Do you try to figure out what your dreams mean?
By The Horse
@TheHorse (238349)
Walnut Creek, California
November 16, 2015 7:11pm CST
I had a strange dream last night. I was playing upright bass at a jam session, and some woman playing with us was telling me to stop. She was basically saying I'm terrible on the bass (I'm not), and that I need to bow that part of the tune.
As it happens, in real life, I can't bow. I tried playing a friend's fiddle (tuned the same as a mandolin, which I play) and I just couldn't bow very well. So I gave up.
What the heck did that dream mean?
By coincidence, I lectured on dreams in my Intro to Psychology class today. Freud says that to analyze a dream, you have to separate the manifest and latent content. Manifest content is what happened recently (playing music, in my case). Latent content is the emotional issue you're trying to process.
So the question for me right now is: What woman (it was definitely a woman) is trying to convey to me that I'm doing something important to me (playing bass is important to me) dead wrong. She's even suggesting I try something that I know (or at least think) I'm not good at.
Do you try to analyze your dreams? For awhile, I kept a dream journal. Now, I just email the really interesting ones to myself in the mornings so I can look them over later.
I'm going to keep trying to figure this one out. It's kind of haunting me.
11 people like this
10 responses
@LadyDuck (502729)
• Italy
17 Nov 15
I had many dreams that "came true". I mean I saw in my dreams something that happened a few days or a few weeks later. This is the reason why I always analyze my dreams. I know that there is always something true, I have only to separate the fantasy from the reality.
1 person likes this
@TheHorse (238349)
• Walnut Creek, California
17 Nov 15
@LadyDuck In my case, it was my Grandmother. Do you think we have a certain synchronicity with certain people and process it in our unconscious? I tend not to think in terms of "spirits visiting us" and things like that, though I'd like to.
2 people like this
@cahaya1983 (11116)
• Malaysia
17 Nov 15
I think most of the time my dreams are too jumbled up to analyze. Some I admit were rather intriguing and they kept me thinking, but I've never really thought about exploring more.
1 person likes this
@epiffanie (11327)
• Australia
17 Nov 15
I used to have a notebook and a pen on my bedside table so I can write down my dreams during the night.. but it was tiring me out trying to analyse those dreams so I gave up .. hope you figure out your dream 
@rahulvsmokiee (3110)
• Thiruvananthapuram, India
17 Nov 15
even i had some deadly dreams. But I realize soon that they are jut imagination created my mind.
@TheHorse (238349)
• Walnut Creek, California
17 Nov 15
@rahulvsmokiee I think that many distressing dreams are anxiety dreams. And the muscle atonicity that accompanies REM sleep makes us feel helpless against the scary monsters that attack us!
1 person likes this
@nanette64 (20363)
• Fairfield, Texas
17 Nov 15
I don't dream much any more @TheHorse . A lot of my dreams were pre-cognitive and came to pass; some of them years later; which some were scary. Right down to even word for word conversation.
@dorianna (509)
• United States
17 Nov 15
I believe that many dreams have meaning. There are some dreams that seem almost self-explanatory indicative with your stress about a particular purchase for example. I have dreamed of future visits of a family member which came true..guess you could call that a premonition.
If a dream troubles me or I am curious I generally go to a dream interpretation book or Internet site to check on meanings.
For example, dreaming of a woman can represents nurturance, passivity, caring nature, and love. It refers to your own female aspects or your mother.
When taking each major item and looking up in a dream dictionary, you will be surprised the clarity it will bring to your dream and may very well focus on something that is on your mind or that you are going through presently. Besides which it is fun.
@TheHorse (238349)
• Walnut Creek, California
17 Nov 15
@dorianna Carl Jung spoke of a "collecive unconscious"--sort of collection of archetypes that exist in all of us. I think there are some very universal emotions: fear/anxiety, sadness, hope, and the need for connection, that may underlie all dreams. But it's so hard to empirically test what dreams mean!
1 person likes this
@dorianna (509)
• United States
17 Nov 15
@TheHorse not being a dream expert, I could not answer that adequately. I could venture a guess. Human beings basically embody the same emotions and characteristics. Though the are some difference due to culture and geography, for the most part , inherently we are basically the same. In the past and still in some cultures there are dream interpreters. There has to be a basis to draw from.
Just as certain behavior can be analyzed based on certain types of human behavior because inherent tendencies or reactions are similar in all humankind.
If you tried it..you may be very surprised.
@troyburns (1405)
• New Zealand
17 Nov 15
I have enough trouble working out reality - the meaning of dreams is way beyond me.
@DeborahDiane (40850)
• Laguna Woods, California
17 Nov 15
It sounds like that dream had an impact on you. I almost never remember my dreams, so I have never had the opportunity to try to analyze one.
