Dream Interpretation

Deirdre Barrett, PhD.

In: Kushida C.A. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Sleep, Vol. 1, pp. 129-131. Waltham, MA:
Academic Press

Synopsis
Dream interpretation during early psychoanalysis elicited associations
from the patient but also involved authoritarian interpretations focused
on whatever the analyst believed to be the key human drives—sex,
power, transcendence, etc. Modern dream interpretation relies on
non-leading questions to lead the dreamer through an associative
process to discover their own meaning for the dream. Research finds
that patients rate therapy sessions utilizing dreams more highly in
terms of session quality, mastery, and insight gained.

Dream interpretation, in the sense of foretelling the future or discerning the will
of gods or ancestors, is as old as human history. The Summerian civilization,
which was the first to develop writing in the third millennium BC, recorded
dreams their earliest texts. For instance, in the Gilgamesh epic, the bull-man
Enkidu has a pair of dreams which foretell his death. Egyptian papyri and other
early civilizations’ writings feature this type of interpretation.
In terms of what western psychology means by dream interpretation, the
Greek philosopher Heraclitus was perhaps the first writer to maintain that dreams
were not of supernatural origin. Instead, he believed that dreams represented
the individual’s retreat into a private communicational world which operated
differently than communication in the waking world but which were still part of
that individual’s psyche. It was not until the eighteenth century that the concept of
the unconscious became popular in western philosophy and dreams were
explained as an phenomena of that. German philosophers von Schubert, the
German psychologist Scherner, and French writer Biran all described systems in
which dreams are symbols of unconscious trends in personality and in which
repression of impulses while awake plays a role in their manifesting in dreams.
In the Victorian era, physicians became interested in using dreams to
understand hysteria and other neuroses filing their consulting rooms. Sigmund
Freud refined the concept of dreams as unconscious products to suggest more
specifically that dreams happened when an ungratified instinct was triggered
during sleep. This threatens to wake the sleeper up, Freud believed, and so he or
she began to construct “wish-fulfillments” to gratify the instincts temporarily with
imagery so that the person could remain asleep. However, all dreams are not by
any means pleasant. Later researchers Hall and van de Castle found the majority
of dream content is the negative side of neutral in emotion and types of
interactions. Freud explained the large number of apparently negative dreams as
resulting from disguise—direct gratification of sexual and aggressive instincts
would also threaten sleep so a dream censor disguised the gratification.
Therefore, by looking at dreams, he believed that an analyst could learn much
about a patient’s ungratified wishes and about their defensive style of dealing
with these.
To discover the symbolic meaning of dreams, Freud asked patients to free
associate to elements of the dream. He told them to say everything that occurred
to them, omitting nothing even if it seemed silly, irrelevant, embarrassing, or
unacceptable. This often moved far afield from the “manifest content” of the
dream but Freud viewed that as unimportant as it was arriving at the “latent
dream”--the important impulse which gave rise to the dream process and the
idiosyncratic ways that individual was way inclined to defend against that impulse
and to gratify it.
Despite writing about how important it was to get individual free associations
and to deduce information about a patient’s unique character and defenses,
Freud often mentioned interpreting elements in terms he seemed to think
universal symbolism such as convex curves as breasts, concave ones as
vaginas and any long protrusions as a penis. He interpreted dreams of people he
never even met—one of his early published cases was an analysis of Doctor
Daniel Schreber despite knowing the man’s history only from biographies, and he
also offered interpretations to patients in the absence of associations. Most
frequently these interpretations were sexual, as with the following dream from a
young woman who suffered from agoraphobia:
Dream: "I am walking in the street in summer, I wear a straw hat of
peculiar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards and the
side pieces of which hang downwards, and in such a fashion that one
is lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a confidential mood, and
as I pass a troop of young officers I think to myself: None of you can
have any designs upon me."
Freud: As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her:
"The hat is really a male genital, with its raised middle piece and the
two downward hanging side pieces." I intentionally refrained from
interpreting those details concerning the unequal downward hanging
of the two side pieces . . .,. I continued by saying that if she only had a
man with such a virile genital she would not have to fear the officers—
that is, she would have nothing to wish from them.

Various other psychoanalysts shared Freud’s belief that dreams reveal

unconscious aspects of personality and conflicts, but placed less emphasis on
sexuality in their view of the unconscious or therefore of dreams. As an early
admirer of Freud, Carl Jung also viewed dream analysis as a primary way to gain
knowledge of the unconscious mind. However, Jung believed that the
unconscious contained collective as well as personal elements, and that it
contained transcendent as well as base impulses. A central element of Jung's
psychoanalytic theory was the archetype. This was a fundamental symbol that
we all share through the collective unconscious. One example is the "mother"
archetype. Everyone has this archetype but how it manifests is influenced by
what one’s own mother was like and one’s specific culture’s concepts of
goddesses, earth mother, motherland, etc. Other examples of archetypes which
might show up in dreams include the hero, trickster and the Self.
Jung also believed that an important role of dreaming was compensation. He
thought that if people expressed one of end of a functional dichotomies such as
thinking-vs-feeling or sensation-vs-intuition more in their waking life, then the
other pole would manifest in their dreams.
Unlike Freud, Jung did not believe the dream should be interpreted using "free
association." Rather, he favored staying closer to the specific images in the
dream. In Jung's words, "I concluded that only the material that is clearly and
visibly part of the dream should be used in interpreting it." Because Jung
believed part of the unconscious was collective, Jung sometimes interpreted
dreams using myths from cultures which patients hadn’t necessary heard of but
which he thought to be universal symbols. Although he described eliciting
associations to each dream element from the dreamer, he interpreted material in
the absence of such associations. As in the following example from the journal of
his patient, Cristiana Morgan:

