Dream Analysis Workshop

DREAM 1

My girlfriend and I are at a country and western nightclub all decked out in our boots, hats, and denim outfits. We are dancing cheek-to-cheek to a slow tune, totally absorbed with one another, when out of nowhere a big, ornery redneck struts up onto the dance floor and demands to cut in on our dance. I resent the intrusion and tell him to get lost. He then grabs my girlfriend's arm and tries to force her to dance with him. She slaps him and shouts something obscene, and the next thing I know the redneck and I are in the hallway slugging it out in a fistfight. I make pretty quick work of him (pointed-toed boots can be lethal) and then take my girlfriend by the arm and return to the bliss of the dance floor.

The scene then shifts to a narrow wooden staircase at the rear of the club. There is now a mob of rednecks swarming up and over the steps trying desperately to reach us. These guys are really big and really mean so it takes me a bit longer to do them in. It's noisy. I'm covered with blood. I'm punching and kicking and flailing about like some kind of Buckaroo Bruce Lee, while all the time my girlfriend is standing behind me on the steps shouting and holding onto my shoulders as if to prop me up.

Then the scene abruptly shifts again, this time to a dark, narrow alley outside the club. My eyes are swollen and my face is bloody and bruised, and I'm being held against the wall by two burly rednecks while a third one pounds me to a pulp. My girlfriend is nowhere in sight.

I wake up.

The Dream as an Unconscious Wish

Sigmund Freud viewed dreams as the "royal road to the unconscious." According to Freud, dreams attempt to fulfill repressed, unconscious wishes which are mainly sexual and aggressive in nature. A possible Freudian interpretation of the dream may be that I am at war with aspects of myself, as symbolized by the fights. I may harbor repressed feelings of sexual inadequacy (I am only able to overcome my adversaries when a woman is present) which manifest themselves in a deep-seated insecurity (I am beaten in the end).

The Dream as Problem Solving

Some psychologists believe that our dreams do not express unfulfilled wishes or repressed anxiety, but are a means of working out our daily emotional problems, or, lacking that, of expressing our creativity. To view the dream in this perspective, we must first examine any sources of stress or emotional difficulty that may be responsible for the dream.

At the time of the dream, I was experiencing problems in my relationship with my girlfriend. She had moved to Gainesville, Florida a couple of months earlier to attend graduate school. Our plan was that I would finish out the school year and then join her in the summer, completing my degree there. The source of my distress was that I just learned that her ex-lover was living in the same town and that the two of them had renewed their romance.

In this context, the entire dream can be seen as method of working out the emotional distress caused by the broken relationship. The dream began with my girlfriend and I dancing together. This is representative of the happiness I felt in our relationship. And yet the setting, a country and western bar, indicates feelings of alienation or separation -- of being out of place -- since neither my girlfriend nor I like country music or dress. The redneck is, quite naturally, her new lover. At first I am able to quickly overcome him and return to the bliss of my lover's dance. I am confident in our relationship. But he has a home-court advantage which is an obstacle that will become harder and harder for me to overcome.

In the penultimate scene I am trying to climb a stairway while at the same time fighting off my foes. I am seeking escape from the situation I am in. With the support of my girlfriend, I am battling all the forces that seek to pull me down. And though I prevail this time, the effort drains me. This is symbolized by the loss of life-sustaining blood.

The closing scene, the dark alley in which, alone, I am finally overcome by my adversaries, is the acceptance of my total helplessness in the situation and my final letting go of the relationship. The darkness of the alley is my depression, my injuries are my hurt feelings.

This view of the dream as a method of emotional problem solving is further supported by my emotional state when I awoke. Instead of feeling depressed or inadequate as one might expect, I felt quite good. The dream became a cathartic experience for me, completely purging me of anxiety over the situation.

DREAM 2

The following dream was sent to me by a 20 year-old woman who had recently broken off a relationship with a man she'd been dating for over a year. Even though they both cared for each other, there were aspects of the relationship that left her feeling unfulfilled, and she was beginning to feel suffocated and trapped; she wasn't ready for a serious relationship at this time. She was also experiencing doubts and uncertainties about the direction her life was taking. Should she continue attending college, or should quit and spend some time travelling and experiencing the world?

I am in the woods, alone in a car, when I see a huge, lizard-like creature in a clearing nearby. As I watch from the car, I notice that the lizard is laying an egg. I pull the car forward and then backward. I thought I ran over the egg but I didn't. The egg hatches and out comes a baby frog. I look out the window of the car and notice the lizard is now sitting on a horse. The lizard looks as though it is riding the horse, but I had the feeling it was actually holding it down.

