Sure, you can study your dreams, but you can’t scientifically study your dreams.
Your dreams are still worth studying, just as it’s worth looking at your face in a mirror every morning. The mirror shows you a reflection of your external self. The dream shows you a reflection of your interior self, potentially an even more valuable reflection.
What do you mean I can’t study my dreams scientifically?
Statistics are available about dreams, but they’re about other people, whole groups of them. But you, yourself, are an individual. That means there are things about you that are very much like other people—and other things about you that are very different. Statistics about dreams are useful in general to tell you about general things. They’re not useful in the particular when it comes to your individual case.
Further, your interpretations aren’t replicable in the way a solid scientific study is.
Interpreting dreams is an art.
It would be nice to be able to look in a dream dictionary and look up what the symbols in your dream meant, just as if you were looking up a word you didn’t know. But, unlike a dream website or the dictionary of a language, the entries in a dream dictionary don’t really mean anything. Your personal dream symbol language is formed by your own individual experiences. Dream dictionaries are next to useless, except for maybe introducing the idea that symbols form a non-verbal language.
That, in short, leaves it to you to interpret your own dreams.
There’s one big problem with that. How can you be sure that you interpreted your dream correctly?
Doing it well is a matter of adhering to process and understanding what’s going on.
1. You spent a couple of minutes after you woke up writing the dream down or recording it.
It’s easy to forget the details of the dream. One element of the dream can build upon another. A solid interpretation starts with getting all the information about the dream together. You’re not going to interpret off of these notes, which you can write on a piece of scrap paper or on an index card. Rather, you’re going to put these rough notes into a journal entry in your dream journal.
The process starts with making sure you get the details down.
2. You’ve explored and seen your dream with fresh eyes and using your conscious mind.
The subconscious is like a mirror that reflects your conscious life. The subconscious is like a child, what Sigmund Freud called the id or the ego. Your conscious mind is rational, the place where decisions are made. This takes us to the next vital step in getting a solid interpretation of your dream.
Your initial idea of what the dream was really about often gets discarded when you’ve considered it point by point. Dreams are an experience. As with other kinds of experiences, learning happens when you stop and think about the experience.
3. You’re following the Dream Recovery System.
That means you’re carefully considering the dream, seeing what each part of it means to you, or what it represents. Once you do that, you can understand how the elements play off of each other, how they’re interrelated.
4. If it takes you time to understand the various dream elements, you’re spending it.
That is, you’re not dismissing the dream as a simple flight of imagination. If it’s confusing, you’re sitting with the puzzle. You can be doing other things while you’re mulling it, but you don’t give up.
You’re not distracted by who the people are; rather, you’re looking at what they mean to you, what they represent in the context of the dream. Sex, for example, can mean many things. In a particular dream, it can be a reward, appreciation of beauty, or a way of creating the future. Money, too, can have deep meanings.
If you’re still confused by the next time you’re going to bed, you can always ask your subconscious for a clarifying dream.
5. You’re keeping your interpretation out of the eyes of anyone else.
Decide on what you think the dream means before you talk the dream over with another human. Your dreams are for you; they’re your own private theater. When you share them with another person, you might be tempted to talk about them differently than they actually happened. There are a lot of reasons for this. You might not want to sound like a racist, a sexist, or some other “ist.” You might think if you describe the dream differently, it would make for a better story, funnier, or something else.
There could be a lot of reasons. Dreams are a private theater, and they’re better off limited to you until you fully understand them.
6. You’re keeping your emotions out of the interpretation as much as possible.
Dream interpretation is a job for the conscious mind.
That’s not to say that emotions aren’t important. Emotions provide meaning. You do what you do because you feel the way that you feel. In many ways, your emotions are in command (if they’re not, you’re choosing feeling one way over feeling another way, even if you’re feeling strongly about one thing).
Nevertheless, keep them out of the dream interpretation process.
The main way emotions can negatively impact interpreting your dreams is that you’d reject an interpretation out of hand because you don’t like the way that it makes you feel, say racist, a pervert, unfair, evil, or whatever. Dreams speak in a symbolic language, figuratively, not literally. That means that if you’re taking the dream literally, you’re misunderstanding the language.
7. You seek guidance from God, and you work to cultivate an honest relationship with Him.
Satan is called the Prince of Lies and the Great Deceiver. God, on the other hand, is the font of Goodness and Truth.
Lies can take a lot of forms. There are flat-out ones, half-truths, and overemphasizing some minor points over other points that are more important.
The truth can be nuanced and complicated.
When you honestly work to understand his Word, work to follow Him, you’re more able to see the physical world and your dreams truly. People who don’t take trying to understand and live by God’s word seriously (endangering their souls) are foolish.
8. When you refer back to the dream later, you consider it in the context of its time in your life.
What you were concerned with during your waking hours will usually have a big impact on your dreams. Some of the points will be major. They’ll have a large impact upon your life. Others will be more minor.
As the years go by, you’ll change bit by bit. Things that were so important will become less so. And vice versa.
The dream must always be considered in the context of its time in your life.
9. When you look at the result of your interpretation, it’ll be good.
When you’re interpreting your dreams well, you’re uncovering truth. Truth is always good, though that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Sometimes, truth comes as the least-worst of two bad choices.
Understanding dreams can result in creative ideas, in improved prioritization, warnings, encouragement or in other positive benefits. Good interpretation results in good results.
Also on the blog:
James Cobb, RN, MSN, is an emergency department nurse and the founder of the Dream Recovery System. His goal is to provide his readers with simple, actionable ways to improve their health and maximize their quality of life.
We use some affiliate links. If you click on a link and make a purchase, we may receive a commission. This has no effect on our opinions.