Dreams

Dream Stuff!

Intro

I've been interested in dreams lately, and spent a while researching theories of dream inturpretation, lucid dreaming, and things related to that. So I'll be talking about my research, notes, as well as dreams of my own.

Hypnagogia

Starting from the beginning, before we begin dreaming, we'll have different stages of sleep and different kinds of activity whilst slipping into unconciousness.

Hypnagogia is the stage in between being awake and being asleep, specifically when you're first falling asleep. Conversely, hypnopompia occurs between sleeping and waking up. Why there's seperate words for them, I'm not sure, since they function in the same way, just happening at different times. Many people confuse hypnagogia with dreaming, but the two are nerologically disctinct, though similar. They are also nerologically similar to daytime hallucinations. The most notable difference, is that dreams typically have a storyline, whereas hypnagogic hallucinations are a string of seemingly random images, sounds, and feelings, and happen before you're fully asleep, while dreams notably occur once you reach the REM state of sleep. It is defined by most resources as a type of hallucination, though a very common one, as up to %70 of people experience them in their lifetime, and are more commonly experienced in childhood. Experiences with hypnagogia can be unnerving to some, and feel like nightmares due to the nature of the hallucinations. I have seen a few people refer to the more unsettling hallucinations with the term "geometric nightmares", in reference to very common subjects of the actual hallucinations. Many of these will be different depending on the person, but there are very common similarities in the types of hallucinations people in a hypnagogic state will experience, many reports are very consistant. An average hypnagogic hallucination may contain the following:

• Many start with a white void, with a small shape at the center. Commonly a circle/dot, but can be any shape.
• A faint noise will be heard. Can be any noise, but commonly things like static, ambiance, water droplets, environmental or animal sounds, phone ringing etc.
• Sometimes voices, ranging from strangers to people you know. The voices will often be saying random words or phrases, or something unintelligable, or your name, very faintly.
• Any voices or audio will often have a sense of being faint and quiet, but also loud at the same time, with the senses and perception being confused.
• The hallucination can often bring an unsettling sense of dread, despite nothing necessarily scary happening. It's common to experience feelings of anxiety during these hallucinations.
• These uneasy feelings can lead to feelings of panic, as if something bad is going to happen, that worsen as the hallucination goes on.
• The felings of anxiety and discomfort soon subside as nothing bad happens, but then the shape in the middle starts rapidly growing to a size the senses percieve as uncomprehensible, and the noises and voices get louder.
• At this point, the voices may begin calling your name if they weren't already.
• Some mention feeling small, and the fear and dread becoming more prominent as the shape/object in the middle grows in size.
• Other objects could appear rather than or alongside the shapes including changing geometric patterns, light flashes, kaleidoscopes, animals, people, or closeup faces. Seeing other general objects is also possible.
• People also experience somatic hallucinations, such as bodily distortions, weightlessness, flying or falling, or sensing the presence of someone else in the room who isn't there.
• Can feel similar to and have many elements of sleep paralysis.

I have experinced these myself, in my experience I will be in a white or black void, I often can't recall what shapes I see, but I will hear voices repeating nonsensical words and phrases, or speaking gibberish, often in an increasingly urgent manner.

my notes, and a summary of this section.

Dream Analysis Intro

The two most talked about theories whithin dream analysis come from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This will be dream interpretation based on freud's theory. Freud says a few things about dreaming, one thing that pops up a bit in his theories is that dreams will often represent a wish or desire, especially if it seems unattainable. We have here, a concise procedure for how dreams seem to work and form. How the unconcious processes material, or thinks, beyond our concious control. Dreams are a type of thinking made possible by the state of sleep. Freud considers dreams to be the "royal road to the unconcious" because the ego's defenses are lowered, for reressed material to come through. The process of these unconcious thoughts being transformed into dreams is referred to by Freud as dream-work. A dream will have the following elements:

Condensation:
• Compressing several ideas or experiences into one experience that kind of overlaps, creates a metaphore. The reason something in a dream can start out as one thing and then turn into another, or why you can recognize someone/something as someone/something they're not and that perception can change throughout the course of the dream, or one thing/person/place can be multiple things at the same time. Your dream is taking several ideas and memories, and mashing them together, and trying to represent many different ideas at once. A dream will only last over the span of a few seconds, although because of the context and memory the dream will provide, it will feel like it lasts mich longer. Time is non linear in dreams, so you could be asleep for only a few minutes, and feel like you've been in that dream much longer. Imagine you spawn into a dream at the very end, but within the dream, you're provided context for whatever's happening, and the dream gives you memories spanning back for however long is necessary to have the feeling of having experienced a much longer dream. That's another purpose of condnsation. It takes that long dream and condenses it into a small fraction of the amount of time you're asleep. You actually have even more dreams while you're sleeping than you think, but you can only remember a few of them.
Symbolism:
• Symbols specific to you or your life experience. Substitutes for other things, one thing standing in for another thing. Symbols will be specific to you. You will sometimes hear people claiming that certain things or senarios will always mean a certain thing in any dream, and while some symbols can be consistant, it actually depends entirely on the person and what it would mean to them. There are no one size fits all inturpretations, even though some symbols can be common or cultural. Though, some interpretations thought to be definitive could have a heavy influence on how the individual views that symbol, and therefore influence their dream's symbolism, so some cultural symbols could become a self fulfilling prophecy in a sense.
Displacement:
• Extensions or transfers. "Transfer of psychic intensity from one place to another" Affects can be relocated. Important elements made trivial and vice versa.
  • 1. What else might a given affect apply to? Where else does it apply?
  • 2. What seems important or unimportant in a dream? What if we reverse them?
  • 3. Are certain people, places, objects, or ideas substitutions for other people, places, objects, or ideas close to the ones the subconcious is really concerned with? (sticky substitution)
  Pay attention to the size of objects, especially if they seem odd. Contrary to what's expected, important objects can appear small, while unimportant objects can appear large. Often as the subconcious's way of pushing the important thing out of focus and out of sight. Sort of like it's there in the back of your mind and the subconcious is focusing on it, but also distracting the dreamer with the larger objects. Also applies to the previous statement, listed as number 2. Most things have some sort of meaning, but some dreams will have the things with the least noteworthy meanings jump out at you, while the things containing the meanings that need to be focused on the most may be out of the way, though still noticable.
Representability/Dramatization:
• Words and thoughts into images. Words that directly represent an idea or thought, sort of like a pun. More direct and obvious symbolism. This is when the unconcious mind strings together these thoughts, images, and ideas into a logical order of events. This is the reason for dreams having a full story with a plot and believable events.

Sometimes the process is instead referred to as displacement, condensation, and secondary elaboration.

Other things dreams will commonly consist of:

• What's known as the "days residue", a fresh thought from that day, or that night before you go to sleep, being used as a vehicle to access another train of thought into other ideas or memories.
• Main ideas and motifs that push the narrative.
• Explorers several different lines of thought, feelings, memories, and ideas at the same time.

Freud speaks of what he calls the manifest content and latent content. The manifest content being what the dreamer remembers, the surface level content of the dream, and the ideas on their own, with the latent content being what that content represents, the symbolism. The manifest content is often based on the events of the day, or past memories. Dream analysis is translating the manifest content into the latent content, to better understand the subconcious. The dream-work's purpose is to distort the latent content into something less threatening, forbidden, or uncomfortable to think about.

my notes, and a summary of this section.

I got the information from this section from Dr. Derek Hook. Following along with his lecture, I also analysed a dream he detailed, using the aformentioned techniques. I first listened to Derek explain the dream, and wrote down my notes as he was telling it. At the end of this part of the lecture, Derek explains his own interpretation and adds a bit more context. I will provide the dream with my initial notes, and then provide Derek's analysis afterwards to compare the two.

Derek's Dream + my analysis:

My notes written in (bold/parenthesis)

