Do you consider dream interpretations woo?

[sg1985]

Occasionally I like to look up things in a dream dictionary and read the interpretations. I do it mostly for fun, I don't take any of it super seriously, and sometimes it makes me consider points of view that I hadn't before.

It has been proven the people dream, there's no arguing that so it's not a matter of whether it exists or not. However, I was reading a book about dream interpretations and it quickly became hardcore woo about dreams directing your life and spirits talking to you through them and zodiacs were thrown in there too.

The site I normally go to is Dreammoods and it's pretty factual and balanced.

For example (from the FAQ, emphasis mine):

Is it true that some dreams can predict the future?

There is no scientific proof that dreams can predict and foretell the future. Yes, many people have had dreams that eventually came true afterwards. This can be explained in how we unconsciously gather little information here and there and when you have a dream, it puts together all this unconscious information before you are consciously able to do so. In short, you unconsciously already know what was going to happen and it only appears as if the dream had predicted the future. Another explanation is that such dream are mere coincidences or is the faulty memory of the dreamer.

Any thoughts?

 

[Starthinker]

I've found that if instead of trying to interpret my dreams based on past events I actually apply my dreams to the very next day they make more sense. Not sure where, but I read a theory that dreams just prepare you for what you are anticipating the next day. It's not prophetic, just trial runs for what you are anticipating. I don't believe for a moment that anything can be predicted from them but I do think they reflect past experiences and maybe subconscience thoughts and feelings, it just applies them to the next day. I also think that dreams are a combination of many things so all theories should be looked at and perhaps applied in small doses.

 

[fishbait]

I had a dream where I ate a giant marshmallow. The next day I discovered my pillow was missing.

 

[legne]

I enjoy interpreting dreams, it's fun - like solving crosswords. I once dreamt that my house was surrounded by evil, talking cats, and some of them were building a machine for CERN, I saw the blueprints and everything.
I couldn't find any interpretations for any of the symbols.

There's so much woo around dreams I don't know where to start. Lucid dreaming for example, according to woos lucid dreaming indicates that you have the ability to astral project. Right-o!
A girl on a forum posted a thread where she described a dream; she was in a city she didn't recognize and it was full of people, including her late grandmother, and they were telling her that she shouldn't be there. So she, of course, asked if she had visited a "ghost town" of some sort.

Some people genuinely believe that dreams can predict the future. As if fortune telling by dreams is any less mumbo jumbo than by using a crystal ball.
Deja vu plays a large role in this, I assume. I've had quite powerful and long lasting deja vu's where I couldn't help but think to myself "I could swear I've dreamt this". Luckily I don't have a need to convince myself that I can predict the future.

I had a dream where I ate a giant marshmallow. The next day I discovered my pillow was missing.

:/

 

[St.Michael]

I had a dream where I ate a giant marshmallow. The next day I discovered my pillow was missing.

I had a dream I was eating my pillow and when I woke up all my marshmallows were missing!

I do find the same themes do occur when I'm in a certain mental state. When I'm depressed I get similar dreams that I'm arguing or being assaulted, sometimes I'm the one doing to assaulting.

It could be that everyone's unconcious mind has similar schemas in dealing with everyday life and these themes have been picked up on by Woo-woo people to promote what they're trying to sell?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

My ignorant, but skeptical opinion is that since there are so many possible ways to interpret every dream... there will inevitably be lots of guesswork involved.

 

[Moochie]

I found how psychotherapist Fritz Perls used dreams in his therapy rather fascinating. He would have clients role-play every item in a dream and have the client converse with things in the dream -- be they animate or inanimate -- as a means for raising the person's awareness of what was troubling them. It appeared to be quite effective.

I think it makes sense, too. Since you are the creator of your dreams, it seems silly to look for "interpretations" from other quarters.


M.

 

[Cainkane1]

I have very lucid dreams every night because I take a sleeping medication called trazadon for insomnia. They are very realisitc and sometimes alarmingly so. Its easy to see whats bothering you when on that medication because thats what you dream about. Its a sort of LSD tranqualizer.

 

[roger]

I found how psychotherapist Fritz Perls used dreams in his therapy rather fascinating. He would have clients role-play every item in a dream and have the client converse with things in the dream -- be they animate or inanimate -- as a means for raising the person's awareness of what was troubling them. It appeared to be quite effective.

