There is a lot of psychological literature on dreams Ive read enough to notice how narrow minded it is The fact that many authors still defer to Freud and Jungexplorers from before the time of the scientific study of dreams global cultural awareness and the emergence of psychedelicsshould tell how little progress has been made
Dreams are a holistic phenomena Approaching them from psychology islike any one approach to a many faceted phenomenaanother story of three blind men and an elephant Youve to get to a holographic view a view in which the whole is not just more than but different from its parts Ill give you a brief view of my understanding of dreams from my background as a dream therapist with a background in scientific theory experiment spirituality psychology and the arts
Neurological
Youre dreaming all the time When you sleep your brain is cleaning up and reorganizing We call these reorganizations dreams when we recognize them moving around our conceptual furniture but this certainly happens at lower levels as well That is to say we dream at nonverbal and non visual levels that we cannot picture too far removed from experience to recall
Youre dreaming while youre awake This is how your mind works and just because you cant hear the tapping on the keys of the typewriters of your mind doesnt mean youre mind isnt writing various stories behind the curtain of your awareness They say that given enough time a chimpanzee could produce the works of Shakespeare Well youre working on it Were all working on it
If you could fit more than one thought in your head at once you would become aware of secondary simultaneous thoughts But we dont think simultaneous thoughts we put them in order on first thought but on second thought These thoughts were already there before we expressed them Our minds are busy Santas Workshops
Psychological
Your awareness of the world is spotty Youre aware only of disjointed bits here and there It takes a lot of work to make sense of the world The world is a hellacious jig saw puzzle and youre trying to make some kind of sense of it It never lets up until you shut it out
There are many disturbing thoughts and images and few of them are welcome In addition we know that the more we think about things the more ingrained they become So how is one to consider confront and conquer negative ideas if to give them voice is to give them power The answer is to consider them when youre in a state that wont remember them This is the dream state You play with dynamite in the dream state No matter how many dreams you remember youve still forgotten 99 of them
CulturalReligious
Personal and social themes are based on meaningful events These are events that other events of lesser importance feed into This hierarchy of meaningfulness has to be constructed The most powerful events implant themselves into our personal and social consciousness These places are different but share many themes We put these themes to different use
For example the role of the savior has one meaning culturally and another personally And while those meanings can be diametrically opposite they still build on the same foundation You dont often think about these fundamental themes either consciously or great detail but they play an ever present role in your symbolic world
When supporting characters appear in our dreams they share many of the same positive characteristics We build this company of characters through repetition and re enactment Like little children playing with dolls we rearrange and act out real conflicts and opportunities using our dream actors These actors wear the same costumes we put on the people in our waking lives
Therapeutic
From the Western psychological perspective we say the mind does so and so and through this means the mind finds balance From this point of view the reality and understanding we achieve is in our minds This is a materialist point of view
If you relax this point of viewthat which gives primacy to the ego and its experiencethen you can turn things around You can say that these characters that we construct are actually our primary identity and that the person we identify as us is built from them That is we can say that the savior is real and you and I are constructs built from this
I mention the savior just to make you think Im religious Im not I want to disturb you thats what makes people think But in this I am serious your idea of what you are is made of little more than soggy paper machéte For most of us our identities have quite a few weak spots Thats OK we inherited most of them epigenetically Were all fairly out of shape mentally Dreams offer us exercise
It takes very little to disassemble your identity and the sooner you master doing that the better off youll be The root of therapy is personal reassembly and youve got to take it apart before you put it back together
Dreams are a holistic experience They are your minds attempt to bring many things together for the purpose of organizing your conscious awareness It is in this sense that dreams consolidate memory They consolidate personality organizing how memories are connected and which will be more accessible to you
One of the first results of sleep deprivation is psychosis which is a losing touch with reality A psychotic person is someone who has assembled reality in a non consensual way That is to say theyve put events and forces together in a way that you I and the natural world disagrees with
We are all borderline psychotics We hold ourselves together with self identity and social conformity That I believe is one reason why we elect such mediocre leaders Mediocrity is reassuring and the more things get out of hand the more we circle the wagons of small thinking The solution to the problems wrought by humans is not to build better technology its to build better humans Learn to master your dreams
Treatment Options
Finding a stable balance can be a delicate state to achieve and takes trust and understanding of ones own intuition To help differentiate between prodromal and non prodromal dreams Dream Studies Portal suggests keeping a dream journal noticing symbols and paying attention to recurring nightmares
However self diagnosis can be a risky task to handle as interpretations can be misleading and serious conditions ignored psychological or physical While your dreams may be a result of an illness it is still only a prediction If you suspect your dreams may be psychologically related then be sure to schedule a session with a family psychiatrist But only a trained professional can tell you if youre showing any early signs of an illness and no one can give better insight into your health than you doctor
If you suspect you may be suffering from an on coming illness or even just want to make sure youre not then be sure to visit your primary physician or specialist especially if youre suffering from any signs of a sleep disorder Luckily Alaska Sleep Clinics specialists are well trained in identifying and treating any degree of sleep apnea including Obstructive Sleep Apnea You can take our quiz if youre not sure whether you suffer from any signs If you are showing signs and you live in the Alaska area be sure to call for a quick 10 minute consultation with our experts and schedule a sleep study today
