Dreams and Their Interpretation

4239 Words9 Pages

“Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.”

― Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

"My dream was grey and foggy. It started off at the beach with my 2 year old son and boyfriend. The beach was in a glass box. My son then had an identical twin and they were getting washed away by the water. I yelled for my boyfriend to help me but he refused to help. I finally was able to save my son and the twin from the waves. I Then take my son and walk out of the glass box. I no longer have my son and there is a black spiral staircase. I was walking down it with blackness around me. Then a little doll in a white nightgown was below me on the steps. I felt so afraid that I jumped over the railing and into The darkness."

If it happened while you were awake, you may have some serious problems, but, most likely this scenario, or one like it, would arise in a dream. So what do dreams mean? Well, that depends on who you ask. A Freudian analyst would tell you that the dream represents a subconscious wish. A Jungian analyst would most likely tell you that the characters in your dream represents archetypes. However, psychology is not the only field that studies dreams. You might talk to a proponent of the Activiation-synthesis model of dreaming, a recent biological approach, who would assure you that the dream was nothing more than random firings of neurons in the brain stem, and that it carries no significance at all. Of course, if you are religious you might want to speak to your spiritual leader. Whether you are a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist or Jewish, to name a few, your faith may lead you to look deep into your dream for signs of communication from higher sources. For the more New Age thinker, there are many book...

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... slowly being accepted by even the last holdouts of the religious community.) This has not happened yet with dreams, though. Until it does (if it does at all) the public jury has the right to decide what it will believe. The diverse and stalwart nature of public opinion is a tremendous factor in pushing scientists to take their research further. So go, take a nap, and see what you think.

Bibliography

1. Lewis, James R. The Dream Encyclopedia. Detroit, MI, Second Edition, Print. 2009

2. Hartman, Earnest Sleep And Dreaming. Boston, Ma: Little Brown and Company, INC. 1970

3. Lewis, Naphtali The Interpretation of Dreams and Portents. Toronto, Ont: Samuel Stevens Hakkert and Company. 1976

4. Ferguson, Harvie The Lure Of Dreams. NY, NY Routledge Press. 1996

5. Welsh, Alexander Freud's Wishful Dream Book. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 1994

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