Thread: Why interpret dreams?

Originally Posted by Ginsan

Why the hell are there so many people trying to interpret dreams? I cringe every time I see it, which is quite often on DV. Why do people think there is some kind of intention or conscious, intellectial, calculated decision involved in creating dreams, sending you a coded message, a riddle? Why does it have to mean anything? /.../

That’s a very good question. But you could also ask: Why wouldn’t dreams mean anything? Why would man have an innate function to create stories when he falls asleep, if it was without meaning? And if it was pointless, why on earth would nature have us remember them?

How many of our innate functions are pointless? Is the ability to visualize things that are not real, as inventions and art, pointless? Are our thinking ability arbitrary and meaningsless? Digestion, fear, hair, the involuntary case of falling in love – all pointless?

Of course not. We are quite sure that every function of this body and it’s psyche has a purpose; if we do not know why we have a cecum, we are certain that science will one day find out why we are born with it, because everything about us, as far as we know, serves a purpose.

If dreams did not have a purpose, then we simply wouldn’t still have them one hundred thousands years into human development.

So we must accept the fact that dreams have a purpose even though we do not agree upon what that would be.

Now, if dreams have a purpose, then dreams are by definition meaningful. That is, dreams mean something, just like toothache means something, or agony, or fear. These is not pointless signals, quite the contrary, they are crucial for our well being.

Experiencing signals from body and mind, and investigating the reason for them (bad tooth, bad health, bad situation) tells us that what our body and mind tells us, that is, the ego which is experiencing it, are of some importance. One could say that these signals are messages: Beware, this situation is dangerous, or, drinking all this Coke will kill you.

We have found that messages from body and mind mean something.

Perhaps the most astonishing type of message is the dream. Of course, one could say, I do not understand it, therefore it is pointless. We say this about everything from music we don’t like to linguistics we don’t get. But thinking about it, once again, wouldn’t it be super strange if we were born with this function if it didn’t mean anything?

Of course it does. So then, what? That’s the million dollar question: What does it mean?

Because here is the other major point I would like to make: Many people, far from all, but many people feel it has to mean something. Okay, there are some who are just looking for answers in dreams like they do in stars, Tarot cards and coffee grounds, but never mind “them” for now. – Have you ever had the feeling that something “means” something, but you are not sure what? Perhaps a thing your partner said one day, or an unexpected email you got, and you’re stuck with the feeling: What the heck?

And others say, “oh, it means nothing at all”, but you are not convinced. Have you ever had such a feeling, and perhaps even beem proven right as time went by?

One could call that intuition. Perhaps it isn’t in the strict sence of the word, but let’s call it intuition. You just know that this-or-that wasn’t pointless or arbitrary, you knew it meant something. Or perhaps you saw a movie once, or read a book, and is stuck with the “what the heck”-feeling for a few days and the suddenly you realize what it was all about, and it’s kind of a revelation.

Well you see, many people get that exact feeling from some of the dreams they have, as this forum and other show. “I had this dream, I know it means something but I can’t figure it out. Please help.” They just know, but they do not know what, so often as it seems in desperation they turn to forums like these. Note how many of the posters in Dream Interpretation who only post once. Note how often people who asks what their dreams post for the first time (and never get back). They don’t know where to turn with their intuitive feeling that this must mean something, but they need to ask. This illustrates a common intuitive feeling that dreams mean something, that dreams are meaningful.

So, to get back to your question. On the one hand we have an innate function to create stories when we sleep. The rational conclusion one must draw from this is that dreams have a meaningful function; that is, dreams mean something. – On the other hand, we have the intuitive feeling that the dreams we have mean something. Hence the “what does my dream mean” that puzzles you. But fact is, dreams are still a mystery, we simply do not know for sure at this point. That’s intriguing in its own right, isn’t it?

I think a lot of people offer dream interpretations simply because people come in here desperately wanting to know what it meant. I have seen a few hippy trippy "interpretations" around here from a new age spiritual perspective, you know, 'your dream tells me that everything is going to be ok for you, and you'll meet that special someone soon' or whatever (funny how annoyingly positive those things always are, isn't it - part of today's vague feel-good philosophy). But most of them are very down to earth and sensible, advising that dreams ar nothing more than symbolic representations of emotions, ideas ad memories jumbled up in a person's mind, driven in intense times by prevailing emotional currents.

It seems like the majority of people, if they haven't studied brain science or developed a firm grounding of rational skepticism, have a tendency to believe their dreams are Telling Them Something, especially at those times when the dreams are charged with intense emotions. They might dream of talking to a deceased relative, or that they were back in school and it solved some problem they face in waking life (typical kind of dream people tend to have in troubling situations), and they interpret it magically, as if the dream is telling them they need to go to school. So they come in here often looking not for actual interpretation, but for fortune telling. Most of the interpreters around here will set them straight (though sometimes people don't want the common sense interpretation, they actually WANT fortune telling).

Wakinyan you are in the right direction but you are slightly off. Yes we can learn something from dreams about ourselves and/or the world around us but that does not mean that dreams have a function. They may simply be the result of some brain activity. You know what I mean? You can learn from it but that does not mean it is telling you something or has a function. Look, if I smash this laptop into the wall and it stops working, I learned that a laptop will stop working if I smash it into the wall hard enough. The laptop is not telling me "Hey man, don't smash us laptops into hard objects, we will stop working". I look at it and learn from it. Dreams might be the same, they aren't literally telling us something, we just learn from looking at them.

I think dreams are way too complex for us to just interpret it and draw some useful meaning from it. If you watch and listen recent neuroscientific lectures you will notice that there is some serious progress in the field, but explenations of dreams still remain vague. Ofcourse, you can interpret it superficially. When you lots of sex dreams it probably means that you have a healthy libido and that you are somewhat occupied with sex. But if you go just a little further, for example the kind of sex, with who or what, how many, the way they looked, the location, the way it started, ended, are all very random variables. Or the creation of those variables depends on way too many things to either predict a dream or to draw meaning from it. I think neuroscience will help us, but before that, it's pretty useless.

Originally Posted by Ginsan

Wakinyan you are in the right direction but you are slightly off. Yes we can learn something from dreams about ourselves and/or the world around us but that does not mean that dreams have a function. /.../

Thanks for reading my post and replying to it, but I never said "we can learn something from dreams about ourselves and/or the world around us", so your "but" doesn't make sense to me. However, if -- as you state (not me) -- we can "learn from dreams", then obviously there is a "function", so I don't get the second half of your second sentence; you seem to contradict yourself rather than me. Sorry for snipping your post, but if the starting argument is quite difficult to accept, then the following elaboration doesn't have much weight to it.

Originally Posted by Ginsan

Why the hell are there so many people trying to interpret dreams? I cringe every time I see it, which is quite often on DV. Why do people think there is some kind of intention or conscious, intellectial, calculated decision involved in creating dreams, sending you a coded message, a riddle?

Because people have had dreams that were significant, that had an intention, a coded message and a riddle?

Just because it's never happened to you is no reason to get upset with what you don't understand.

Imagine people saying "why the HELL are people trying to LD, it's just stupid, it doesn't work".

If you think dreams are so worthless, how do you have so many posts here?