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What Do Dreams Mean?
I love talking about dreams, mainly because it’s one of those things that we all have a great deal of experience in, no matter how mundane our waking life. A post over at my forum, combined with my recently immersing myself in a non-stop Twin Peaks marathon has got me moving in a new direction when it comes to dreams.
In that post, one of the regulars on my site describes a dream in which he became a giant robot from a movie (the Iron Giant). And then he asked: “What does this dream mean?” It’s a funny question to answer, I think - especially when you’re not the person having the dream. I find personally that when people try to interpret my dreams for me, it almost never sounds right. There might be elements that make sense or seem somehow appropriate, but rarely - if ever - do I get that sense of “clicking” and unlocking the actual truth behind the dream.
And yet, it’s still a tantalizing thing to reach for, even though nobody seems to be able to give it to me - and frequently I’m at a loss myself as to decoding the meaning of my dreams. I’ve thought about this a lot in regards to my own dreams and when friends tell me dreams, etc. What does such and such mean? What am I supposed to take away from all this? What’s the message? Sometimes I wonder if meaning/messages etc are really a sort of foreign concept to dreams - whether trying to take a dream and translate it into a specific meaning actually does more harm than good. That is, that meaning and so forth is an attempt by the rational/linear mind to put something into a box which by its very nature doesn’t belong in one - or that exists for the purpose of exploding boxes. I’m not really sure what the truth is here, but it’s an interesting discussion - one which I’ve rarely seen approached in this way.
Maybe the purpose of dream symbols is actually simply that you have them, that you experience them. They come up because they need to come up. And there may even be a “reason” that they came up which you can successfully detect or decode. But that the central purpose of them is not rational, but transformational. By having these dream experiences, your mind becomes constellated according to a different pattern, which flows outwards and subtly changes who you are.
So what’s the solution? I think if that’s truly the case, what you might want to try is simply amplifying the symbols, events or images which occurred to you in your dream. Rather than trying to understand with your linear mind why you became the Iron Giant (or whatever else comes up), go watch the movie again. Immerse yourself in robot images. Read a book about robots. Make a costume or walk around and pretend you’re a robot. Draw a picture of you as a robot, or write a story where some of these things happen. The idea basically is to take the symbol and feed it as much energy and concentration as you can. The easiest way to do this is through filling yourself up with associated imagery - anything that seems to you to be similar or referenced will work. And really go over the top, over-do it if you have to. And keep it up until it no longer seems interesting or noteworthy, or until you experience a new dream symbol which seems as powerful and important.
You’ll also find that over time, this technique of amplification will get you more in tune with the underlying “meaning” or logic of it all also. Simply paying attention to this side of your mind and giving concentration and energy to it will also yield an increase in creative energy and spiritual perception.
There also exist some materials out there from a Jungian perspective on dream amplification (a term he coined, as far as I know). But I think some of them are either too technical or too intellectually based to be especially useful (still check them out and make your own decision though). What you’re looking for essentially is emotional resonance or impact. Just follow the trails of what “feels right” and don’t worry about what it all means. You just want to follow chains of associations and literally immerse yourself in imagery that seems relevant and important to you. By doing so, you’re going to enmesh yourself in larger psychological patterns of which your dreams are but a small part. It’s almost like diving into the well your dreams were pulled up from. And in my experience, it’s very powerful stuff - and even better, it’s readily and easily available to everyone.
- Folded Dreams
- Dreaming you’re somebody else
- The mind of which we are unaware
- Plane Crash Dreams
- Celebrity
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- Next: What is Faith?
November 17th, 2005 at 4:15 pm
That’s an awesome insight. I really enjoyed the amplification part. And dreaming has always been one of my favorite topics since, like you said, everyone has access to it and has had an experience. It’s that weird… intangible phenomenon that everyone experiences and accepts as normal, yet almost completely crazy and foreign and otherworldly.
I think there are lots of different types of dreams. But maybe that’s just our interpretation and attempts to categorize things when they don’t fit into specific criteria. Entertainment, symbolic, literal, precognitive, lucid… Those are the kinds I can think of off the bat. I wrote this short little article awhile back giving a spur-of-the-moment interpretation of what I thought dreams are.
