The Meaning of Dreams: Their Symbolism and Their Sexual Implications

Events experienced while awake are said to feature in 1 to 2 percent of dream reports, although 65 percent of dream reports reflect aspects of recent waking life experiences. The dream-lag effect has been reported in dreams that occur at the REM stage but not those that occur at stage 2. A study exploring different types of memory within dream content among 32 participants found the following:.

Researchers suggest that memories of personal experiences are experienced fragmentarily and selectively during dreaming. The purpose may be to integrate these memories into the long-lasting autobiographical memory. A hypothesis stating that dreams reflect waking-life experiences is supported by studies investigating the dreams of psychiatric patients and patients with sleep disorders. In short, their daytime symptoms and problems are reflected in their dreams.

In , Freud described a category of dreams known as "biographical dreams. Many authors agree that some traumatic dreams perform a function of recovery. One paper hypothesizes that the main aspect of traumatic dreams is to communicate an experience that the dreamer has in the dream but does not understand. This can help an individual reconstruct and come to terms with past trauma.

The themes of dreams can be linked to the suppression of unwanted thoughts and, as a result, an increased occurrence of that suppressed thought in dreams.

The results demonstrate that there were increased dreams about the unwanted thought and a tendency to have more distressing dreams. They also imply that thought suppression may lead to significantly increased mental disorder symptoms. Research has indicated that external stimuli presented during sleep can affect the emotional content of dreams.

For example, the positively-toned stimulus of roses in one study yielded more positively themed dreams, whereas the negative stimulus of rotten eggs was followed by more negatively themed dreams. Up to now, the frequencies of typical dream themes have been studied with questionnaires. These have indicated that a rank order of 55 typical dream themes has been stable over different sample populations. For example, from to , there was an increase in the percentage of people who reported flying in dreams.

This could reflect the increase in air travel. Some have hypothesized that one cluster of typical dreams, including being an object in danger, falling, or being chased, is related to interpersonal conflicts. Another cluster that includes flying, sexual experiences, finding money, and eating delicious food is associated with libidinal and sexual motivations. A third group, containing dreams that involve being nude, failing an examination, arriving too late, losing teeth, and being inappropriately dressed, is associated with social concerns and a fear of embarrassment.

In neuroimaging studies of brain activity during REM sleep, scientists found that the distribution of brain activity might also be linked to specific dream features. Several bizarre features of normal dreams have similarities with well-known neuropsychological syndromes that occur after brain damage, such as delusional misidentifications for faces and places. Dreams were evaluated in people experiencing different types of headache. Results showed people with migraine had increased frequency of dreams involving taste and smell.

Dreams: Why do we dream?

This may suggest that the role of some cerebral structures, such as amygdala and hypothalamus, are involved in migraine mechanisms as well as in the biology of sleep and dreaming. Music in dreams is rarely studied in scientific literature. However, in a study of 35 professional musicians and 30 non-musicians, the musicians experienced twice as many dreams featuring music, when compared with non-musicians.

Musical dream frequency was related to the age of commencement of musical instruction but not to the daily load of musical activity. Nearly half of the recalled music was non-standard, suggesting that original music can be created in dreams. It has been shown that realistic, localized painful sensations can be experienced in dreams, either through direct incorporation or from memories of pain.

However, the frequency of pain dreams in healthy subjects is low. In one study, 28 non-ventilated burn victims were interviewed for 5 consecutive mornings during their first week of hospitalization. More than half did not report pain dreams. However, these results could suggest that pain dreams occur at a greater frequency in populations currently experiencing pain than in normal volunteers. One study has linked frontotemporal gamma EEG activity to conscious awareness in dreams. The study found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences on-going brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams.

Researchers concluded that higher order consciousness is related to oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz. Recent research has demonstrated parallels between styles of romantic attachment and general dream content. Assessment results from 61 student participants in committed dating relationships of six months duration or longer revealed a significant association between relationship-specific attachment security and the degree to which dreams about romantic partners followed. The findings illuminate our understanding of mental representations with regards to specific attachment figures.