I think it makes sense, too. Since you are the creator of your dreams, it seems silly to look for "interpretations" from other quarters.


M.

Well, I can imagine a therapist having clients role-play the therapist's dreams, and having it result in the client becoming aware of what was troubling them. Or a Shakespeare play. Or anything.

 

[MRC_Hans]

I have certain dream patterns that will resurface occasionally, obviously reflecting my current mood or worries (or pleasures). Dreams are not well understood, but it appears clear to me that they are very kaleidoscopic, and the overall impression you remember from a dream consists of an interpretation that can obviously depend on real-life feelings and thoughts.

So, IMHO, yes dream interpretation can serve a purpose, but it is an area fraught with woo.

Hans

 

[Roma]

For years I had nightmares that some one was choking me and I couldn't breath, then I would wake up gasping.
Turns out I have sleep apnea.

 

[SnuffSnuff]

Some people genuinely believe that dreams can predict the future. As if fortune telling by dreams is any less mumbo jumbo than by using a crystal ball.

I once believed this back in High School and thought I was some kind of seer until a girl next to me said that she has dreams that come true out loud, and then half the class started to talk about their mysterious powers.

To quote Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater, "Oh Z'no!"

Now I know better

 

[ExMinister]

After 20 years of working with dreams and about 4 of frequent lucid ones, these days I've concluded that we must have a stream of consciousness type thinking go on all night long that is similar to what goes on throughout the day. So some of our dreams just out-picture our worries and concerns and emotions or whatever it is we are mentally still rambling on about throughout the night. From this perspective, it makes sense that some interpretations will tend to be true for more than one person; perhaps certain symbols are so common among us that we tend to out-picture similar emotions/concerns in similar ways. Nothing woo about that.

I like Gillian Holloway's The Complete Dream Book. She's a Ph.D and her work with the symbolism behind the imagery that is common to many of us is insightful and helpful to me. Unfortunately, the last chapter is called Psychic Factors, and there it diverges into woo. Otherwise, a good book.

 

[The Professor]

I agree that dreams may have something to do with the future. Just as your mind tries to predict the future for 1/4 of a second or so (ie. When playing catch) almost all day long, your subconscious has virtually hours every night to anticipate what may happen the next day.

 

[fuelair]

Occasionally I like to look up things in a dream dictionary and read the interpretations. I do it mostly for fun, I don't take any of it super seriously, and sometimes it makes me consider points of view that I hadn't before.

It has been proven the people dream, there's no arguing that so it's not a matter of whether it exists or not. However, I was reading a book about dream interpretations and it quickly became hardcore woo about dreams directing your life and spirits talking to you through them and zodiacs were thrown in there too.

The site I normally go to is Dreammoods and it's pretty factual and balanced.

For example (from the FAQ, emphasis mine):

Is it true that some dreams can predict the future?

There is no scientific proof that dreams can predict and foretell the future. Yes, many people have had dreams that eventually came true afterwards. This can be explained in how we unconsciously gather little information here and there and when you have a dream, it puts together all this unconscious information before you are consciously able to do so. In short, you unconsciously already know what was going to happen and it only appears as if the dream had predicted the future. Another explanation is that such dream are mere coincidences or is the faulty memory of the dreamer.

Any thoughts?

A good psychiatrist can almost certainly use knowledge of a patient to interpret dreams of that patient assuming the patient remembers and reports accurately those dreams. I have done that a couple of times (kind of showing off/fing around) and in both cases the persons agreed my interpretation made a lot of sense to them. It helped a lot that I knew about the situations that they were undergoing at each of the times.

 

[Roma]

A good psychiatrist can almost certainly use knowledge of a patient to interpret dreams of that patient assuming the patient remembers and reports accurately those dreams.

Sure, and a bad psychiatrist can do that too. Or maybe I should say "especially" a bad psychiatrist can do that too.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

After 20 years of working with dreams and about 4 of frequent lucid ones, these days I've concluded that we must have a stream of consciousness type thinking go on all night long that is similar to what goes on throughout the day. So some of our dreams just out-picture our worries and concerns and emotions or whatever it is we are mentally still rambling on about throughout the night. From this perspective, it makes sense that some interpretations will tend to be true for more than one person; perhaps certain symbols are so common among us that we tend to out-picture similar emotions/concerns in similar ways. Nothing woo about that.