November 17th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
I think dream analysis works if you know the person whose dreams you are analyzing very well. My good friends ask me to analyze dreams for them and they trip out on my interpretations. But I couldn’t do it with a mere acquaintance or someone who I never met in person or a total stranger.
November 17th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
I’m a big fan of the Jungian approach to dream analysis. Jung’s main ideas are that in dream symbolism (for dreams are hugely, if not completely, symbolic), the unconscious is trying to speak to the conscious to make it aware of something. Maybe something hugely important, maybe nothing.
Tim’s approach is similar to the Jungian one. By looking into mythology, symbolic relevance or basically anything relevant to the dream you had, you may be able to stumble across what your unconscious was trying to get across to you.
Try the first chapter of Man and his Symbols for amazing insights into Jungian dream goodness, it really makes sense. To me anyway. There are examples of people who have witnessed symbolic imagery that is 1000’s of years old that they have never seen/heard of before. Also examples of people seeing imagery suggesting the death of someone near to them shortly before their actual death. Fascinating stuff.
November 17th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
eye reallly appreciated this post and the immersion in the symbolism idea is a great one to pursue and experiement with.
nice stuff.
November 17th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
My greatest enjoyment and self-exploration is dreaming. I have from time to time quite beautiful dreams of deeply meaningful, yet easily accessible images. Lately, I have been having dreams about unfinished houses, open to the elements.
November 17th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
I’ve been writing down my dreams for about five years now. Its cool cause even a five year old description of a dream, when reading it, makes me feel like i did when i woke up that time.
Time doesn’t seem to affect the dream world so much.
November 17th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
C.G. Jung is the only person in the world who’s ever been able to explain me to myself. Ever since I found out I was INTJ its been like FINALLY having an owner’s manual for Bill. Especially since reading ‘Psychological Types.’ INTJ is not a good personality type to have. I have few friends and I’ve never had a boyfriend even though I just hit 40 (and — frankly — not hard to look at). But at least I now know I’m not INSANE.
His ideas about dreams have been just as useful. Every big dream I’ve ever had in my life opened right up using his techniques. I was thrown off a little by his discussion of the place of the serpent in psychology and dreams. I understood it intellectually but I could never relate to it. Turns out I’m one of the few people for whom the spider, and not the serpent, is the symbol of the chthonic self. As soon as he mentioned that — BAM!! — I was on my way. This is one of those things that convinces me he’s onto something very powerful. I’ve read all of Freud’s important papers but he did nothing for me.
Jung’s amazing.
He is blown off by the vast majority of psychologists and dream researchers, though. No idea why. All the other shrinks I’ve been to have been useless. And just so you know, it’s been PROVEN we’re born with the images of spiders and snakes already buried in our heads. Just read a discussion of that in ‘Emotions Revealed’ by Paul Ekman.
November 17th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
Bill, that’s interesting. You’re probably the third or fourth person reading my site who’s spontaneously declared they are an INTJ. In the past, I’ve classified myself that way as well - so perhaps there’s something to us congregating together around a shared approach or mindset.
Interestingly, the last time I took a short personality type test, my score had shifted me into a new category. I began leaning towards the INFJ… I think for me the difference is that I’ve become less interested in “systems for the sake of systems” in favor of what’s actually important to people, and that’s been a big change for me this past year - which I think reflects in my writing to some extent hopefully.
I’m curious if anyone else has shifted around on the personality scale spectrum like this.
November 18th, 2005 at 12:02 am
I’ve believed for quite some time that gnosticism is Christianity for introverts. Extraverts need dogma to keep them from being totally emptied out into objects, and they need to be plugged into a collective idea. This means, furthermore, that gnosticism is the shadow of orthodoxy (and vis-versa). I tell people that extraverts think introverts have their heads up their asses, and introverts think extraverts don’t HAVE a head to stick up their asses. It’s very hard for us to get along. This is why Our Lord commanded us above all to trust in him and love one another.