Researchers compared the dream content of different groups of people in a psychiatric facility. Participants in one group had been admitted after attempting to take their own lives. Their dreams of this group were compared with those of three control groups in the facility who had experienced:. Those who had considered or attempted suicide or carried out violence had were more likely to have dreams with content relating to death and destructive violence.

One factor affecting this was the severity of an individual's depression. The right and left hemispheres of the brain seem to contribute in different ways to a dream formation. Researchers of one study concluded that the left hemisphere seems to provide dream origin while the right hemisphere provides dream vividness, figurativeness and affective activation level.

A study of adolescents aged 10 to 17 years found that those who were left-handed were more likely to experience lucid dreams and to remember dreams within other dreams. Studies of brain activity suggest that most people over the age of 10 years dream between 4 and 6 times each night, but some people rarely remember dreaming. It is often said that 5 minutes after a dream, people have forgotten 50 percent of its content, increasing to 90 percent another 5 minutes later.

Most dreams are entirely forgotten by the time someone wakes up, but it is not known precisely why dreams are so hard to remember. There are factors that can potentially influence who remembers their dreams, how much of the dream remains intact, and how vivid it is. Over time, a person is likely to experience changes in sleep timing, structure, and electroencephalographic EEG activity.

Evidence suggests that dream recall progressively decreases from the beginning of adulthood, but not in older age. Dream also become less intense. This evolution occurs faster in men than women, with gender differences in the content of dreams. A study of dreams experienced by males and females found no differences between the amount of aggression, friendliness, sexuality, male characters, weapons, or clothes that feature in the content. However, the dreams of females featured a higher number of family members, babies, children, and indoor settings than those of males. Dream recall is heightened in patients with insomnia , and their dreams reflect the stress associated with their condition.

The dreams of people with narcolepsy may a more bizarre and negative tone. One study looked at whether dream recall and dream content would reflect the social relationships of the person who is dreaming. College student volunteers were assessed on measures of attachment, dream recall, dream content, and other psychological measures. Participants who were classified as "high" on an "insecure attachment" scale were significantly more likely to:.

The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality

Older volunteers whose attachment style was classed as "preoccupied" were significantly more likely to:. Everyone dreams, although we may not remember our dreams. At different times of life or during different experiencs, our dreams might change. A study investigating anxiety dreams in children aged 9 to 11 years observed the following:.

Studies comparing the dreams of pregnant and non-pregnant women showed that:. Those that give care to family or people who have long-term illnesses often have dreams related to that individual. A study following the dreams of adults that worked for at least a year with individuals at United States hospice centers noted:. It is widely believed that oppressive dreams are frequent in people going through a time of bereavement.

A study analyzing dream quality, as well as the linking of oppressive dreams in bereavement, discovered that oppressive dreams:. In another study of people experiencing bereavement:. The number of people aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s dreaming in color increased through to Researchers speculated that color television might play a role in the generational difference. Another study using questionnaires and dream diaries also found older adults had more black and white dreams than the younger participants.

Older people reported that both their color dreams and black and white dreams were equally vivid. However, younger participants said that their black and white dreams were of poorer quality. Some researchers claim to have evidence that this is possible, but there is not enough evidence to prove it. Most often, this seems to be due to coincidence, a false memory, or the unconscious mind connecting together known information.

Dreams may help people learn more about their feelings, beliefs, and values. Images and symbols that appear in dreams will have meanings and connections that are specific to each person. People looking to make sense of their dreams should think about what each part of the dreams mean to them as an individual. However, for those who are interested in such books, there is a selection available for purchase online.

One study followed the dream content of people who regularly use crack cocaine in Trinidad and Tobago during a period of abstinence:. People with complete vision loss have fewer visual dream impressions compared with sighted participants. People who have been unable to see from birth report more auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory dream components, compared with sighted participants.