This sounds about right.

I find the things I dream of mostly (or rather, most memorably) are things that I'm worried about or things that feel unresolved (like after an exchange of words or something I feel guilty about). Otherwise, it's just usually minutia from the day, or maybe thinking about something that I was thinking about during the day.

Once in a while I get amazingly great narrative dreams. I guess they're semi-lucid because I am an outside observer (sometimes aware that I'm inventing it as I go along), and sometimes I'm one or another character in the thing.

I'm sure people do share some common symbols (about as much as we share a language anyway), but I'd heed the words of an Adlerian therapist I once knew: no matter what the interpretation, if it doesn't feel like it's "right" to the person who had the dream, you can scrap it. It seems like sometimes words, symbols, meanings are just so personal that they don't follow any convention.

So I myself am leery of people who claim there's a black-and-white interpretation dream elements (especially like you'd find in the dictionary). Maybe running horses symbolize power, beauty, freedom (or whatever) for most people, but my brother-in-law who was nearly killed by a kick to the jaw from a horse as a child probably wouldn't have the same kind of associations.

 

[Miss_Kitt]

I think that if you work with a trusted friend or a good psych, you can find some value in interpreting dreams that feel important when you wake up, especially those that are so memorable and disturbing or elating that you think about them for some time.

I used to tell my counselor that I always knew when a dream was "A Message from Subconscious Central" and we'd talk about it. I've also had a couple of dreams that were memorable for being 1)Really long, detailed, and scary, or 2)Really long, detailed, and good, or 3)So f****ng weird that, even while dreaming, you think, "That's so strange!"

I occasionally have "night terrors", and mostly I don't remember what I was dreaming except for the last moment before I awaken--which is a skeletal figure reaching for my face with its bony hand. I always know when I've had one, though, because I wake up with a sore throat and a big adrenaline rush going on, and my husband is freaked out because I've been screaming. It used to bother me that I generally don't know what I'm screaming about; but now, I'm glad. It's bad enough it wakes me (and my poor hubby) up; it doesn't have to haunt me with imagery later.

Dream symbols are highly personal, and I am suspicious of the books that claim that "the sea means passion" or whatever. I know when I've been working on figuring an important dream out, there was always an "Aha!" moment when the right meaning was assigned to something. It's very clear when you've nailed it.

So, overall, I think it's a field riddled with woo, but you can work out some of your personal symbolism if you want to. Just remember, it won't necessarily work that way in your next dream!

Just my thoughts, MK

 

[supercorgi]

I have very strange and vivid dreams most of the time (flying seems to be a frequent theme). I had to stop taking Chantrix (the stop smoking drug) because it started giving me nightmares and very disturbing dreams. Dreams in which I had a task to do and people were actively working against me so I couldn't get anything done. They were sort of paranoid dreams. I almost never have nightmares. Most of my dreams are quite interesting.

 

[Bikewer]

Neuroscientists tell us that dreams are the result of your brain attempting to make sense of random neural firing or outside inputs during sleep. Often the dream "storyline" will incorporate outside stimuli, as you'll be aware once you wake and become aware of the TV being on or whatever.
If you look at half-a-dozen books on interpretation from the library, you'll likely find half-a-dozen different notions as to what things "mean".

We had a local group in the St.Louis area who styled themselves The School Of Metaphysics. Dream interpretation was a big item on their agenda, and they would often appear on local radio talk shows.
They had developed their own symbolism; for instance if you were in a car that was supposed to represent your life journey.... That sort of thing.

I would assign very little credibility to interpretation.

As my old MRC buddy Hans notes, I too have certain "themes" that show up frequently.
Often I'm at "work", but instead of the university I will be policing some fantastical factory or other setting that's totally unlike my actual place of work.

I have what I call "fishing" dreams, where I am near some body of water which is populated with large and vaguely threatening fishy critters....

And also "UFO" dreams, where I'll become aware of large numbers of fantastical flying objects, which will cause great interest but not fear from all present.

I credit this to many years of science-fiction and horror reading....