The symbolic meaning of dreams

The symbolic meaning of dreams

Sometimes dreams represent the fulfillment of an irrational wish; While sometimes it may simply represent a wish, the specific symbolic meaning of the dream is closely related to the characteristics of the dreamer, the environment, and the experience of the dream.

If you are not serious, any dream can be said to be meaningless; But if you want to be a dream interpreter, any dream is a symbol of a certain result, a certain psychology, a certain phenomenon, a certain behavior.

A young gay man had two short dreams:

I dreamed that I had a gun in my hand, with an unusually long barrel.

I dreamt I was holding a long, heavy stick, as if ready to hit someone, but there was no one around.

We see that these two dreams have roughly the same content, but they have different meanings, according to Freud's theory, the barrel and the stick

Both symbolize the male genitalia. Then we can conclude that these two dreams express a homosexual desire. When asked about the homosexual's thoughts in the past few days, he talked about two different events:

Before having his first dream, he meets a man and feels a strong sexual urge, and before falling asleep, he sinks into a sexual fantasy and takes the young man as his object.

Before dreaming of the stick, his first association was that he was disgusted with a fellow student in the dormitory, who he thought had prejudiced him. But because he was too shy and angry to speak out, he could only have a dream of revenge. Another association with the stick was that when he was ten years old, he was disgusted by the teacher who beat another boy with a stick, and he always had a fear of the teacher.

The second dream expresses his homosexual desire for his roommate and perhaps the teacher he hated as a child. If the events of the previous day and the state of mind before bedtime are important clues to the symbolic meaning of dreams, then these symbols must be interpreted in a different way, but there are obvious similarities.

The gay man had a homosexual fantasy before he had his first dream, so a gun with a long barrel symbolizes Yin

Stem. Although the weapon has become a symbol of the sexual organ, this is not accidental. This symbolic form reveals the knowledge of the dreamer's homosexuality. In his view, sexual intercourse expresses a desire for domination and destruction rather than love. He was always afraid that he wasn't manly enough, and his early guilt was caused by masturbation. First he was afraid that doing so would damage his sexual organs, and then he was worried that his penis was inferior to others. He is very jealous of other men, and all this becomes a desire to be close to men, to show his superiority in proximity, and to use the sexual organs as powerful weapons.

In the second dream, he was angry before he went to sleep, but he could not express this indignation, not even in a dream that he could express it directly by hitting his roommate with a stick or his childhood teacher. He only dreamed that he had a stick in his hand and wanted to hit 'someone.' He chose the stick as a symbol of indignation, a condition shaped by his early experiences. When he was young, his teacher had beaten other boys with a stick, and his current hatred of his roommate was mixed with his old hatred of his teacher.

These two dreams confirm a universal principle: similar symbols can have different meanings. The correct interpretation depends mainly on the main state of mind of the dreamer before bedtime, and this state of mind continues to exert its influence during sleep.

Not only do similar symbols have different meanings, but even the same symbol can have different meanings in different dreams

Yes. Sometimes there are multiple meanings in the same dream. For example, if you dream of falling, it will have multiple meanings.

If you dream of falling, it may indicate that there is a real danger of falling in your life. For example, 'I dreamed that I fell off the balcony of my newly built seventh-floor apartment. When I woke up, I immediately checked the balcony railings and found that they were visibly loose.' 'My neighbor dreamed that his son fell from a ladder. He checked his ladder and found it loose in one place.'

If a falling dream has no such superficial warning message, the next step is to remind the dreamer of what kind of figurative fall is currently possible.

For example, a student who was afraid of repeating a grade because of his poor grades dreamed that he fell down the stairs of the college. The dream shows that he is afraid of losing his position. For example, the wife of a power plant director had many dreams of falling down immediately after her husband's promotion, which meant that she felt she was no longer worthy of her husband. In other words, she believes that her position in her husband's heart has 'plummeted'. And a girl from a scholarly family, after living with a boyfriend, did a series of unpleasant falling dreams, which shows that she is very guilty, because she feels that she has 'fallen'.

