Thread: Self Interpretation Adventures - Discussion

My view is somewhat similar to that of Sageous, except I'm not as sure as he that most dreams don't have any inherent meaning. It could be that they do have inherent meaning, because they reflect what's going on in your mind.

On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that most dreams don't have much of any meaning. Because maybe dreams are just part of the daily "hardware maintenance" for our brains and have little to do with the "software" (i.e., our psychology).

Also, whether or not dreams have meaning depends on what is meant by the word "meaning". If there's a poem that's meaningful to you in some way, does it matter that the poet intended it to have a different meaning, or maybe no particular meaning at all? Similarly, the ink blots used in Rorschach tests have no inherent meaning at all, yet they may still reveal meaningful things about you when you look at them and describe what you see.

So, like Sageous, I agree that looking for meanings in dreams is a really useful--not to mention fun--thing to do, even if the dreams themselves have no inherent meaning. I should add that I find writing down whatever I can remember about my dreams to be very useful. The act of writing down a dream almost always causes me to make interesting connections that I never would have made just by thinking about the dream. These might or might not be "connections" that are inherent in the dream itself. But that doesn't really matter as long as they help you gain insight into yourself. (Though, admittedly, it is way more fun to think that such things really are inherent in the dream.)

Thank you both for your input! As a skeptic of all things, I can absolutely see where you both are coming from when saying that the meaning behind dreams could and probably is self imposed upon waking and remembering the dream. And I very much appreciate that neither of you gave a hard no, and can see the value of finding (or giving) meaning to a dream even if there was none in the first place. These dreams that have been "telling" me to get more assertive may or may not be real in the sense that it's my subconscious actually telling me to do something. But the fact that I'm perceiving it in that way and taking it as a sign to become a better version of myself holds value in itself.

Originally Posted by Zthread

Similarly, the ink blots used in Rorschach tests have no inherent meaning at all, yet they may still reveal meaningful things about you when you look at them and describe what you see.

This in particular made a lot of sense to me.

And thank you, Sageous, for your book recommendation. I'll be sure to check that out.

Originally Posted by anti_nation

Thank you both for your input! As a skeptic of all things, I can absolutely see where you both are coming from when saying that the meaning behind dreams could and probably is self imposed upon waking and remembering the dream. And I very much appreciate that neither of you gave a hard no, and can see the value of finding (or giving) meaning to a dream even if there was none in the first place. These dreams that have been "telling" me to get more assertive may or may not be real in the sense that it's my subconscious actually telling me to do something. But the fact that I'm perceiving it in that way and taking it as a sign to become a better version of myself holds value in itself.

Another approach to working with dreams that's in opposition to doing dream interpretation is just to be more aware of what's going on in your dreams, without trying to figure out what they mean. Just think about the events of the dream, the dream imagery, how they made you feel, etc., and let that have whatever effects it has on you. It's sort of a mental feedback loop, where being more aware of your dreams provides the feedback. In this view, dreams are thought of as being similar to works of art. Art can be inspirational, but analyzing exactly what a work of art means can detract from its ability to inspire. Similarly, when you explain why a joke is funny, it destroys the humor. And explaining how a magic trick works destroys the magical effect.

Here's an excerpt from the lyrics of Bob Dylan's song "Gates of Eden," that recently made me think more about this anti-interpretational approach:

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.

So Bob Dylan probably isn't into dream interpretation. At least he probably wasn't when he wrote that song.

However, I have to admit that I still often try to figure out what my dreams mean. With many dreams, the apparent meaning just jumps out at me. It's unavoidable.