Intro and some basic questions

[Palette Wings]

Hi, my name's James, I'm 20. I've been interested in dreaming for the last few years and have achieved lucidity once briefly, but i'm more interested in recollection and interpretation. The reason I've only just joined the forum is I've been having a recurring dream, or a recurring theme, which has never happened to me before, so i was hoping someone might be able to direct or link me to some information about these things. I've only been able to find some very basic information, without knowing the source. What i'm hoping to discover are some theories behind recurring dreams or themes and the people behind them. The dreams I've been having all involve me getting shot, but i react differently every time, so i'm not exactly sure what to call them... whether recurring dreams or themes? I'm also at a loss to interpret it, if anyone can help me I'd really appreciate it. - Cheers

[Wavygravy]

There are lots of opinions as to dream interpretation. My personal belief is that DC's, themes, and issues that arise in our dreamscape are all metaphorical, and hence, symbolically represent some aspect of our own unconscious--be it fears, hopes, unresolved issues from our past, etc. So. if I were having dreams with your theme, I'd be asking myself, "what issue or aspect of myself am I trying to "kill" (figure out, resolve, understand, accept)? In the end, it all belongs to you. Good luck.

[carl]

Yeah I generally agree with the above... I think it's not anywhere close to as precise as we'd like it to be though. It seems to me from everything I've experienced and everything I've heard that dreams are basically thoughts that your brain interprets and connects together. So in the same way that your waking thoughts turn to something often if it's really weighing down on you, your dreams can too. Poeple who've lost a family member, or are nervous about school starting, that sort of thing. But as your thoughts can wander, so can your dreams, which leads to the bizzarre stuff. And sometimes connections are made that are somewhere in between... The point being that there are definitely some psychoanalytical conclusions you can draw, but if it sounds like a stretch, it probably is. The metaphoric stuff mentioned by Gravy though I think is good too, because emotions are thoughts, just not object-oriented. So if you're feeling afraid of something coming up in your life, in your dreams you might be afraid and thus have something frightening happen in the dream. That's just a theory though.