One small study explored the dream diaries of 14 people with impairments. When compared with 36 able-bodied individuals, findings showed that around 80 percent of the dream reports of participants with deafness gave no indication of their impairment. Similarly, the dream reports of those with paraplegia showed that the participants often walked, ran, or swam in their dreams, none of which they had ever done in their waking lives.

A second study looked at the dream reports of 15 people who were either born with paraplegia or acquired it later in life, due to a spinal-cord injury. Their reports revealed that 14 participants with paraplegia had dreams in which they were physically active, and they dreamed about walking as often as the 15 control participants who did not have paraplegia. Other research has suggested that the brain has the genetically determined ability to generate experiences that mimic life, including fully functioning limbs and senses.

People who are born without hearing or unable to move are likely tapping into these parts of the brain as they dream about tasks they cannot perform while awake. We picked linked items based on the quality of products, and list the pros and cons of each to help you determine which will work best for you. We partner with some of the companies that sell these products, which means Healthline UK and our partners may receive a portion of revenues if you make a purchase using a link s above. Article last updated by Adam Felman on Thu 28 June All references are available in the References tab.

PLoS One, 6 A comparison of the manifest content in dreams of suicidal, depressed and violent patients [Abstract]. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 31 1 , Dreams and REM sleep [Abstract]. Journal of Sleep Research. Exploring the dreams of hospice workers [Abstract]. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care, 31 4 , Consciousness and Cognition, 11 1 , Dreams and interhemispheric asymmetry [Abstract]. Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S.

Korsakova, 12 , Is the brain of migraineurs "different" even in dreams? Dreams and the temporarlity of consciousness [Abstract]. American Journal of Psychology, 2 , Psychoanalysis and the neurosciences: International Journal on Psychoanalysis, 80 6 , Memory sources of dreams: Journal of Sleep Research, 23 4 , Generation and function of dreams [Abstract]. Reviews in Neurology, 59 8 , Do we only dream in colour?

A comparison of reported dream colour in younger and older adults with different experiences of black and white media [Abstract]. Life span differences in color dreaming [Abstract]. Dreaming, 21 3 , What physicians need to know about dreams and dreaming [Abstract]. Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine, 18 6 , Are oppressive dreams indicators in bereavement?

Incorporation of pain in dreams of hospitalized burn victims [Abstract]. Sleep, 25 7 , Progression of dreams of crack cocaine abusers as a predictor of treatment outcome: This organic self-regulating, spontaneous rhythm cannot be determined by the mind. It is the involuntary expression of a lawful process, so exacting, intricate, and meaningful that to convey it to your human scope of understanding is impossible. As you all know, blocks to true fulfillment exist because the infant within the adult personality still seeks its own mode of fulfillment.

It seeks a nurturing parent rather than the specific other person, and it seeks the merely receptive, in-taking kind of closeness. The fusion thus aspired to can never take place. Hence, the person lives in a treadmill of perpetual frustration which then seems to justify his or her caution, withholding, and negativity. The movement toward closeness is split off and a counter-movement is instituted which causes a short-circuit in the system.

This short-circuit is then experienced as an involuntary block, inhibition, and deadness. On the emotional level, the movement toward fusion must be expressed in a feeling-exchange. What does feeling-exchange mean in adult, realistic terms? Feeling-exchange, or the emotional level of sexuality, is determined by love in its real sense with all its many aspects and manifestations. You use the word love very freely, but only too often there is no meaning attached to the word when it is pronounced, or even worse, the word love is used as a label behind which are hidden very different feelings such as ego-needs and negative aims.

People use each other in the most exploitative way and call this love. What is the vivid, living experience behind the stereotyped label? The experience of love is primarily the attempt to perceive the multiple reality of the other person. Such an endeavor requires that you temporarily put aside your ego, your own needs, expectations, and personal preoccupations to make yourself empty.

