When I interpret dreams, I look into the emotions in the dream, and try to get an intuitive feel for the dream. Yes, interpreting dream symbols is important, but I also want to interpret the dream as a whole, and the symbols in the context of the dream, and the dream in the context of waking life as well as in dream series with other dreams.

My personal dream symbols tend to change over time, and sometimes the meaning attached to a symbol seems to change. Especially any symbol that keeps reoccurring, usually has several different meanings. Dreams are kind of like onions with many layers of interpretation. I often keep coming back to the same dream, and find that my interpretation of it changes. I am not a big believer in "original intent": especially when interpreting my own dreams, while I do wonder what my mind thought when it had the dream at that time, it's what my mind can do with it now that counts more, and as my mind changes and I come back to the dream I may "find" a new meaning in it - or my mind makes up a new meaning - but that's all good, because to me dreams are tools to understanding the mind, and it's not so much that I want to understand my mind when the dream occurred, but more importantly I want to understand my current mind as I am interpreting the dream. So even an interpretation of the dream that had not occurred to me yet at the time when the dream occurred is perfectly valid. The dream is like a prism that allows me to look at my mind in a new light. Yes, it can tell me about the state of my mind at the time of the dream, but the act of interpreting it and what interpretation I attach to the dream post-factum tells me about the state of my mind at that later point.

I have a very intuitive approach to dream interpretation, much more than rational: if an interpretation "feels" right, I accept it. Of course, if I reject an interpretation, I may later on come back to it, and realize that the reason why I rejected it was not because it was wrong, but because it was too close to a truth that I was not comfortable yet to accept.

I like self-interpretation of dreams, but I also appreciate the feedback of other dream interpreters from whom I learn a lot about dream interpretation. A couple of examples of things I learned that I have found to be useful: try to interpret all dream characters as a part of dreamer's own personality; a house represents the mind. I also pay attention to means of transportation in my dreams: fast or slow, am I in control or not, on tracks like a train or more flexible like a car, modern or old fashioned - transportation in dreams tells me a lot about how things are going, what my confidence level and flexibility is, etc.

I also at times write down the dream in detail, but then distill it to just the keywords (in the DV dream journal those would be tags) and then I look at those keywords and what they mean to me, at other dreams with similar keywords. Also at times I will brainstorm additional adjectives for different part of the dream. I look at my emotional reaction and especially what is positive and what is negative, and ask myself why. I look at the dream in terms of issues on my waking mind, my goals, my values and religion, things that happened to me recently and things that happened long ago but were formative in my life.