People across time and of every culture have been fascinated by dreams. Each night we create four to six dreams which reflect the deepest levels of our psyche and provide a mirror of our unconscious concerns at the time of the dream. Each dreamer is the set designer, casting director, script writer, director and producer of his or her dream experiences. Carl Jung and the psychologists who train in his theory believe that our nightly sequence of dreams contain the direction, healing, and wisdom that we all require. Yet most people either forget their dreams, scoff at them, are frightened by them, or ignore them rather than following a path of understanding dreams that can transform their lives.

Jungian dream theory suggests an approach to dreams. We can give ourselves the suggestion before sleep that we will remember a dream.

We can ask for a dream that will give us guidance about a particular concern. On awakening we can capture dream images and fragments before they vanish. Dreams do tend to vanish quite quickly once we are up and about our daily activities. We can keep a dream journal or simple spiral notebook and pen near our bed and jot down any memory upon waking. Later in the day we can take a few minutes to reflect on the dream and flesh it out by writing it as if it is happening in the moment without adding anything to it or leaving anything out.

The next steps take some time. It is helpful to set aside time each day or weekly to reflect on our dreams. First we read the dream aloud. Hearing the dream in our own voice is a step in taking it seriously and honoring it. Then we can go through the text and underline the important elements: set, characters, images, action.

We can record our associations to each element. If we dream of a beach what does “beach” suggest to the individual dreamer? Something of one’s own experience of beaches most likely. As we record our associations one will “click.” This means that one of our thoughts, feelings, memories about the beach will bring a feeling response. We can highlight that association and then continue through the rest of the dream elements in the same way.

We then need to ask what each element suggests about our current condition, dilemma, concern. If the association to “beach” that clicked was the quotation “life’s a beach” we need to ask ourselves in what way am I treating my life as if it is a beach? We do this with each key element and the association that clicked. We then can attempt a first interpretation of our dream. Most often dreams are not fully understood on our first attempt but are best understood in series, over time, and with added reflection.

A caution is needed here! Our dreams exist to show us something new; something that we don’t already know and need to see. If we can easily interpret our dream we probably have it wrong! We would not go to the trouble of setting, casting, scripting, and directing a dream about something that we already know and have nothing to learn from. It is most difficult to interpret one’s own dreams. Even Jung needed help to interpret his dreams. He sometimes consulted Freud about them (until their differing developing theories of the psyche caused them to part ways). Jung sometimes asked the handyman come to work on his house what he thought the dream meant. Jung said the handyman being unschooled in psychology would get it wrong but just talking it over might help Jung to see something he needed in order understand.

Once we feel we have understood a dream it is helpful to enact it in some way often through a ritual. An understood dream about a beach might inspire us to spend an hour at the beach sculpting in the sand or sending a message in a bottle out to sea. It is most helpful to participate in dream analysis with a psychotherapist specially trained in understanding dreams. A fun and supportive way of working with dreams is to join an on-going dream group with a leader skilled in dream interpretation. Something to note is that the little books of dream symbols available at retail stores are useless! Each dream symbol must be understood in a very personal way by the individual dreamer.

Carol Weiss, MA, Licensed Psychotherapist is a Jungian trained in dream analysis and will be holding a dream seminar in late May and June on three Thursday evenings to be followed by a newly forming dream group. For more information call her at 468-4006.