Then you can let in what is, let in the other person so you can truly perceive, experience, and feel all the complexities of this other being. What more fascinating experience could there be? When you have no stake in maintaining an illusory image of who the other person ought to be, and then resenting it when he or she is not that, you will be open and sufficiently empty to let in what is. This is one way of expressing love. From that solid basis a feeling-exchange can be built.

If you perceive in reality, you are free enough of your selfwill, your pride, and your fears to be sufficiently ready to deal with what is. You will be able to handle even pain and frustration if necessary, so that reality which is ultimately bliss can come to you. The ability to take frustration and pain are essential to giving and receiving and experiencing bliss. On the other hand, if you are very threatened by and defended against pain—the pain of not having your way, the pain of being hurt a little, the pain of having to give up an imaginary or even a real advantage—you will create a hard wall out of your flowing energy stream.

Nothing can come into you through this wall, nor can anything flow out from you toward others. You are isolated in the self-created prison of your defense against pain and unpleasantness. You become numb and cannot live fully. You cannot fuse and thus you can have no pleasure. This ability, in turn, depends on how well you can suffer pain in an undefended way that is free from manipulative interpretations of the pain. Such interpretations only aim to annul the pain, whereas letting the pain be will make room for a truthful interpretation of the events which bring the pain about.

The aspect of real love which I refer to as letting the other be means more than just accepting where and who the other person is at any given moment. It means having a vision of the total person, including his or her as yet unrealized potential. Such a vision of the unmanifest in another person is a great act of love. It has nothing to do with the illusion of manufacturing another kind of person for the purpose of self-willed needs.

You thus gain the freedom to assert your own right to be, which you can then do without defiance and without playing your negative games. This real self-assertion stems from the guilt-free state that follows the truly giving attitude. Not giving feelings makes mutual exchange impossible. Since in reality giving and receiving are one, you cannot give to others without also giving to yourself.

Conversely, by withholding from others, you inevitably withhold from yourself. You then blame the consequent deprivation on the other person because you are still clinging to the illusion that giving and receiving are two separate acts. The fusion you long for can only come about if every feeling you long to receive, every single aspect of loving, is richly flowing out of you. These aspects of love include tenderness, warmth, respect, and also the recognition of the essence of the other with his or her capacity for growth, change, and goodness.

Add to these patience, and giving the other the benefit of the doubt. Make room for alternative interpretations. Trust, and give the other room to unfold and to be. You also yearn passionately to be given these aspects of perfect love. Fusion can take place on the emotional level only when you are fully committed to learn to expand your own capacity to give these components of perfect love.

But in order to fuse emotionally—and therefore totally—it is equally necessary to express yourself truthfully toward the other person, even when this may not be welcome or desired. Not doing so under the guise of a so-called loving goodness and taking it in silence is sentimental and usually dishonest.

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For in reality you merely fear the unpleasant consequences and are thus not willing to risk pain, exposure, confrontation, and the hard work of reintegrating the relationship on both a higher and more profound level. This can only be done healthily without guilt when you have dealt with and eliminated your own cruelty. As long as any cruelty exists in you, you will never be able to tell the truth to others without hurting them, because the hidden motive to hurt others so pervades your energies and affects your actions and words that it paralyzes your courage to speak up and confront a situation that requires improvement.

How then can an unhampered giving of love be reinstituted and increased? It is possible that you are free from cruelty and can speak up in a totally constructive way, and still the other person is hurt—maybe because he or she insists on never being criticized or frustrated. But if you can deal with the hurt that arises in you from this reaction, you can truly risk this event and battle it through so that an open exchange of feelings can be made possible. You will find that the more you act out of your sincere intention to love and feel more deeply, the more fruitful the outcome will be when you risk offending your partner.

Your guilt for this hidden motivation will be a shield standing between you and the truth and between you and the other person. The fulfillment and bliss your soul longs for can only be satisfied through fusion with another consciousness. It depends on your ability to risk, to confront, to admit your most guarded secret, and as a result to speak up when the other person puts obstructions in the way. You must also recognize your own limitation to express your best feelings when the unexpressed negativities and hidden games of your partner make this impossible.

