Thread: dream interpratations

You work with clients? In what capacity? Are you a psychologist?

Well, this does lend a lot more credence to what you say. And at least you do say that context must be taken into consideration.

Actually I agree that many dream symbols do have some widespread (probably not universal, but close) meaning. Swarms of insects for instance seem to often mean disease or sickness or unhealthy conditions that could lead to sickness.

But I also think it's important for people to understand that you can't just look up symbols in a book without some understanding of the processes that create dreams and how to interpret them. This is exactly what far too many people think they can do.

As a great example, here's the section on Dream Symbols from that paper I linked to above - this demonstrates how dream imagery can be interpreted in this particular instance.

3.2.2 Dream symbols In order to point out the differences between both interpretations of dreams regarding the meaning and role of dream symbols, I shall quote the following dream-report.10 One young patient tells the dream: "I am in the tree in unknown garden and I am picking apples. I look around carefully to see if I am being watched." We have learnt that patient's associations are a must when interpreting dreams. So let us tell the associations that the patient told to the therapist. The content of dream reminds the patient on his childhood, when he picked some of pears in the foreign garden without permission. The feeling of bad conscience, intensified in dream, reminds him on an event from the previous day. On the street he met and talked for a while with his acquaintance, a woman who was otherwise indifferent to him. In that moment, a gentleman, who he knew too, passed by and he got the same feeling as when he stole the pears. Picking apples reminds him also on the scene from the paradise. He could never really understand how picking prohibited apples had such a crucial consequence for the first human. Sometime ago he was constantly mad at God's punishment for man's sins, which is why he believed God created people in the way they are: curious and greedy. He also remembered on his father who punished him few times for no obvious reason. The worse was when he got caught while secretly watching the girls that were swimming. In connection to this, he confessed that he had recently started an affair with some house-maid, but he could not induce her to engage in sexual intercourse. He had a date with her in the evening before this dream occurred.

Now, Freud would interpret this dream above all as fulfilment of wish that remained unsatisfied during the day. Picking apples in connection with the patient's associations is an expression of erotic scene. The censorship transformed the latent motive into symbolic image, where apples symbolize breasts. As regards the associations of father's punishment and the paradise, we could say that the events in the past significantly transformed patient's superego (the influence of social norms, patterns of behaviour) and are therefore responsible for the repression of sexual desire. Also the uneasy feeling he had when talking to his acquaintance was a consequence of inherited social norms.

The dream with apples is undoubtedly an erotic scene for Jung too. However, more important is the myth of Adam and Eve. It is a myth of sin that was punished with Adam's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. Considering patient's associations, we can say that erotic dream scene was presented as sin. The dream points at improper relationship to the opposite gender. The patient's central conflict is expressed in desire to have a sexual intercourse on one hand, and commit a sin on the other. He also has a fear of being observed, which is present in the myth of Adam and Eve too. Eve persuaded Adam to take the apple off the tree, but he could not hide from God seeing it.

Sorry for wall of text, but this is great stuff.

And it helps to understand that the reason so many symbols can be read almost universally is precisely because they emerge form the *collective unconscious that's common to us all.

* Another of Jung's terms that's all-too-often misused by New-Agers to justify telepathy etc. That is not what it means. It's simply inherited thought-forms that we all share in common, which are largely what make us human.