Should you tell your dreams?

Freud’s statement that in every human dream there are motives that are unsatisfied and repressed from consciousness (in particular, sexual desires or the desire for death), opens up possibilities for a wide variety of interpretations of the images that arise in dreams. These images can indeed affect a wide range of associations, and it is often impossible to either convincingly prove or convincingly refute such interpretations of dreams that can lead to serious conclusions in the process of psychotherapy. The psychoanalyst’s explanation may even sometimes reflect his own psychological problems, transferred to the client who told his dream. And when Stanislav Jerzy Lec warned: “Don’t tell your dreams to anyone. What if psychoanalysts come to power?” – he may have warned not only against the fact that the narrator could be too well understood and subjected to general condemnation or even punishment, but also against the opposite situation – from the fact that an erroneous judgment would be made by someone whose competence is not questioned, and the conclusion cannot be justifiably refuted. Even if the dream is truly understood correctly, wouldn’t it be better if what is understood remains a secret, both from yourself and from others? ..

Sometimes it seems to psychologists that they are already well versed in the problems that manifest themselves in dreams, and their interpretation of their own dream is the only correct one. But a person, no matter how educated and professional he may be, cannot be an analyst for himself. Then what happened to one of my acquaintances, a world-famous psychologist, very famous for his truly outstanding discoveries, may happen. True, he did not study psychoanalysis. He did not study sleep and dreams either, so I was surprised when I read his article in which he inserted his own dream. He saw in a dream that he was playing poker with friends. He had very good cards in his hands, solid trump cards, he looked at them with pleasure, anticipating a win, and then laid them out on the card table. But to his amazement there they all immediately turned into small cards.

After reading this, I was taken aback. I was not so much struck by the dream itself (I knew this man well and could have imagined something similar), but that he, a high-class professional psychologist, put it on public display in a magazine article. For, unlike many dreams, which are really not amenable to unambiguous interpretation, this dream certainly reflected the problem of this person – uncertainty in his achievements, in his potential, in his own “trump cards”. This dream reflected surprisingly clearly the inner problem of the author, which I knew about. I am sure that if someone else told him such a dream, he, as a psychologist, would immediately give him a correct explanation.

But here’s how he commented on his own dream: “It’s very simple – the dream reflects my love of poker.” Such an explanation means that the author’s defense mechanisms worked, which did not allow him to apply the natural explanation to himself. His self-doubt against the backdrop of high popularity was too painful for him to be conscious, and he defended himself so reliably against this realization that he was without any doubt ready to acquaint everyone with this dream. If he had even the slightest uncertainty about the correctness of his explanation of what he saw, he certainly would not publish it, as a person at the same time very ambitious and vulnerable, sensitive to any comments when discussing his scientific achievements.

If the interpretations of our dreams by psychologists sometimes look dubious and even arbitrary in our eyes, they may still in some cases contain the keys to solving our internal problems. But the more serious these problems, the more inaccessible these keys are for us.

So, really, just in case, keep our dreams a secret, as Jerzy Lec jokingly recommended? No, of course not. Share them, but only with those whose understanding, sympathy, and benevolence you believe in – discussing your dreams with these people can help you get to know yourself better.