The positive assertion I speak of here is entirely different from making a blaming demand, which truly puts the responsibility on the other person. The kind of assertion I refer to here does not blame the other, and yet it also recognizes what the other is doing. When you no longer have a stake in blaming, you can truly speak up.

The Meaning of Dreams

You are no longer too blind to fully see the emotional involvement in your negative exchange. In order to fuse emotionally, honest exchange at the risk of occasional crises is necessary. If you are hampered, inhibited, and afraid, you also inhibit the mutual scope and depth of the bliss that arises from fusion.

In that case, you have to ask yourselves where this fear has its origin in both of you. And since you can only be responsible for yourself, ask especially where the fear originates in you. Where is the cruelty in you that makes you afraid of saying what you see? Where does your blindness toward yourself inevitably blind you toward the other person, so that you are unsure and defensive about what you see—and consequently militant and hostile. Again, emotional fusion can exist only to the degree that the prerequisites I discussed here are fulfilled. Mental fusion exists on the level of the thinking mind.

The ability to exchange the deepest ideas and thoughts and to risk disagreement and disapproval are basic. Mental fusion can only exist when there is a certain blend of compatibility. Two compatible partners have to share certain fundamental ideas about life. They must also be spiritually more or less on the same plane of development. This does not mean that every small idea must be shared. That is quite impossible and divergence in some ways is necessary.

Several qualities are required for reaching mental fusion. One is the need to grow toward truthful understanding of each other, another is the humility to search for, and discard if necessary, the ideas and opinions you both may hold. You also need the humility to let the other and also yourself be right or wrong. The very act of looking for a deeper way of truth concerning even the tiniest issues provides wonderful fuel for growth and helps you to reach deeper union on the mental level.

The attitudes you bring to bear on the points of difference and the ways you approach them are important. Do you avoid any confrontation of ideas because it is simply too uncomfortable to make waves? Can you perhaps not be bothered to even deeply think about things that do not directly concern you? Is disagreement a way to find an outlet for the negative feelings and thoughts stored up in you which you do not choose to deal with constructively? The freedom to have different ideas can be granted only when you are both anchored in spiritual truth and when you aim in that direction.

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When spiritual reality is forever the ultimate aim, you also know that there is only one truth. And this applies every bit as much to the large vital issues as to the smallest everyday inanities. But you also know that this one truth has many facets, often including two apparent opposites that are parts of one whole. With spiritual truth as the ultimate goal, you will sit lightly in the saddle of opinions, ideas, and thoughts. This will make it possible to share and exchange them. If you always aim for the inner truth, the spiritual truth, then the little disagreements or different opinions slowly disappear.

First they cease to matter; then they become integrated or fused in the all-uniting truth of spirit. Mental sharing must not be neglected. One often sees relationships with sexual sharing and, to a degree, emotional sharing, but mental sharing is strangely neglected in a world that stresses the importance of the intellect, ideas, and the mind so much. Yet people live next to each other day in and day out, depriving themselves and each other of the joys of mental fusion.

They do not mentally expose their innermost beings, ideas, beliefs, dreams, aspirations, feelings, fears, goals, yearnings, insecurities, and hopes. The world of the mind and ideas is an integral part of total sharing. And it is quite impossible for one person to fuse with another on one level in a truly satisfying way, while keeping separate on any of the other levels and thus not staying in tune with the natural movement toward fusion.

For instance, quite often when frustration is ascribed to sexual incompatibility, the sexual incompatibility may not be a result of an absence of physical attraction at all. It may be the result of insufficient fusion on any one or all of the other levels. Spiritual fusion is always a natural result of fusion on the physical, emotional, and mental levels.

