What’s Your Dreaming Style?

There’s a saying that goes “Freudians have Freudian dreams; Jungians have Jungian dreams….” meaning that our dreams will conform and fit into whatever our training or belief systems require. We will, in turn, interpret them according to the rules of our system. The problem is, not all dreams fit into a nice, neat package. Here are three schools of thought, each offering something for your dream interpretation toolkit. Read on or jump to the end to see how you can put some of this into practice.

Freudian Dreams:
Revolutionary in his time, Sigmund Freud used “free association” to get to the hidden meaning of dreams, believing that in dreams, we all have a censor hiding the horrible truth from our conscious mind. He employed his famous couch, where his patients would lie, and let their mind flow with whatever came to them. Dreams held the hidden thoughts and wishes that were considered unacceptable to the ego and were a distortion of our repressed wishes and feelings. It seems as if everything was about sex or your mother (need I mention “phallic symbols”?) and Freud worked very hard to make it all come together. Unfortunately, it didn’t always work, but he brought the value of working with dreams into mainstream thinking.

Jungian Dreams:
Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and colleague of Freud, who took dream work in another direction, thought that we should be working towards individuation, the process of integrating our various parts to become whole. Words now commonly used in everyday language like shadow, persona, collective unconscious (Okay, maybe just in my circles), originated with Jung. Dreams could be expressing wishes (not hidden), but also anything that involves the whole person; one’s life, hopes, beliefs. Dreams were also considered to be compensatory in nature, balancing our one-sided masks that we wear in life. Dreams show us our waking attitudes and offer course corrections, all with the goal of becoming whole. Jung, as with Freud, created a complex system, to be put in this little nutshell of a description and I would encourage you to Google the work of these men to learn more.

Gestalt Dream Work:
Gestalt therapy, popularized by Fritz Perls, holds that all images, characters and objects in a dream are really aspects of the dreamer.  Using the “hot seat”, Perls would have his clients take on the body posture, the voice and attitudes of each part of the dream. Through role-playing and dialogue between the dreamer and the parts and characters of the dream, the dreamer will explore the feelings that emerge. Unlike other schools of dream work, to a Gestalt therapist, it doesn’t matter what the dream actually means rather it’s what the dreamer feels about the dream that matters. The main interest of the therapist will be to have their clients make contact with their real self, their repressed emotions, and withdraw projections—the stuff we lay on others. It’s wonderful work, yet it often leaves the dreamer unsatisfied.

So what’s a dreamer to do? Here are some dream interpretation techniques that will have you unpacking your dream in no time.
 
1. A little free association is good: Allow your mind to wander as you think about cats for example (fill in your own dream characters) and write down all the things you think of when you think of cats. From your associations, feelings will become obvious and then you will have the feeling tones of the dream nailed.

2. Jung’s work always included, “taking up the context” which for us means looking at all our associations together with the reality of our lives, beliefs and conscious attitudes. But this always included an overleaf of our cultural beliefs. So once you have all the details of your associations to the elements in the dream, get a good book on symbols and read about what other cultures and religions believe about any given object. If you look up snakes (serpents) in “An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols” by J.C. Cooper, you will find pages and pages of information throughout history, religion and culture explaining this symbol that is meaningful throughout the world. Chances are, some of these attitudes will work their way into your dreams. These sources are available on line as well.

3. Now for a little Gestalt fun! Let’s say you dream about some people in your office. Put two chairs facing each other and start a conversation. In one seat will be you, the you that you’re familiar with, with all your conscious attitudes. In the other chair put your office mates, one at a time and become them. Move as they do, talk as they do and let them tell you what they are doing in your dream. For example, “Why are you here?” “Why did you do that?” and as them, let them give you some attitude… attitudes that you may not allow yourself to express in waking life.

Dream work isn’t work! Have fun using all the techniques that are available until you nail it. How will you know? You’ll feel it in your body!