| 
well the two main theories of dreams (freuds and jungs) are that dreams are either 1. subconscious wish-fulfillments, b/c the subconscious(primal, "immoral" desires) gets stifled in everyday life because we dont want to accept these desires, so it gets what it wants in the form of dreams, but in order for us to even get to see these desires fulfilled, a part of our unconscious has to filter them into symbols, so that, yes pretty much everything in a dream is a symbol that stands for something else. and the reason that we sometimes have unpleasant dreams is that we either a. displace ourselves onto another character in the dream whose getting the good treatment or b. our conscious may want to deny that these our wishes that our unconscious actually has so the dream itself seems "horrible" to us. 2. dreams are ways to balance the psyche, like if you feel overly powerless and inferior to others its likely that youll dream that youre overly powerful and in control. this extreme dream attitude is also an overcompensation, so the best way to adjust personally is usually to take the middle path. also, in order to interpret a dream with any accuaracy you really have to know the dreamer personally and know about all these hidden unconscious attitudes toward things so the best way to do it is to help the dreamer find these meanings themselves. for instance, theres no way that i could know what the shower symbolizes because i dont know all the unconscious personal meanings that underdawg places on it. jung thought, though, that there are universal symbols but having these "archetypal dreams" is an extremely rare occurance. i can only recall like 2 that i may have had in my life, and they usually occur during extreme mental stress.
"You are reading this."
|