Want to Decode Your Dreams? Psychoanalytic Research Suggests You Ditch Your Dream Dictionary
7 steps you can take right now to decode your dreams, according to dream psychology.
My love for psychology and curiosity for understanding my deepest self led me to a seat in the back of a college course called the psychology of dreams. It was a gripping experience; having to be vulnerable for an A was not exactly what I’d thought college was going to be like, but the reward was massive. By the end of it, I was motivated to quit my dreadful day job.
At the beginning of the semester, my professor urged us to give away our dream dictionaries and expressed how useless they are in our quest to understand our dreams. This was a promising viewpoint from someone with glowing reviews on ratemyprofessor.com. He familiarized us with dream archetypes and symbolism; the textbook screamed definitions I’ve never heard of. This is what dreams are made of, I thought.
I gathered myself, took a deep breath, and down the rabbit hole I went.
Down with the dream dictionary
There isn’t a solid science-backed system of dream interpretation. Patrick McNamara, Ph.D., writes in a Psychology Today article, “ What you will get if you look at dream interpretation blogs, sites, pages, and the like will be garbage pure and simple.” Ouch. If you’re gripping onto your dream dictionary, it may be time to finally lay it to rest.
So, does this mean our dreams are meaningless, and even recurring dreams or archetypes are nothing special? Not quite.
As my professor simply put it, dreams are personal — symbolism is subjective, and there isn’t a system or a dictionary that can decipher the symbols in your dreams. A person’s dream about losing teeth won’t hold the same meaning or symbolism as another person who has a similar dream because our attachments and associations differ from each person. This is why there isn’t a dictionary that can decode your dreams; symbolism isn’t absolute.
A Scientific American article supports the neurobiological theory of dreaming being the “activation-synthesis hypothesis.” This means dreams are simply electrical brain impulses creating a scene from random thoughts from our memories. Over the years, evolutionary psychologists have proposed that dreams have helped protect us by simulating threatening events.
What’s in a dream?
Dreams have been studied for over a century and many theories as to why we dream are being debated today. Psychoanalytical research from the likes of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud theorizes dreams can be messages delivered from the unconscious mind. From a psychoanalytical perspective, dreams can be a tool to unlock deep-seated fears and desires in our waking lives.
In Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.’s article entitled ‘Jung’s Theory of Dreams: A Reappraisal’, Bulkeley writes, “Both Jung and Freud agreed that dreaming is a meaningful product of unconscious forces in the psyche with roots deep in the evolutionary biology of our species. Both of them agreed that dreams are valuable allies in healing people suffering from various kinds of mental illness.”
Both Freud and Jung agreed on the impact our unconscious minds (dreams) can have on our waking life. A fundamental difference in their dream research was Feud’s beliefs decided dreams were a tool to look into early experiences while Jung believed dreams were a gateway to revealing an individual’s future development.
Dream interpretation vs Dreamwork
The distinction between dream interpretation and dream work, as defined by Good Therapy, is interpretation allows a therapist to analyze a person’s dream, while dreamwork allows the dreamer to analyze their own dreams (symbols, archetypes, and associations) with a therapist or expert fulfilling the role of a guide in their dream exploration.
Dreamwork offers the dreamer a deeper insight by digging deep into their unconscious state. There are different variables that prove how it wouldn’t do much justice to tell a person what their dream means — coming from different backgrounds or spiritual beliefs might pose an issue when identifying symbols or limit the exploration of the dream.
This is where dreamwork holds up — as a guide, the therapist or facilitator is able to ask the questions needed for the dreamer to dig deep into their dreams. Instead of the facilitator asserting their associations or expertise on dream symbols, they’re setting up the dreamer to analyze each dream symbol by the association the dreamer has.
For example, a helicopter appearing in a dream can be analyzed by asking the dreamer what associations they have with helicopters. Helicopters are vehicles used to rescue people, so the dreamer might have associations of safety, help, or rescue. From there, the facilitator can help connect the dots to other symbols in the dream. The facilitator is there to offer insight into the dream with the information given by the dreamer.
Consider dreamwork instead
My psychology professor was a Jungian and revered Carl Jung’s approach to dream analysis by incorporating excerpts from his writings in our textbook. From the very start, we were told to surrender our preconceived notions about dream interpretation and instead look into analyzing dreams through dreamwork.
A Good Therapy article defines dreamwork as a therapeutic technique used as a way to tap into an unconscious state of mind, to gain a deeper analysis, and to identify hidden meanings in our deep desires and conflicts. Dreamwork, although it’s not as common, is used in therapy models like cognitive behavioral therapy and Gestalt therapy. Its main purpose is to help people solve and understand conflicts, tap into a state of self-awareness, and improve their well-being.
Dreamwork is an extensive discipline that psychologists and psychoanalytic researchers dedicate their life’s work to understanding. Some forms of dreamwork require you to propel yourself into the dream by becoming the dream, as it is taught in Gestalt therapy, in order to gain insight.
My professor was a firm believer in the power of Gestalt therapy. One of the scariest moments of my life was using it in practice for a grade. Near the end of the semester, we rearranged the room so we were all sitting in a circle with two chairs in the middle, facing each other. There were a little more than a dozen people in the class, but it could’ve been a hundred people and it would still be equally as terrifying.