I then see the headlights of another car coming toward me. They wanted to pull in, saw that I was there, and instead pulled into a driveway across the street. I left in a car with other people. We were lost in the woods. There were friends and family in other cars around us.

Analysis

There are three principle images in this dream: the green lizard-like creature, and the egg that transforms into a frog, and the car. All three of these symbols in some way represent rebirth, renewal and transformation. The most obvious of these symbols is, of course, the egg, a universal symbol of birth and renewal. Not so obvious, however, is the car, which in this case could be viewed as a symbolic juxtaposition of the egg; the hard body, or "shell," of the car being analogous to the hard shell of the egg. The lizard, like the snake, is a symbol of rebirth and renewal in that each year it sheds its old skin. The frog is a symbol of transformation. It starts its life as an egg buried in the mud. The egg hatches and becomes a tadpole that lives in the water. The tadpole then completely transforms itself into a frog, at which time it moves into the air.

Taken together, all these symbols would seem to indicate a feeling on the part of the dreamer that a major change is getting ready to take place in her life. However, though she subconsciously feels the need for this transformation to take place, she is perhaps reluctant to change her old ways. In the dream she puts the car into reverse (a regression to old ways) and then into drive (a moving forward). This indicates uncertainty. She's not sure what she wants to do. At one point she's even concerned that she might have run over the egg. This indicates caution. She may not yet be ready for major change, but she doesn't want her options closed out either.

This sense of caution and uncertainty is reinforced by the dream's setting: the woods. The woods indicates unknown territory. It symbolies confusion. At first, it appears the dreamer will get some help in solving her dilemma; she sees the bright headlights of another car approaching. However, upon seeing the dreamer, the car turns away. Moreover, the dreamer says that she is "lost in the woods" with her friends and family. Normally, we would turn to our friends and family for help and guidance, especially when we need to make major life decisions, as does the dreamer in this case. However, in this case the dreamer feels that they just as lost as she is, symbolized further by the fact that they are in different cars than is she.

Finally, there is the image of the lizard sitting on the horse. The horse is a powerful, sacred animal. It represents power, sexuality, and strength. But it is also a dangerous animal; if you're not in control of it, it can easily overpower you. The symbol of a horse and rider in a dream usually indicates that the dreamer is receiving a message from the higher realms of consciousness, the source of our inner strength and spiritual power. That the lizard--the symbol of renewal--is sitting on the horse "holding it down," indicates a strong desire for fundamental change, but also a reluctance to allow that change to take place.

TIPS ON INTERPRETING YOUR DREAMS

When interpreting dreams, keep in mind that not all of your dreams are necessarily important, and thus not all lend themselves to interpretation. The best ones to decode are those that carry a high emotional charge (positive, negative, or both simultaneously), or those that recur over again, frequently in situations when the rational, conscious mind is not in full control. When you have a dream that you feel might be important, the following tips may help you in decoding it.

1. Try to guess what the dream is about. Dreams are usually concerned with current problems and interests, and we don't have to dig very far to find the associations. Dreams rarely comment on issues in which the dreamer has little or no involvement.
2. Re-experience the emotions in the dream. Do they relate to present conditions or relationships?
3. Identify the setting. This helps identify what area of one's life is being addressed. Is the locale inside or outside? Familiar or unfamiliar? Daytime or nighttime? A specific season of the year? Spring may indicate a time of new growth, a new beginning; summer, a time to harvest what has been sown; autumn, a time to gather and store "seeds" for an inactive, restful phase; winter, a "frozen" or nonproductive stage.
4. Extract the basic theme of the dream. You should be able to summarize the basic theme of the dream in one sentence, like an advertisement for a movie. If the dream is long, with changing scenes, write a theme for each section. At this point you should emphasize the actions, not the actors. Don't try to dig into the individual dream symbols until you've first sketched out the major themes.
5. Analyze the major symbols. After establish the context in which the symbol appears, isolate each dream character and examine the role he or she plays in real life. Next, look at each object. What is it? What does it do? How does it work? What is it used for? Does it trigger a remembrance of someone or something? Dream dictionaries may be helpful here in decoding common symbols. However, always keep in mind that the meanings given in dream dictionaries are only suggestions. The meaning of each symbol is ultimately going to rest on the meaning that you assign to it.
6. Arrive at a preliminary interpretation. Begin linking the major symbols to your dream's theme.
7. Apply what you have learned. The goal of the dream is to guide us in altering our behavior, attitudes, and emotions. Pay attention to it.