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Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.” Sometimes they awaken very strong emotions in us: anxiety, joy, fear, amazement, and at the same time a desire to understand what this dream can mean for us. Are we able to slightly open these gates leading to the deepest territories of our personality?
Sometimes sleep is just a continuation of daytime worries and reflections. But it happens that it has nothing to do with real life: war in the distant past or in the future, unknown places, mysterious creatures, completely unreal events. Some dreams surprise us – and this is a sure sign that their plot hides some other meaning. How do dreams arise?
What can dreams tell?
Dreams convey messages from the unconscious and help you enter into a dialogue with it. According to Freud, they represent forbidden desires in symbolic form, allowing us to experience what we cannot get or do in reality. And as Jung believed, dreams help maintain mental balance. What are dreams made of? 40% – from the impressions of the day, and the rest – from scenes associated with fears, anxieties, worries, neurophysiologist and somnologist Michel Jouvet believes. There are dream plots common to all mankind. But the meaning of the same plot is unique for everyone.
We see nightmares if our “I” ignores what the unconscious is trying to communicate.
What do you dream about the most? Men see other men in their dreams, sex with strangers, cars, tools and weapons. The action takes place in an unfamiliar place or in an open space. But women are less likely to leave the premises. They often dream of food, clothes, work. In addition, women tend to be more attentive to dreams than men and remember them better.
Dreams work for us, even if their images are frightening. They talk about anxiety, dissatisfaction, point to unresolved tasks. But if we calmly think about what we saw in a dream, the fear will gradually decrease.
“Frightening dreams, shocking us, make us think,” explains Jungian psychoanalyst Vsevolod Kalinenko. “We see nightmares if our “I” ignores what the unconscious is trying to communicate.” Consciousness tends to “forget” everything that is incompatible with our beliefs, but in some circumstances we can no longer do without this “forgotten” thing.
What is paradoxical sleep
We see dreams in a special phase of sleep, which was discovered by the French neurophysiologist Michel Jouvet in 1959. Such a dream was called paradoxical.
“While studying conditioned reflexes in cats, we unexpectedly fixed an amazing phenomenon,” says Michel Jouvet. – The sleeping animal showed rapid eye movements, intense brain activity, almost like during wakefulness, but the muscles were completely relaxed. This discovery turned all our ideas about dreams upside down. The state we have discovered is not classical sleep and wakefulness. We called it “paradoxical sleep” because it paradoxically combines complete muscle relaxation and intense brain activity.”
On the verge of sleep and wake up
Some are convinced that they are not dreaming. “Illness, accident or injury can cause neurological changes that lead to the disappearance of dreams,” explains Michel Jouvet. “Dreams can also disappear if REM sleep phases become too short and frequent.” But there are many more who simply do not remember dreams. This is possible in two cases: either the person woke up a few minutes after the end of the dream, and during this time it disappeared from memory, or the images that emerged from the unconscious were subjected to strict censorship by the “I”.
For those who do not remember dreams and regret it, there is a method of “free waking dreams”, developed by a psychotherapist, somnologist and writer, author of the Dictionary of Dream Symbolism, Georges Romey. The patient, immersed in an intermediate state of consciousness (waking dream), describes to the psychotherapist the images that come to his mind, without trying to find logic in them.
According to Georges Romey, “Past experiences of trauma or hardship have fixed neurons in certain positions. In a state of relaxation, nerve impulses flow better, identifying and releasing blockages and thus promoting awareness of images, memories and emotions. And not only does waking dream change what is written in neurons, but its study reinforces these changes. By combining Freudian dream interpretation (deciphering fantasies and personal repressions) with Jungian analysis (the collective unconscious) and using Georges Romey’s symbol typology, the therapist helps the patient understand the dream.
Is it possible to decipher a dream?
So, I had a dream that surprised or alerted. What can be done to sort it out? To begin with, show interest and curiosity, since forgetfulness is a consequence of insufficient attention to the world of dreams. And vice versa, if we begin to be interested in the inner world, if the dream touched us or seemed important, memory improves.
“We can almost forget a dream, but if the most insignificant fragment of it or even the feeling of sleep, its aftertaste, is remembered, this is sometimes enough to penetrate the slightly ajar door into the unconscious with the help of fantasies and memories,” says psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin. Often we immediately try to explain our dream to ourselves … but this should not be done: thinking is a function of consciousness, and dreaming is the result of the activity of the unconscious.
“We can be sincerely sure that we understand a dream, but this is nothing more than an illusion: in reality, we hear only the voice of our own logic,” Andrey Rossokhin believes. “Therefore, take your time, let the dream “breathe”, allow different thoughts and sensations to come that will arise in connection with what you see.”
Words and thoughts may at first glance seem completely unrelated to the dream. The apparent meaning of the dream is only a screen behind which the deeper “messages” of the unconscious are hidden. It is necessary to notice details, especially unusual ones – often it is in them that the main idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthe dream is encrypted. By changing the appearance and shape of ordinary objects, by creating strange situations, the unconscious gives a hint: you need to look here.