One by one, we’d take turns in the hot seat, our written out dreams in tow, while our professor asked us to tell our dream and animate our innermost, vulnerable symbols in the empty chair in front of us.
As the ‘analyzer’, my professor would guide us to our destination instead of trying to decode himself what each symbol meant. Watching others dive deep into their unconscious mind was terrifying and beautiful all at once. One person drew their dream back to old childhood trauma, some with conflicts in their present relationships. It was inspiring to see the willingness and openness of my classmates.
Then, my name was called.
An entire semester couldn’t have prepared me for the raw, scathing feeling of vulnerability, but the rush was therapeutic; it felt like I was finally being seen, even if it wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it. For me, I unfolded my deepest resentment for my mother for placing so much criticism and responsibility onto me as a child but failing at her own motherly duty to protect me.
When I took my seat, I felt relieved, shocked, and very confused. All this time, I knew my nightmarish dream had to do with fear, but I don’t think I would’ve ever imagined fear and resentment that I’d been avoiding well into my twenties to surface. And all of that was uncovered with my dream symbols being a helicopter and a community pool? Go figure.
Dreamwork is the cornerstone of my spiritual awakening, and its impact can be proven in Jungian and Freudian research. Because you can’t quantify or measure dreamwork, there’s a lot of trial and error when analyzing symbols and archetypes. It’s a continual process of keeping records of your dreams and analyzing them, but there are exercises in place that can aid you in a deep dive into your dreams and help you tap into hidden parts of your psyche.
Step 1: Keep a dream journal and log dreams you can remember.
As a rule of thumb, writing dreams down will help in analyzing them, since we often forget dreams almost immediately after we wake up, even if they’re vivid. Keeping your dream journal and pen within arm's reach, like underneath your pillow or by your nightstand, is recommended by many lucid dreamers and practitioners of dreamwork. It can even work to use the notes app on your phone — keeping any record at all is powerful to recall the dream.
Step 2: Rewrite the dream in the present tense and from your point of view.
Once you’ve logged your dreams, rewriting them in the present tense will help you relate and feel connected to the dream. Instead of writing, “I walked down the hallway that had doors on each side and saw my ex-partner and the end of the hallway,” rewrite it to, “I’m walking down the hallway with doors on each side, and my ex-partner is standing at the end of the hallway.”
Step 3: Choose symbols in the dream to analyze.
Dream symbols can be a person, place, object, sound, situation, or speech. Like many psychoanalytic approaches to dreams, the Jungian approach suggests reimagining your dreams to identify certain images or symbols in order to find a connection to your unconscious desires and inner conflicts. In my class, we used five symbols to focus on. It’s good to start small in the beginning.
Step 4: Identify the associations you have with these symbols.
Jungian analyst and author Robert Johnson created a four-step process in diving into our dreams to pine for a deeper understanding of our unconscious selves. Carl Jung believed there are connections with the items in our dreams — it can be a situation like running away from someone, a person like your intimate partner, or a place like your old childhood home. In my class, we were told to identify five symbols and associations.
Draw connections you have with each symbol by identifying the thoughts and emotions you get from them and take ownership of them. They can be layered, too — nothing is as linear in a dream.
For example, in the dream I used in class, I associated my community pool with togetherness since that’s what community represents to me as well as rebirth or life since water typically represents life in that way. Personally, I’m afraid of drowning so water could also represent fear.
Step 5: Connect dynamics with yourself.
Once you identify the associations you have with each dream symbol, you can start to connect these dream images to your internal self. Instead of seeing a person or thing in your dream in the literal sense, try propelling yourself into these images.
For example, a dream about your ex-partner might not symbolize them perse. Instead, they might represent a reflection of you or the relationship. Reimagine the dream and insert yourself in place of your ex. What were they doing or saying to you? Imagine their actions or words as a message to you from you.
Step 6: Self-analyze the dream as a whole, given the information you’ve gathered.
Using the information you’ve gathered about your dreams, you can analyze it to find the central message. Consider the dream symbols and archetypes, or dream patterns and how they relate to the conflicts or situations arising in your waking life. Retell the dream in present-tense, as well as what each symbol means to you personally, and analyze the dream’s message as a whole. It’s often said during self-analysis, breakthroughs are seldom self-congratulatory — interpretations that stroke your ego is probably not authentic. Interpretations are meant to hold you accountable and help you discover deep inner conflicts.
Step 7: Create a ritual.
As with any kind of practice, creating a ritual helps you honor the act itself. Making a habit of writing your dreams and taking time to analyze them deeply can help you connect with your inner self. Lighting a candle and meditating in the morning can be part of a ritual to honor your dreamwork.
I used to have recurring dreams about my old childhood townhome. Unlike most of my dreams which would be chaotic and busy, this dream would be still and focused on the driveway of my old home. When I would have this dream, I’d visit the neighborhood, walking the same streets I did years ago. A ritual doesn’t need to be expensive or as elaborate as visiting old homes, but having one will provide access to accurate dream self-analysis.
Dream interpretation traces back to ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Interpreting dreams were believed to require intelligence and even a relationship with the Divine. In the modern era, dream interpretation has been deemed linear, but research has proven dream analysis is much more complicated and fluid than that.
It seems we’re a long way from uncovering the truth about dreams, and for now, we only have theories. Whether dreams are simply biological stimulation of the limbic system or a window to our deepest desires and trauma, is up to you to interpret.