You working on your emotions is a good thing. That’s precisely what an INTJ’s supposed to work on first, then the sensate function last. High differentiation is actually a good thing, however, even if tends to make you more vulnerable to neuroses. When the opposites are pulled widely apart there’s more energy. People who are muddled in their personality type tend to not be very interesting.
We INTJ’s are so quick to identify ourselves because we’re so fucking lonely. And since people think we’re kooky if not mentally ill we need to show them that we aren’t. I think Harriet Miers is INTJ. It’s why she looks like crap in a dress and wrote those juvenile notes to the Bushes talking about how COOL they are. It would also explain why she’s not married.
November 18th, 2005 at 12:36 am
Bill, there’s a good bit in one of Marie Louise Von Franz books where she talks about introverted versus extraverted religions. Let me see if I can find it.
I don’t have a direct quote, but this link to a post I wrote a while back has a link to the book. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote. I found it very enlightening.
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2004...verted-and-extraverted-religions.html
I also think there’s a danger for INTJ and related types to go too far trying to categorize everybody and fit everybody into a neat logical system.
November 18th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Well there’s always a danger trying to categorize and label people because labels and categories and stereotypes are only part of the equation. They should only be used to get a first impression. After that, if you continue to treat people under the categories and labels you’ve created for them, you only further to divide yourself from society. We as humans need categories and labels to understand others, but once we actually establish a relationship with a person, the labels and categories should be dropped and replaced by the new information we acquire about that person. Failing to do so creates negative and unwarranted reactions and actions.
November 18th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
Very cool post. Jungian dream analysis is also an excellent study; Jung is a diety in his own right! I also am a huge Jung fan, as well as dream analysis. I agree with you that dreams are for the person experiencing them…I believe; however, that sometimes people come along with some insight. How we apply that insight is solely up to us. Most of the time, people don’t know that they have brought something insightful to us; it’s for us to recognize the insight, not for them to recognize it. It is similar in dreams. When someone has something to say about someone else’s dream, it might not be accurate for that person. That’s why it’s important to research more than one source, including more than one person. At the end of it all, ask and trust yourself.
If you’re interested, check out today’s entry (18 Nov):
http://exploringconsciousness.blogspot.com
November 18th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
I am am infp — getting more “p” as I realize that life is about process, not moving in a direct line toward a goal.
November 18th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Whoops, my mistake. I think my old score was INTP and my newer slant is towards INFJ… (ie, balancing out the extremes from before - hopefully). more on this some other time though.
November 18th, 2005 at 11:16 pm
I usually don’t categorize people unless I need to make a decsion or it’s just obvious. About a third of our population, for example, is clearly a collective example of extraverted feeling/thinking personality types being herded by a very sophisticated mass mind control information complex. This is a necessary observation to make if you’re going to understand things as diverse as the war in Iraq, the impeachment of Bill Clinton… even the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’ve become a black hole that is now ripping to shreds the time/space contimuum of our body politic. It wouldn’t surprise me if they led us into civil war.
For myself it’s a matter of recognizing the obvious — I’m very strongly INTJ. It’s an almost godlike personality to have; sometimes I swear I can see through walls and read people’s minds. It’s not for nothing that Augustus Caesar was not only Imperator but Pontifex Maximus. Notice the fact that he never looks you in the eye in his statues. Compare his gaze to the very direct one you get out of Constantine. And whether he’s wearing the armour of a god warrior or the covering of a priest he looks like he doesn’t quite fit into it. Godlike, yes; lonely CERTAINLY. I guess I should really stop whining since it’s a fair trade.
Once I studied Jung in depth a LOT of contemporary American politics suddenly started making sense, and I started making sense to myself as well. I even got amusement out of reading about Augustus’ struggle with his daughter Julia. She’s clearly an extraverted feeling type. Females of this type SHUT DOWN men like us if we’re not forewarned and forearmed. Even the gay men. Now I just shoot them a cold stare when they start getting out of control. Or rather, when their probing of the world with their emotional function (which is something like a giant, wet psychic tongue) starts stirring up my undeveloped emotional side. It’s archaic and possesses me when that happens. Think Spock with a weekly dose of pon farr. Same thing with my deeply buried sensate function.
