlfriend is having a hard time keeping up, so I pace her. As I’m running along side her I become slightly more conscious that I’m dreaming, and decide to take my girlfriend a little inland and give this dream a happy ending. As we start going inland, my father keeps running up the beach. We try going behind a very large, smooth, black rock, but we can still see my father. My father is far ahead of us, but still visible. The dream ends with us clothed and a little disappointed, but still resting by the rock.

The Conscious Interpretation: Don’t sell yourself short, you are somewhat conscious. Often when you try to “control” the dream, you’re about as in control as a person who orders their dog to do what it is doing. But there is still a voice. The conscious interpretation would see the figures from my history at face-level, and give a 5 out of 10 rating on the dream because it didn’t end with sex. I’ll give it a couple points, because at least I remembered the dream! Once I analyze the subconscious aspects of the dream there is much more literal meaning. Some of this I don’t mention because it is personal, and the interpretation would be too long.

The Symbolic Interpretation: I associate the woods and the beach with “home”. This symbol is unique to me. Every single one of your symbols will be unique to you. I see it as home because the place I grew up in was a forested island. My girlfriend and I have had 3 homes together. There are also 3 settings: a forest, sandy beach, and rocky beach. We always have had to hide if we wanted privacy, and could never express our selves freely – even with something like wanting to play guitar or sing, because of roommates. The rock is an archetype. An archetype is a repeating thought, action, or pattern that can occur regardless of the age, culture, or people (like the archetype of a hero, everyone knows what it is regardless of where they came from). A rock often symbolizes solidarity, shelter, and the essence of something

I like to think of the shadow like the shadow of the moon, while the conscious mind would be the visible side of the moon. The whole moon is the mind. With these symbols, the shadow can communicate to the conscious mind. With the above symbolic interpretation, it’s a very hopeful message to me. Because even though my girlfriend and I are running, trying to hide, not able to do what we want, and we still stay together (the rock is shielding, solidarity).

Deeper into the Shadow: When I looked at the dream in terms of my animus and anima, I realized it was a compressed version of my entire life. The anima is like yin, while the animus is like yang. In this case, my girlfriend represented the anima, and my father the animus. The animus is what tells me to keep on soldering on, learning, working towards my goals, and getting good grades. The anima would represent my social, creative, intuitive side, and tells me to not overlook the present moment.

In the beginning I start in the forest, but there is a path. I think that in the beginning of my life I didn’t have any choice but to play along and see things through. I may have thought about suicide a lot even when I was as young as 3 or 4, but I decided my only worthwhile option was to push on and become better than those I saw. From the age of 8-16, it was easy living, which could be represented by the sandy beach. 17-18 was a very reckless and dangerous series of close calls and blind luck. At this point the beach narrowed to a very thin point. After 18 came the “real life”, jobs, self-studying, and rocky beach. The timeline and dream end at the present day.

One of the conflicts in my life right now is my studies. I’m going to school and studying something I don’t want to, because I know I’ll make a lot of money in the field. Digital forensics is interesting, but I really don’t feel like finding out what perverts are up to (child porn). Likewise hacking is interesting, but I really don’t care about helping millionaire CEO’s make more money. Lately I’ve been spending more time doing things that I like, such as guitar and programming. I won’t make any big money with these things, but I now know I shouldn’t abandon this side of me. I would be turning my back on my feelings (girlfriend) and true foundation (rock), just to keep on soldering on (father). What gives it even more meaning is that I haven’t lost sight of my animus, and I could easily catch up if I needed. Another literal observation: until I met my girlfriend, I was very out of touch with my anima. My days of creativity and imagination used to be nothing more than a memory that was already behind me. Something weaker, inefficient, and a drag on my goals.

Conclusion: Hopefully you have some tools for listening to your all of your mind now. Nothing is a static straight-shot with the mind. There are many more possible interpretations with this dream. I personally believe that the reason why these images were selected is because they follow the same pattern or underlying algorithm shared by multiple things; the symbols were playfully collaged together by my mind.

“If we could just remember our dreams, psychedelics would become obsolete.” - Terrance McKenna in his lecture “Eros & Eschaton” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLCsEnbi2oM

Terrance McKenna also said that DMT (the chemical that gives us our dreams) has the archetype of the carnival. You can see the playful collage in this DMT-inspired art in the link here. http://www.zaporacle.com/wp-content/uploads/Andrew41.jpg

Comments
ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

If a mod would be kind enough to help me edit this article, I would be grateful. There doesn't seem to be an "edit" function anymore, and there are several changes that should be made. There are points that are not made, points that are not as clear as they could be, and the title was messed up.

ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

Never mind with the title being wrong. That part is ok.

korg's avatar
korg 13 years ago

Got it all fixed up, Nice read. I do my best thinking while I'm sleeping I even keep a pen and paper beside me to jot things down. Try to figure them out later.

stealth-'s avatar
stealth- 13 years ago

Interesting article. Very good quality, although a little of it seemed to be simply "finding what you were wanting to find". I've always wanted to try things like that, but unfortunately I'm not a person who remembers their dreams very often.

ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

I did cut out the earlier parts of the dream, and some of my own interpretation because of the length. I can't cover an hour of material in 2 pages. Dreams are not the only way the subconscious communicates. There is always that voice ready to make a "playful collage" and see the intuitive patterns in life. There are many ways to help you remember dreams too. If that's something you want should find material on "lucid dreams" or self-hypnosis. You can also become as intuitive as possible in your waking life (yoga, fasting, music, dancing, etc). There is also of course the chemical side of it. Listen to Terrance McKenna and read the book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" for that side.

spyware's avatar
spyware 13 years ago

I've heard that keeping a dream diary will improve your ability to get and remember dreams. Any truth in this?

spyware's avatar
spyware 13 years ago

Oh, I've read over the part you say you jot your stuff down. Still, if you write down your dreams, does it improve your ability to "get" them?

korg's avatar
korg 13 years ago

Yes it does actually. A lot of times I'll be thinking of something I'm working on before I go to sleep and get ideas while I sleep or just come up with stuff. You often forget some important parts of your dreams that can be useful. Most of the reason I don't sleep all night is waking up with an idea and going and doing it. :@

ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

@ MoshBat: waking dreams/hypnotic states are much more consciously guided, so they can't have the same meanings. With my experiences with that, I always saw it is being very mechanistic. I would need to want to go into the state, and I would need to create the imagery with my conscious mind. Using the moon dark and visible sides of the moon as a metaphor of the mind, I would say those things only move the shadow's boundaries - not dig into the core where the anima/anumus/self are. Dreams can't be meaningless though, because you don't see species survive natural selection who waste energy on useless features. And you wouldn't see something useless in other animals like dogs. The reason why I think the messages come as symbols, is because symbols are very fractal in nature. with fractals, scale doesn't matter. This is how 10 minutes of a dream can represent a time-line of someone's entire life. Networks are also very fractal in nature - like our bodies/brains.

ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

The same symbols are also found in other ways that the subconscious can communicate, like ink blot tests. In my opinion though, dreams and drugs are a much funner and revealing methods for going about it. And thanks for the support guys. It means a lot =)

ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

I didn't see that I missed your last part Moshbat. I found it interesting as soon as I was able to apply it to this dream about a month ago. Before I had read a little of Freud's work, and he never acknowledges that everyone's symbols are unique to them. So teeth = feeling unclean, red = life, and so on. I couldn't confirm his ideas with my own senses, so I passed up the whole dreaming thing. To me Jung's methods seemed a lot more intuitive, and you can confirm everything he says with your own senses before you even analyze a dream. Achetype, anamus, anima, shadow, and the idea that we each have unique symbol keys are all Jung's ideas. These ideas are manifesting all the time.

-god-'s avatar
-god- 13 years ago

nice, you ever thought of studying eastern philosophy on yin and yang? it turns out some very interesting results. simply put, it symbolizes balance, with the yin associated with soft, dark, feminine, water, submissive etc and the yang resembling the opposites, hard, masculine, fire and dominance. only with both of these things will there be harmony, a man needs a woman to create a child, water will put out fire. it's all very interesting and probably worth looking into.

ghost's avatar
ghost 13 years ago

I haven't at all. However from reading Jung, I know that there is no way he could have been ignorant about some of the Eastern philosophies, shamanic cultures, or some of the physical/mental potentials of psychedelics.

Arabian's avatar
Arabian 13 years ago

Gypsy magic on a hacking site…. I'm okay with this. :3

ghost's avatar
ghost 12 years ago

thx for showing the way you interpret your dreams. tip for remembering dreams: when you notice that u are awake, stay still and ask your self what have i dreamt? if you move you'll get more concious and it'll be harder to remember.

ghost's avatar
ghost 12 years ago

efore i read this article i could not for the life of me remember my dreams, thanks bro! :happy:

ghost's avatar
ghost 12 years ago

Before*

Mtutnid's avatar
Mtutnid 11 years ago

Holy shit. A lot of people on this site do black magic. Interpretation of dreams is seeing what you want to see. You can find a symbol in anything, but it isn\'t actually there. You give something that has no meaning a meaning. Basically your article is full of spiritual shamans shit. Nicely written though. And yes dreams do have a function. You can get ideas while sleeping, but they come directly, you also go through what you have learned that day in a dream so they are anything but useless.