Dream: “I was with a star-nosed mole and canary bird. I had cut their
nails and was afraid I had cut them too short and caused them pain.
Some one said “the mole goes deep down into the ground.” I took the
canary out of its cage. It didn’t fly away as I expected.”
Jung: You cut the nails of the animals to destroy their powers. This is
what you should do rather than bite your own nails. By doing this you
are self destructive. The mole in the dream is a sensation animal. The
bird is intuition. The mole carries your star on his nose which means
you must follow sensation—follow your star. You will have a fight with
your intuition.

On other occasions, Jung implied he knew the meaning of a dream without the
patient’s associations but chose not to interpret it, as with another dream of
Morgan’s:

Dream: “I was in a harvesting machine moving wheat.”

Jung (this time after inquiring and getting no associations from
Morgan): You cannot seem to associate anything with wheat. I do not
dare to interpret the dream for you now. I do not want to go too far too
fast.

A third of the early psychoanalysts, Alfred Adler, emphasized control, power

strivings and defense against an ‘inferiority complexes’ as the impulses driving
human behavior. Therefore he saw dreams as clues to how the individual
personally expressing these strivings. Adler did not believe that the conscious
and unconscious function against each other—or even that they were very
different from each other. Rather he thought the unconscious represented issues
in more emotional and visual terms than the waking mind. He believed that the
purpose of dream imagery was to express underlying thoughts, not to disguise
them. He observed that patients demonstrated the same strivings and fears in
dreams as they exhibited in waking life but that sometimes they or he could see
something in their dream imagery they’d not understood awake.
For Adler, dreaming is a preparation for future waking situations. Dreams
attempt to solve problems interfering with the gratification of instincts rather than,
as for Freud, to temporarily discharge them. Adler did not, as Jung, believe the
dream was a source of collective wisdom, or was an expression of a more
complete self. He described them instead as ‘pictures which will arouse the
emotions we need for our purposes, that is, for solving problems confronting us
at the time of the dream, in accordance with the particular style of life which is
ours.’ He called them ‘a dress-rehearsal for life,’ in which the dreamer practices
ambitions defenses, and general plans for the future.’
Like Freud and Jung, Adler usually elicited patients’ associations in
interpreting their dreams, but he also proffered universal symbols in some of his
writings. He suggested that dreams of paralysis arose from feeling hopeless
about a problem, dreams of travelling were an expression of ones progress in
life, dreams of falling reflected fears about loss of face socially, and dreaming of
flying demonstrated confidence about solving problems.

Most modern schools of dream interpretation put less reliance on one type of
content and discourage authoritarian interpretations of others’ dreams more
consistently than did the early analysts. Modern techniques rely on various
approaches to leading the dreamer through an associative process to discover
the significance of the dream. As a testament to how consistent this attitude has
become, the Statement on Ethics of Dreamwork of The International Association
for the Study of Dreams (the main international dream organization) reads in
part, “Systems of dreamwork that assign authority or knowledge of the dream's
meanings to someone other than the dreamer can be misleading, incorrect, and
harmful. Ethical dreamwork helps the dreamer work with his/her own dream
images, feelings, and associations, and guides the dreamer to more fully
experience, appreciate, and understand the dream.”
Most of these approaches inquire one-by-one about each image or action in
the dream—whether it reminds him or her of anything or anyone. Special
attention is paid to whether feeling—emotions or body sensations remind the
dreamer of anything from waking life. The emphasis is on asking non-leading
questions to get at associations and more detail than the dreamer may have first
described. Often metaphoric meaning emerges better if the therapist does not
ask for extremely logical reflection on symbolization. Just getting them to define
each element can yield rich idiosyncratic detail of how they see that object or
action. So the modern therapist would not tend to ask: “What do teeth symbolize
for you?” but instead: “Pretend I didn’t know what teeth are. Describe them to
me . . . What are teeth used for? Anything about teeth happened recently? Can
you think of anything in waking life that gives you that same feeling in the pit of
your stomach that you had in the dream when you realized that your teeth were
falling out?”
In a specific approach which Gayle Delaney and Loma Flowers have termed
“The Dream Interview,” they often use the phrasing “Pretend I’m from another
planet” as a premise to get patients to take seriously the task of describing a
dream element afresh. Here is an example of this approach.

Dreamer: A cat was on the windowsill. It came into my room, raised a

ruckus, and left.
Interviewer: Pretend I come from another planet. What are cats like?
Dreamer: They are sleek, agile, distant, aloof, they love you when
they want and leave you when they want.

