Thursday, February 7, 2008

Why Do We Dream?

Today in my Personality Psych class we had a Jungian analyst come in and speak to our class. One of the things she specializes in is the interpretation of dreams. Now I've always thought that our dreams sometimes symbolize things and then other times I thought dreams were just thoughts brought about from the experiences from the day. But today I learned that dreams are much more important than insignificant thoughts. In fact every dream that we have is actually our unconscious mind trying to tell us something important that we are unaware of. Sometimes our unconscious is trying to help us see an answer to a problem we're faced with. Other times it can be trying to warn or prepare us of things that are to come.

As I was listening to our guest speaker talk about the importance of dreams I began to recall a dream that I had just last night. I dreamed that I was being shown a house by a relator and I remember feeling excited because the house was so amazing. Next I was on the phone with my dad and he told me that the house was mine and I joked around with him saying "What, are you dead and you're leaving the house to me?" and he said yes. (Very important to remember that there are two of my dad in this dream) I didn't believe him and I left to go to my mom's house. Once I got there my mom told me that my older sister, Madison, had something to tell me. She told me that our dad had died and I burst into tears feeling the worst emotional pain as I tried to grasp the concept that I would never be able to see my dad and tell him how much he meant to me. And then I woke up.

So as I sat in my psychology class, I began to fear that maybe my dad was about to die but as I listened to the speaker she began to explain that our dreams are usually supposed to be interpreted subjectively and only on rare occasions are they supposed to be looked at objectively. As she started to explain what some things we may dream about symbolize (this blog would be way too long for me to name all of them), I think I worked out what my unconscious mind was trying to show me.

The new house that ended up being mine I think symbolizes my new independence as I'm getting older. One important symbol the speaker told us about was having someone or something doubled in your dream and that death doesn't necessarily mean someone is going to die but that something is going to change in your life and "die" off. So for me, my dad symbolizes someone who has always taken care of me as a little girl and having one of him die in my dream means that my childhood is ending and I'm growing into an adult. Of course, I'm not a dream expert though!

4 comments:

Sarah said...

Hey Macon! Interpretation of dreams sounds really interesting. I always thought dreams were just thoughts that had popped into my head throughout the day, but did not really have time to think about. I think it would be really cool to understand my own dreams. The way you interpreted your dream sounded pretty good. It made sense to how you said your speaker explained it.

Anonymous said...

That's a really good interpretation of your dream, Macon! There have been so many debates on whether or not dreams actually mean anything and I agree with you; dreams do have meaning. Okay, so sometimes you can have completely random dreams that you do not even know where they came from,but I think it is because we only remember very very little of the dreams we have. So I think that those random dreams are apart of a longer dream that we just forgot. I'm not an expert or anything, but that is what I think.

Anonymous said...

Weird! I never thought of those tiny little synapses in your brain actually telling you something important. It's really crazy to think about how there's an entire science about someone's mind and all that's included? I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I really enjoyed this post though. Your writing is very conversational and I like that :)

Anonymous said...

PS. I found a really good article for your issue of school assessment! I'll try to bring it to class Tuesday.