During sleep, the brain helps to find answers to questions that bother us, says dream researcher Deirdre Barrett. She recommends listening to dreams more often and tells how to do it.
Dream interpretation is a common practice in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams reflect repressed human instincts and drives, and Carl Jung was convinced that images from dreams correspond to the archetypes on which the work of our unconscious is built. Harvard psychology professor and sleep researcher Deirdre Barrett believes that the study of dreams not only allows you to look into the deep realms of the psyche, but also provides clues to solve many of life’s problems.
To work with dreams, Deirdre Barrett uses the sleep aging technique. “I borrowed this term from the ancient Greeks,” explains the psychologist. – They had special temples of dreams, where people with ailments came to receive instructions in a dream on how to be treated, or even receive healing. Modern psychologists use the term to refer to any kind of ritual we perform to influence our dreams.”
According to Deirdre Barrett, dreams that revolve around difficult and frightening situations are actually our brains trying to find a way out. “My hunch is that the details of these dreams give us clues about how we should behave,” says Deirdre Barrett. “The difficulty is that our attention in a dream is often attracted to the wrong things that can really be useful to us.” .
Rollo May, Leopold Caligor
“Dreams and Symbols”
The outstanding American psychotherapist, one of the founders of existential therapy, Rollo May readily accepted the proposal of his colleague Leopold Kaligor to analyze the dreams of his patient and her own interpretations of these dreams.
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- Do you hear the signals of the unconscious?
This is because during sleep, our brains decrease the activity of some areas – for example, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for controlling our actions, planning and regulating emotions – and increases the activity of others. On the one hand, our inner censor has no control over our thoughts and feelings, and therefore, in a dream, we may encounter our deepest fears or painful memories. On the other hand, different parts of the brain “communicate” with each other more freely. “It’s kind of like brainstorming in a way,” says Deirdre Barrett. – Free discussion of ideas pushes the boundaries of our thinking, gives space to creativity. The same thing happens in sleep when we let our brains take flight.”
Many thinkers have guessed about the creative potential of sleep. For example, Gandhi used his dreams to find answers to the challenges his people faced. American writer Jack Kerouac used dream images as a source for creativity. Paul McCartney heard a wonderful melody in a dream. Fortunately, he was able to memorize and reproduce it, and the famous song Yesterday was born. “When a solution to a problem or a new idea comes to us in a dream, it seems that some higher power suggested it to us – it is so different from our usual logic of reasoning,” Deirdre Barrett reflects. “Unfortunately, we rely too much on rational thinking, and very little listen to the unconscious workings of the brain. In Eastern cultures and tribal communities, people attach much more importance to their dreams, they are much more likely to listen to what their dreams tell them.
Read more:
- What is the meaning of what we see in a dream?
Here are a few of the steps Deirdre Barrett suggests for dream analysis.
1. Briefly describe your problem.
2. Think about it for a few minutes before you go to bed.
3. Lying in bed, imagine (visualize) the problem in the form of a specific image.
4. Tell yourself that you would like your problem to appear in a dream – before you go to sleep. You can place objects in the bedroom that remind you of the problem.
5. Keep a pen and paper by your bed.
6. After waking up, lie in bed for a while. Remember what you dreamed, try to restore more details of the dream. Write them down in as much detail as possible.