The interviewer proceeded to elicit more details about each aspect of the dream--
that this specific cat was gorgeous, black, and sleek and that the room it had
entered was the bedroom, and that after it left, the dreamer felt awful and was in
tears. The therapist then recapitulated the dream with these details inserted:

Interviewer: Is there anything, anyone, or any part of yourself like a

gorgeous, black, sleek, agile cat that raises a ruckus in your bedroom,
is distant, aloof, loves you when it wants and leaves you when it
wants, and you feel awful, end up in tears when it leaves?
Dreamer: Oh my boyfriend! He is sleek and black and gorgeous and
has exactly that personality.

Flowers points out that if the interviewer had assumed that cats represent the
mother, the feminine principle, or an Egyptian goddess—as many popular or
cookbook dream dictionaries do--it would have lead the dreamer away from her
own meaning.
Other approaches access similar associations by “replaying the dream”—
asking the person to close their eyes while the therapist slowly feeds back the
description of the dream, or by inducing a trance-like state and visualizing re-
entering the dream environment to observe it. Others use a body-centered
approach, asking the dreamer to focus on each event in the dream in terms of
what sensations they notice.
While the vast majority of these modern approaches insist on the therapist not
interpreting from their own associations, a few suggest this can be a helpful step.
After getting the dreamers associations, a therapist might inquire, “I wonder if the
teeth falling out in the dream possibly has anything to do with the real illness you
are experiencing right now . .. does that feel related?” Montague Ullman, in his
group approach to dream interpretation, includes a stage he calls “The Game”
during which the group very explicitly offers its projections onto the dream. Each
member pretends the dream is her own. Ullman encourages group members to
phrase their most declarative comments with “If this were my dream. . . .” .
 “Dream dictionaries” are considered useless—in fact harmfully misleading—
by most modern therapists. Some see a bit of potential to the most varied and
lenient ones, which instead of: “Teeth falling out—Fears about Castration,” offer
something more like: “Freudian analysts have suggested this imagery can reflect
‘castration anxiety.’ Jungians might see it as symbolizing the Self not being
whole, feeling as if one had lost some part of oneself. Teeth are also used in
eating, nourishing ourselves. One bites with ones teeth, so they could represent
aggressive or defensive potential—in this case, missing. There are twoperiods in
life when one commonly loses teeth: around the age of 5 or 6 when baby teeth
fall out and again in old age. You might think whether the dream feels like it is
associated with either of those life stages. . . .” Such comments might trigger
the dreamers own associations—like the Ullman “Game” process. However,
most dream dictionaries are phrased in ways to shut down rather than stimulate
the dreamers’ self-exploration.
Most modern dream interpretations methods are designed so that the dreamer
can work with a therapist or other objective facilitator, but can also be utilized by
a dreamer on their own systematically asking themselves open-ended questions
and playing both “roles.”
Recent research has found that dream interpretation can improve the benefit of
psychotherapy over general therapy not utilizing dreams. Much of this work has
been done using Clara Hill’s Dream Model, a highly systematic version of the sort
of inquiries described above that has been standardized to be replicable for
research purposes. Over 25 studies using this model have found, among other
things, that patients rate dream sessions highly in terms of session quality,
working alliance, gains from dream interpretation, and mastery-insight. They
show gains in insight into specific dreams, clarification and implementation of
action ideas for specific dreams, change in target problems identified in dreams,
and improved attitudes toward dreams. Studies find that patients who benefit
from dream work are those who are able to become actively involved in the
process, but such variables as attitudes toward dreams, openness, gender, and
dream recall do not seem to be related to outcome. Patients in one study
indicated that what was helpful about the dream interpretation included the
associations, links to waking life, catharsis, taking an objective perspective, and
working on their dreams with a therapist.

FURTHER READING:

Adler A. 1927/1963 . Understanding human nature. New York: Premier.

Delaney, G. (ed.), New directions in dream interpretation. NY: State University of

New York Press, 1993. See especially chapter: Flowers, L.K. “The dream
interview method in a private outpatient psychotherapy practice.”

Barrett, Deirdre “Christiana Morgan: Her Life and Dreams” Talk at the
International Association for the Study of Dreams, Rolduc, June, 2011. Abstract
at http://asdreams.org/2011/abstracts.htm#B_.
Ellenberger, Henri. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and
Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Freud, Sigmund The Interpretation of Dreams (3rd edition) 1900 Translated by A.

A. Brill (1911), at Project Gutenberg, retrieved 5/20/11
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15489/15489-h/15489-h.htm

Hill, C. E. (Ed.) (2004). Dream work in therapy: Facilitating exploration, insight,

and action. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

International Association for the Study of Dreams (1997) Dreamwork Ethics

Statement, http://www.asdreams.org/ethics.htm#ethics2

Speiser, E.A., “Akkadian Myths and Epics.” in Pritchard, J. B. (ed.) The Ancient
Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Vol. 1:31-86). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1958.

Ullman, Montague Appreciating Dreams, Sage (1996)