Fusion existing on these three levels means that the parties involved must be highly developed spiritual beings, actively working on and involved in a spiritual path. They must be sufficiently awake to consciously and deliberately seek spiritual truth. Such a state is maintained to the degree that the partners are in movement, and to the degree that destructiveness has made room for constructive, outgoing, positive attitudes and behavior.

All too often human beings are stuck and have no intention to move out of their stagnation. They are then surprised when their yearning for oneness remains unfulfilled, and they blame others, circumstances, and life for it. All matters of life must finally be related to the spiritual self and to spiritual reality.

All disputes can truly be resolved and conciliated only in the spiritual self which is one in all created beings. When two human beings fuse with the feeling that there is a spiritual world within both of them where they can discover their oneness, then spiritual union takes place. The tremendous creative power of the sexual force generated through union on all levels has self-perpetuating life with both positive and negative aspects.

Participating in this life, the partners striving for union set something in motion that takes on its own momentum like a stream which the human personality has to learn to follow. Whatever exists within the human psyche shows up in the sexual experience; it is impossible to keep anything out. It will reveal where a person is liberated and at one with divine law, where evil and destructive, and where stuck and stagnant because the destructiveness is hidden and not dealt with.

Hidden facets become magnetized and energized by the sexual current, thereby determining its direction. Unfortunately, human beings are extremely blind to this. All that information is revealed and available to anyone who knows how and where to look for it. All too often sexual attitudes are dealt with in a glib way by simply judging them as healthy or neurotic, or morally right or wrong. There is also a defiant refusal to recognize the keys contained in them.

In such cases these manifestations are separated from the rest of the person as if such inclinations were purely a matter of taste, or inborn traits such as being born with blue eyes or brown. Labels are so often supposed to take care of the matter. The way sexuality expresses itself in an individual mirrors those inner aspects which the person desperately needs to be aware of. My friends, it is a question of learning to use this knowledge.

Look at your sexuality in a new way. What does it reveal to you about your non-sexual nature, about your person, your attitudes, and so on? Where does your sexuality expose your problems, and where and how does it reveal your purified nature? When you and your partner are not fusing at one of the four levels we discussed, then that must be apparent in your life.

Let us say that your attractions, needs, and desires are strong on the physical level. Let us assume you are ready to expose yourself on that level and seek fusion there. There you wish to keep separate and do not wish either to give, or to risk, or to constantly integrate each level on a yet higher plane. The physical level will then not only become severely restricted, but the nature of your sexual drive must, in one form or another, reveal the emotional and mental attitudes you may keep hidden.

You may have no notion that these attitudes reappear in a sexualized form, infused and magnetized by the sexual force. If the negativities of the psychic system are denied consciousness, the sexual experience must be blocked, flat, unsatisfactory, mechanical and, in more severe instances, even totally paralyzed.

If this denial is removed, the sexual inclination may show up character tendencies such as finding pleasure in being cruel. There are many variations and details that cannot possibly be generalized.

For example, if both the guilt and the ensuing self-punishment are denied and repressed, they may show up in a sexual inclination to be hurt, humiliated, or rejected. There are innumerable possibilities and meanings. Each sexual fantasy must be reawakened and allowed to be, so that it can be understood. This is the only way to bring stagnant sexual energy back into a flowing state, even if it first means living out the fantasies, either in your mind or in a playful way within an intimate and established relationship.

Often the deviated sexual expression is quite conscious and is indulged in and enjoyed to whatever degree it is possible to do so in this hampered way. This is totally untrue; the pleasure that would become available if the negative characteristic were recognized is incomparably higher in intensity and quality, and nothing has to be given up for it. From there, a natural transformation in the direction of the sexual current will organically take place.

You who have been working on this path for some time have already confronted some of your negativities. Can you believe that these negativities do not express themselves in your sexuality? Can you, even for an instant, assume that your negativities do not manifest in your sexual attitudes and therefore do not influence your capacity for fulfillment, fusion, and bliss?

That would indeed be foolish.