In the case of INTJ the ‘J’ just means the judgemental type is the extraverted type, which in my case is Thinking. My dominant function is iNtuitive, which is perceptual.
The best Jung essay to read if you want to get to the bottom of modern politics? Easily ‘The Undiscovered Self.’ It’s funny how it was written in response to the Communist threat of the 50’s, and yet it’s a direct and very specific warning to the United States about the threat of the religious right that, while today in full bloom, was at the time merely latent.
November 18th, 2005 at 11:30 pm
You made a really strange switch, Tim.
First: Introverted Thinking dominant (extraverted Feeling the most buried), Extraverted iNtuition secondary (introverted sensation therefore half buried/half conscious in third place).
Then: Your iNtuition takes the dominant position and goes introverted, and it’s seconded by extraverted Feeling, which was the hitherto most fully buried and therefore archaic. That’s definitely something I wouldn’t try and categorize at this point.
November 18th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Interesting: just did a quick review of the colors that were ascribed to the different functions by Jung. Blue: thinking. Red: feeling. Green or Brown: Sensation. Yellow: Intuition. Yellow has always been my favorite color, and in my active imagination work Red and Blue loom large in my mandalas, which as of yesterday were pinwheels. The day before it was an orb of blue encircling a red center. As I said, for an INTJ the first thing to work on is Feeling. It’s funny because I figured it would be Sensation because it was the most buried. In my conscious activity I was always trying to stretch my Sensate function, while for months my dreams and spontaneous active imagination work kept stressing my feelings. Then I read later in Jung that you are in fact supposed to work your TERTIARY FUNCTION (the third one) first. This lets your ego settle effortlessly into a new and more formidable center of gravity. Yet more evidence to me personally of this man efficacy.
He really is a deity in his own right.
November 19th, 2005 at 12:12 am
Bill, I have no idea what you mean, but it sounds interesting (regarding my apparent change-over). I never quite grasped what they mean in that terminology. Could you try re-phrasing in a way that’s less… um, godlike? Hehe.
November 19th, 2005 at 12:21 am
In any event, I definitely agree about Jung having totally and utterly grasped something absolutely transcedent. And even more amazing than that is that he brought back his knowledge to share with other people in a way that’s entirely usable - if a little (okay a lot) obtuse at times…
November 19th, 2005 at 12:48 am
Well, in the beginning your feelings were the most buried and unconscious. This was the part of you that you were most unconscious of, was the most primitive, and was the most contaminated by the archetypes. Then it jumped up to being the second most powerful function which is usually almost completely conscious.
For example, thinking is my secondary function. But even though its secondary it’s still very well developed. I carried 98% averages in college in logic and all my math classes up to and including Calc II.
On the other hand, my sensation function is my most buried function. I’ll never have washboard abs although I’m mostly vegetarian and work out a lot because I get into feeding frenzies. If I don’t get to a buffet at least once a week I get really angry and depressed. I can’t have cookies or chocolate in the apartment because I tear through them. It’s the same with sex, I’m afraid. For food and sex it’s quantity over quality. I thank God I’m a top because otherwise I would have gotten A.I.D.S. years ago.
So for me it’s unthinkable that my Sensate function would suddenly jump up and replace my Thinking function. But something very similar to that is exactly what happened to you.
Also: your iNtuition went from extraverted to introverted, and your Sensation therefore went from introverted to extraverted. That’s quite odd.
November 19th, 2005 at 12:56 am
Okay, I think I’m starting to follow what you’re saying. You’re saying I basically had an explosion which released my feelings from way down in my subconscious right up to (almost) the forefront? I can independently verify something like that has absolutely gone on this past year. It’s been enormously transformative in both my personal life and my writing. Pretty much knocked me on my ass multiple times - and I don’t think it’s done yet either.
I always get confused here as to what it means when a function is introverted or extraverted, since E/I is already one of the functions to begin with. What’s the difference between an extra/introverted intuition and sensation?
November 19th, 2005 at 1:00 am
Also, I don’t understand how you determine which function is dominant…
November 19th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
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