Dreams can be mysterious, but understanding the meaning of our dreams can be downright baffling. The content of our dreams can shift suddenly, feature bizarre elements or frighten us with terrifying imagery. The fact that dreams can be so rich and compelling is what causes many to believe that there must be some meaning to our dreams.
While many theories exist to explain why we dream, no one yet fully understands their purpose, let alone how to interpret the meaning of dreams. In fact, some prominent researchers such as G. William Domhoff suggest that dreams most likely serve no real purpose.
Despite this, dream interpretation has becoming increasingly popular. While research has not demonstrated a purpose for dreams, many experts believe that dreams do have meaning.
According to Domhoff:
"'Meaning' has to do with coherence and with systematic relations to other variables, and in that regard dreams do have meaning. Furthermore, they are very "revealing" of what is on our minds. We have shown that 75 to 100 dreams from a person give us a very good psychological portrait of that individual. Give us 1000 dreams over a couple of decades and we can give you a profile of the person's mind that is almost as individualized and accurate as her or his fingerprints."
Freud: Dreams as the Road to the Unconscious Mind:
In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud suggested that the content of dreams is related to wish fulfillment. Freud believed that the manifest content of a dream, or the actually imagery and events of the dream, served to disguise the latent content, or the unconscious wishes of the dreamer.
Freud also described four elements of this process that he referred to as 'dream work':
- Condensation – Many different ideas and concepts are represented within the span of a single dream. Information is condensed into a single thought or image.
- Displacement – This element of dream work disguises the emotional meaning of the latent content by confusing the important and insignificant parts of the dream.
- Symbolization – This operation also censors the repressed ideas contained in the dream by including objects that are meant to symbolize the latent content of the dream.
- Secondary Revision – During this final stage of the dreaming process, Freud suggested that the bizarre elements of the dream are reorganized in order to make the dream comprehensible, thus generating the manifest content of the dream.
Jung: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious:
While Carl Jung shared some commonalities with Freud, he felt that dreams were more than an expression of repressed wishes. Jung suggested that dreams revealed both the personal and collective unconscious and believed that dreams serve to compensate for parts of the psyche that are underdeveloped in waking life. However, later research by Hall discovered that the traits people exhibit while they awake are also expressed in dreams.
Jung also suggested that archetypes such as the anima, the shadow and the animus are often represented symbolic objects or figures in dreams. These symbols, he believed, represented attitudes that are repressed by the conscious mind. Unlike Freud, who often suggested that specific symbols represents specific unconscious thoughts, Jung believed that dreams can be highly personal and that interpreting these dreams involved knowing a great deal about the individual dreamer.
Hall: Dreams as a Cognitive Process:
Calvin S. Hall proposed that dreams are part of a cognitive process in which dreams serve as ‘conceptions’ of elements of our personal lives. Hall looked for themes and patterns by analyzing thousands of dream diaries from participants, eventually creating a quantitative coding system that divided the content of dreams into a number of different categories.
According to Hall’s theory, interpreting dreams requires knowing:
- The actions of the dreamer within the dream
- The objects and figures in the dream
- The interactions between the dreamer and the characters in the dream
- The dream’s setting, transitions and outcome
The ultimate goal of this dream interpretation is not to understand the dream, however, but to understand the dreamer.
Domhoff: Dreams as a Reflection of Waking Life:
G. William Domhoff is a prominent dream researcher who studied with Calvin Hall at the University of Miami. In large-scale studies on the content of dreams, Domhoff has found that dreams reflect the thoughts and concerns of a dreamer’s waking life. Domhoff suggests a neurocognitive model of dreams in which the process of dreaming results from neurological processes and a system of schemas. Dream content, he suggests, results from these cognitive processes.5
Popularizing Dream Interpretation
Since the 1970s, dream interpretation has grown increasingly popular thanks to work by authors such as Ann Faraday. In books such as The Dream Game, Faraday outlined techniques and ideas than anyone can use to interpret their own dreams. Today, consumers can purchase a wide variety of books that offer dream dictionaries, symbol guides and tips for interpreting and understanding dreams.
Dream research will undoubtedly continue to grow and generate interest from people interested in understanding the meaning of their dreams. However, dream expert G. William Domhoff recommends that "...unless you find your dreams fun, intellectually interesting, or artistically inspiring, then feel free to forget your dreams."1 Others such as Cartwright and Kaszniak propose that dream interpretation may actually reveal more about the interpreter than it does about the meaning of the dream itself.
"A dream is a work of art which requires of the dreamer no particular talent, special training, or technical competence. Dreaming is a creative enterprise in which all may and most do participate." – Clark S. Hall
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