This shorter form post on what do dreams mean is for anyone who only needs a few bullet points.
When we take the time to delve into our dreams, we’re connecting with the very core of our existence.
In my work as a Jungian psychoanalyst, I analyze people’s dreams every day. Dreams hold incredible significance in the process of healing. They serve as guiding beacons, enabling my clients to rise above their challenges and find transformation, ultimately pointing the way forward in their lives.
The following list and a few examples can give you an idea about working with dreams, but it does not begin to tap the depth of the work. Always keep in mind that every dream has something new to teach you about yourself. A dream does not tell you what you already know, unless you have somehow forgotten it.
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Carl Jung gave us valuable insights into dream interpretation. Jung demonstrated that dreams primarily revolve around the dreamer’s own psyche. This means that when you ponder questions like, “What does it mean when you dream about someone?” remember that the dream is a reflection of your inner world and not wishful thinking, old memories, or anything like that. Furthermore, if you dream of death, the dream is not about your thoughts or fears about death.
When you dream about someone, something, or even someplace you’re essentially dreaming about facets of your own personality. Each person in your dream symbolizes an unconscious aspect of yourself, aspects that you might not have fully recognized or accepted. These hidden aspects can encompass both positive and negative traits. Jung used the term “shadow” to describe everything about yourself that remains hidden from your conscious awareness.
A place in your dream symbolizes an inner space, a place that is psychologically similar to the place in your dream. Something in your dreams, such as car or a house in dreams say something about how you move through or exist in life.
Sometimes you dream about someone and then you see or hear from that person, but that is not the meaning of the dream. That is called a synchronicity, still meaningful in itself, but different kind of psychic expression.
Sometimes we dream of our crush and that includes both romantic and platonic crushes. When we’re attracted to someone we don’t know well, we often project qualities onto them that might not truly exist. These fantasies create stories about potential relationships. However, it’s crucial to recognize that this projection is a unconscious process. Becoming aware of it is essential for personal growth and our dreams about these people give us information about our projections.
Dreams can also serve as a form of compensation, helping to restore psychological equilibrium. They address imbalances in your conscious and unconscious mind, symbolically offering insights that your waking self might overlook.
For example, a quiet, introverted client of mine was caught up in a creative project and didn’t want to leave her house. That’s a bit neurotically introverted. She had a dream of a large, loud, and big-haired Texas woman (the dreamer was from Texas) coming into her home and yelling, “I’m gonna take you to a Yankees game!” The dream clearly stated that she needed to compensate her too-introverted attitude with some extraversion.
Dreams can be incredibly clever in revealing truths about people and situations. For instance, a dream humorously showed a woman that a potential love interest might not be the person she imagined he was. In the dream, she walked into a room where he stood naked. He bent over and revealed his anal sphincter! The dreamer took that literally: “he’s an a**hole.” Sometimes, dreams provide exactly the straightforward, no-nonsense insights we need.
Dreams can reveal truths about others, but they also reflect your own psychological landscape. For example, one dream exposed a supposed friend’s true, deceitful nature to a dreamer who had been in denial. However, it also highlighted an inner conflict within the dreamer, that being the dreamer had a tendency to draw this kind of deceitful woman into her life based on her childhood experiences with a negative mother.
The real picture became clear about six months into the relationship. She found herself living in a Jekyll-Hyde situation and it turned out the unconscious was giving her a warning. The man’s demeanor could turn on a dime and soon the full personality was too much for the man to hide any longer. Eventually, the woman was forced to end the relationship. Sometimes we have to take these kinds of dreams as prognostic indicators.
That does not contradict anything we have already said about dreams being about oneself. Our dreamer was attracted to that man because of an inner demon she needed to address.
What do dreams mean when it comes to those closest to us? Dreams about our families are common. Family plays a profound role in shaping our worldviews. The beliefs and attitudes we inherit from our families often become ingrained in our psyches. These familial imprints can influence our relationships, behaviors, and self-perception. When we dream of being back in childhood or with our families, then we can be sure we are – psychologically speaking – in that parental/family dynamic.
Negative experiences with a mother can lead to a negative mother complex, affecting how you relate to women and your sense of belonging. Dreams about our mothers can bring these psychodynamic issues to the surface, prompting self-reflection and growth.
Your father’s influence extends beyond your childhood. Dreams involving your father can reveal how his worldview has impacted your own. Whether positive or negative, this influence can shape your perceptions of the world and yourself. These dreams tell us something about the unconscious influences of our so-called conscious attitudes and perspectives.
Ultimately, your dreams offer glimpses into your inner world, helping you uncover hidden aspects of yourself and guiding you toward personal growth. It’s crucial to recognize and confront these aspects to move forward in your life.
Dreams are not mere byproducts of sleep; they are ongoing, concealed mental processes, as elucidated by Carl Jung in his essay “Problems of Modern Psychotherapy.” Below the surface of our conscious awareness, the act of dreaming persists, particularly when we are haunted by repressed or other unconscious complexes.
Within each of us, there exists a hidden world. Close your eyes briefly, and you can catch a glimpse of it. We often refer to this inner realm as “fantasy,” yet many mistakenly consider all fantasies as products of our deliberate conscious thoughts. While we can undoubtedly create fantasies intentionally, in such cases, it’s a conscious endeavor and not the spontaneous creations of our human psyche.
Similar to dreams, these spontaneous psychic creations draw us in without our deliberate consent. For example, how frequently do you snap out of a daydream or become “lost in thought” while engaged in an entirely unrelated task? Essentially, these processes mirror the dynamics of dreams, although we still maintain a degree of consciousness during such moments.
Think about the constant inner dialogues that unfold in our minds—lively debates we’ve had with others, conversations we aspire to have, or perhaps unsettling memories that linger. These are the repressed or unconscious complexes that exert their influence, just as Jung alluded to in his earlier passage.
As we transition into sleep, the boundary between consciousness and the ever-present realm of dreams and fantasies in our psyche becomes more permeable. This is why we can sometimes wake from a dream only to slip back into it, or why we often return to a dream upon waking, even when we initially forget it. The more familiar you become with this threshold between your waking and dream worlds, the easier it becomes to venture into that inner realm beneath the surface of your consciousness.
What do dreams mean about our future? Dreams often serve as symbolic indicators of potential outcomes, rather than direct predictions. Carl Jung provided several examples of prognostic dreams from his patients, such as one instance involving a man who had achieved considerable success in his career but persisted in seeking even more recognition, despite evident exhaustion.
Among his various dreams, one stood out as highly significant. In this dream, the man witnessed a train conductor stubbornly powering ahead at full throttle despite an impending curve. The train was exceptionally long, and it was evident to the dreamer that if the conductor didn’t slow down, the train’s tail would derail. The dreamer awoke in a state of fear.
Jung offered a clear interpretation of the dream. The train symbolized a collective endeavor, signifying that the man was pushing too forcefully in the collective sphere. It was as though his unrealistic ambitions were being driven by this enigmatic conductor, who disregarded the impending warning.
Regrettably, the man ignored this insight and persisted in pushing himself relentlessly. Eventually, the crash he had foreseen in his dream materialized. He experienced a neurotic breakdown, ultimately leading to his departure from his job, and sadly, he never fully recovered.
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