It can be seen that the same dream of falling may indicate a real fall, may also indicate a repeat grade, a decline in status, a fall, or other meaning. What it means in a particular dream can only be determined according to the 'context' of the dream. Where to fall in the dream, indicating the meaning of the fall. For example, in the previous example, the student dreamed of falling down the stairs of the college, which indicates that his 'feeling of falling' is related to the school, so we can guess that he is referring to the repetition of the grade. If the specific form of the fall is different, the meaning will be different. For example, a woman dreamed that she was lying in bed, and suddenly felt that people and beds were falling like snowflakes, and she felt a little afraid. We can guess from the 'bed' that the dream must be related to family or sex, because the bed is a place for rest or sex. This woman is married and does not have the mentality to regard sex as depravity. It can be inferred that the whereabouts of this dream bed, suggesting that the family foundation is unstable, indicating that marriage life is not satisfactory. The dreamer also confirmed this, saying that she did feel that her husband did not care for her as before, and that she felt 'lost', so the fall in the dream represented 'loss'.

Therefore, in the interpretation of dreams must not mechanically say 'what is what', must be specific according to the specific situation

Dissect.

One of the important reasons why some dream interpretation books can not be called scientific is that they have simplified the symbol and absolutized it, so their conclusions are often wrong.

For example, in one book, there is an entry 'Bad things happen to portals'. Generally speaking, dreaming of portal corruption symbolizes bad things or there is a certain truth. Portal often represents the home and oneself, portal corruption of course in more times represents the decline of the family and other bad things. But if we take this as an absolute, we can make a mistake. For example, a person dreams of an old house, the door wall collapsed, only one wall is still good, he excitedly used a hammer to smash this wall collapsed. According to the book, it's supposed to be a bad dream. But in fact this is not the case, after the analysis of the master of dream interpretation, the meaning of the dream is that the dreamer is breaking the old self and is about to create a new self. And that's a good thing.

In the dreamer's dream, the old house has long been ruined, but he is about to build a new and better house, which is the symbol of decline

Reverse.

The superstitious interpretation of dreams adopts the method of one-to-one correspondence, which simply corresponds to the dream images of astronomy, celestial phenomena, birds, fish and insects, cars, ships, clothes and socks as good luck, bad luck, disasters and diseases.

But in the interpretation of the dream of psychological science, the meaning of each dream character, scene, and action depends on the context of the whole dream and is finally determined. For example, the number '18' indicates age in some dreams.

An old man dreamed that he went to the cinema to see a movie, his ticket is the 18th row of seats, so he wanted to find the 18th row, but how to find also can not find, in the dream very anxious, also very worried.

In this dream, 18 represents age. This dream means that he is anxious about his aging, and wants to return to '18', return to the young past.

But in other people's dreams, even the old man's other dreams, the number '18' may be other symbols. Look at this example:

A young man in a rural area wanted to go to a big city to work and save money. One night, he dreamed that he was going to this city. The train he took was No. 18. Here the meaning of '18' is also self-evident, '18' is to send also.

It can be seen that if we really want to understand the meaning of dreams and hope to get inspiration and enlightenment from it, then the blunt interpretation out of context will only lead to superstition. In doing so, both harm and harm.

If you want to know what a dream really symbolizes, you must find and think about the important questions related to dreams. Now let's list a few questions, just for reference:

(1) Do you need the dreamer's association?

(2) Can it be explained apart from these associations?

(3) What is the connection between the dream and real events, especially what happened the day before the dream?

(4) What is the connection with the dreamer's entire personality?

(5) What is the connection with fears and wishes rooted in character?

It can be said that any dream has its symbolic meaning, some people deny this, now let us take an example to see whether all dreams have its symbolic meaning:

A college student was interested in interpreting dreams. At breakfast, she told her roommate that she had a dream last night that she had brought strawberries to her roommate for breakfast. But strawberries are the last thing your roommate likes, so the college student concluded that some dreams are meaningless.

Obviously, this dream is definitely not meaningless, let's analyze it. The college student served her roommate strawberries that she knew she did not like, which was neither useful nor pleasing to her. Is the dream a symbol of her frustrated personality of loving to give to others what they do not like, or is it a symbol of the deep conflict between the two students, caused by the dreamer's personality but unaware of her own? Or was it a sign that she was merely reacting to the displeasure caused by her roommate the day before, in other words, to get rid of the temporary unhappiness with an act of revenge in the dream? We cannot answer these questions without knowing more about the classmate's personal relationship. However, we know that the dream must have its symbolic meaning.

In order to analyze dreams clearly, we must first understand the problems related to the dreamer. If we can master some methods to interpret the dream for ourselves (because the person who knows you best is you), to see what it really means, and to have a guiding effect on ourselves.