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Dr. Ceren: Dreams - Freud's Royal Road To The Unconscious
Some believe dreams are just random firings of our brain’s neurons.
Others, like Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed
they are meaningful messages from our unconscious.
Carl Jung, his contemporary believed
in a collective unconscious in which all humankind shares in the meaning
of universal dream images.
Everyone dreams every night, perhaps
three or four dreams each night. Some people do not recall their dreams,
while others do. Dreams may help us understand our secret fears and
desires. Some experts insist dreams are gifts from our unconscious.
The ability to recall dreams may be effected
by the individual’s depth of sleep, physical health, the motivation
to tune in to dreams, medications or alcohol that interferes with the
dream cycle.
If no physical or chemical cause blocks
access to your nightly dreams, the best way to recall them is to make
a decision to do so. Keep a writing pad and pen at your bedside.
Before falling asleep, suggest to yourself
that you will easily recall a dream upon waking.
When you awake, remain in bed for awhile
with your eyes closed and focus on your dream.
Breathe deeply, and pretend you’re fishing
for the dream in the deep waters of your unconscious. You will likely
recall the most recent dream.
Upon recalling a dream, write it down
immediately. Continue this behavior for several weeks and you will probably
be rewarded with a frequent awareness of your dreams when you awaken.
The next step is find out the meaning
of these "movies in your head."
Popular books suggest dream images are
always symbolic and have only one "particular meaning." For instance,
an old, worn out shoe might represent "loss of value and the aging process"
to one person, and "comfort that comes with familiarity" to another.
Our experience colors the meaning of various symbols in our dreams.
If a dreamer is too emotionally close to the dream material to interpret
its meaning, the assistance of a therapist trained in dream interpretation
may be fruitful.
Each person’s unconscious communication
is highly symbolic, visual, and appears non-linear and illogical. The
significance of these symbols may be unique to each individual and takes
a bit of deciphering.
Research suggests that those who dream
in color are usually more aware of their emotions and less fearful of
acknowledging them.
Repressed people are not in touch with
their emotions, engage in chronic denial and tend not to recall their
dreams and if they do recall a dream, it is often in black and white--
a reflection of a life devoid of color.
In a research project at the NASA sleep
laboratory a doctoral dissertation by Dr. Ginger Blume demonstrated
that the unconscious mind is highly consistent in communicating with
the conscious mind, whether an individual is awake and making up a story,
simply day dreaming, or dreaming during the night. This consistency
is so remarkable, that even an untrained person is capable at a greater
than change level, of identifying someone’s dreams, stories, and reveries
from a large assortment of various people’s unconscious material. This
research helped support the theory that dreams are meaningful and not
random mental images.
The peaceful Senoia island culture treats
dreams as sacred communication. If one person dreams of harming another,
the next day, he or she apologizes to that person. While the Senoia
experience a full range of emotions, including anger, aggressive behavior
is absent in their society.
Knowing this, you can see why dreams
are gifts we give to ourselves, as well as to others.
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