Dreams

Just like many of you stated already, I am fascinated by dreams. It's interesting to see what the mind will produce when you are not in total control. To me, dreams are ideas that simply surface in creative representation. In my personal experience, most dreams parallel an experience, thought, emotion, desire, etc.. that occurs when you are fully awake and aware; they are, essentially, that precise topic but are simply shown in a different way.

When I can remember the majority of one of my dreams, I try to find a recurrent symbol, motif, or theme that surfaced continually throughout the dream. Usually, that symbol will help me figure out the reasoning behind my dream. For example, I often have dreams that my teeth fall out. In particular, I once had a dream that I was hiking through the woods alone. As I was walking back down a heavily wooded hill, I noticed one of my teeth were loose. The instant I touched it with my tongue, it fell out. As I looked down at it in my hand, I realized there was a person standing in the woods staring at me. As I ran toward the end of the path, the person followed (they didn't physically run to follow, they were just kind of there beside me the entire time). The next day, I could not figure out what that was supposed to mean, until I went to class that evening. I was getting ready for a presentation(very nerve-racking), and I realized it was a creative representation of my fear of humiliation/embarrassment. I am afraid of screwing up even when I am alone (alone in the woods).

I don't usually create new ideas in my dreams. They usually reflect some emotion I already have. Sometimes they help me realize emotions I never realized were existent (or maybe they actually create the emotions, who knows!). I am envious of people whose dreams lead to serious creativity. I suppose I just need to learn to use my dreams for creativity.

I also believe that Freud's ideas of dreaming are a little cynical. Classifying every dream into either sexual repression or aggressive repression is extremely narrowing. There are many complex emotions that have little or nothing to do with sex or aggression. What about love? Love does not necessarily include sex and typically does not involve aggression? Or what about those dreams about being chased? I certainly don't think that's sexy, and you are definitely not showing aggression.

I seem to agree more with Jung, but not completely. "Below the personal unconscious, where repressed feelings and thoughts developed during an individuals life, lay the collective unconscious, 'the vast historical storehouse' of feelings, thoughts, and memories inherited and shared by all humanity." (Hughes, 56) We all see the same basic ideas in our dreams. We feel the same universal emotions, but represent them individually in our dreams.