Derek is getting a lift from 2-3 colleuges he's vaugely familiar with. It's about 2 in the morning, he's eager to get home. He's dropped off, and he stops them. He tells them to wait five minutes, so he can make sure he's got enough money. He pulls out some amount of rand, a south african currency from his childhood, He then tells them it's fine, and they can leave, and they do. In the next scene, he's in a garage, seemingly someone elses, and he's rifling through random stuff, and sees a lowly elevated white shelf, and looks through thinks on the shelf. (Searching for something). A certain item catches his attention, a pen. A strange pen with 2 writing points. The pen is yellow and it's tiny. He thinks to himself that this must be a "special enscribing tool", fixating on this pen. (What comes to mind is this scene possibly being displacement/sticky substitution. The pen itself may be less important in the grand scheme, or a distraction. The important thing may be the general act of "searching for something". The pen may be nothing, or it could represent his desire to find that thing he's searching for, he may not realize what that something is just yet, or the pen could be symbolic of that thing. Interesting when it comes to displacement, considering both the size of the pen and smaller things being more important, but also the focus of the scene being on the pen, which would align with the possibility of it being a distraction. That's how I came to the conclusion that the pen and this idea are linked, or rather the pen IS that idea.) Derek looks at the pen, and wonders if he should take it. While he's thinking it over, someone else comes into the garage, a family, and they sit down. Derek is excited to see the family, and thinks to himself that "This is a good opportunity to see what a normal American family talks about at supper time." They sit down, and Derek sees the father, and notices tha also sitting at the table is Paulie from the Sopranos. He is sitting closest to Derek, and he looks scary. (Paulie is likely a stand-in for someone in Derek's life. Paulie is a serious and intimidating character, who intimidates Derek in the context of the dream, so whoever he's meant to be a stand-in for, likely gives off a similar cadence or makes Derek feel that sort of way, or who he's at the very least unsure about. Paulie was noticed right after Derek looked over at the father specifically. I think It's likely the father and Paulie are somehow connected. Either they're one in the same, or the father could sort of serve the role of Tony, as Paulie is his right hand man. The presence of Paulie and connection to the father may represent Derek viewing whoever the father represents as being similar to Tony, metaphorically. Powerful, dangerous, and intimidating. The focus on Paulie seems to be a misdirection (displacement) When the figure Derek is really intimidated by is the father. The father could represent Derek's own father, though seeing as the family is unfamiliar to him, I would say maybe not. If Derek has a father-in-law who either disapproves of him, used to disapprove of him, or he just has a memory of being anxious about impressing him, the father could represent him, and the "danger" or fear Derek is sensing from him could be psychological/social, not a fear of physical harm. The Sopranos representation of him could also be an exaggerated way of symbolizing power he has over Derek. Fathers are also socially seen as "providers", so if Derek has never had a rocky relationship or anxiety over an actual father figure in his life, a boss at work also comes to mind. ) In Paulie's face, near his nose, he got a double puncture mark, like he was stabbed or jabbed in the face. Derek notes being put-off by the scar. He looks at Derek, and Derek tries to be nice, and then at some point the father puts his hands together, Derek remembers the gesture he makes being some sort of finger gun. either a regular one, or a larger one with his hands pressed together. Either way, (pointing the finger at Derek). He finds it threatening and menacing. Derek gets up, saying he should be going, and the father says "You should stay." Derek says, "Just for five minutes" and sits back down in an old school floral chair. (Another thing that jumps out is the family walking in right as Derek was pondering weathr to take the pen. Maybe whoever the father and Paulie by proxy symbolize, Derek feels is standing in the way of what he was searching for, symbolized by the pen. Maybe Paulie having the double marks on his face implied he was harmed in some way by the double jointed pen, which represents the thing Derek is searching for/desires, implying conflict between his desire and Paulie/the father. If it's his father-in-law, this desire could be a relationship with the daughter. If it's his boss, the desire could be a raise, promotion, etc. )

Derek's analysis:

Key motifs:
Paulie relation to the father, emphasis on family.


1. Day's residue associations:
double marks:
Before the dream, he had been watching the movie, 'It' with his son. He recalls a scene in the movie where an old lady has a double puncture mark on her chest, much like Paulie's mark on his face. He also watched a show called 'Tommy and Pam' with his wife, in which a character had a similar mark on her arm, and he remembers lingering on that, wondering the purpose.

garage:
He had recently moved into a new house, and he and his wifewere worried about getting the garage sorted out. (Relating back to him "sorting" through this garage, in a place that felt new to him.)

enscribing tool:
He had been reading a book called 'The Night Watchmen' in which a character has to enscribe something with a similar tool. He fell asleep listening to the audiobook.

2. Larger Associations:
The Pen:
20 years ago, he went to visit his Aunt and Uncle for a few days before going to travel. He took a pen, and later got a call from his uncle, looking for the pen because it was valuable, and he seemed angry. He still feels guilt for stealing the pen. The pen was tiny in the dream, because tiny things represent a huge idea, that being guilt for stealing the pen.
(My note: This adds a new context to the father figure/Paulie, perhaps. Maybe the represent his uncle possibly being upset with him.)
The colour yellow:
His favourite screwdriver was yellow, and needed to be fixed in the garage.
Main theme being guilt.
(My note" New context to Paulie's double puncture, he imagines his uncle feeling hurt/betrayed by his actions involving the pen.) New additions upon retelling/remembering:
Derek retold the dream after his explination, and recalled new information relating to the dream.
1. Feeling like a tourist during the comment about American families when the family shows up. Feelings of unfamiliarity overallwith the locations throughout the dream. Feeling foreighn. One of his students pointed out that he may not feel entirely at home in America yet. In the dream, he's with a family he's unfamiliar with that feels menacing. His conclusion, possibly displacement. Relating another stressful memory to his feelings of unfamiliarity in his new country. He also got involved in a controversy on twitter that stressed him out, and he relates some of his uneasy and uncertain feelings back to the dream. Overall, still feels like a guest in America. The twitter controversy made him fear losing his job, causing anxiety about being asked to leave, or having to go back to his old country. 2. Other family members obscured, aside from father. Derek remembers a few days in the summer, his father-in-law visited, and he and his father-in-law were the only ones without covid, and thus spent a lot of time together while the rest of the family recovored. He was worried about having to be a good host in their absence.
(Relates somewhat back to my original interpretation)
motif of guilt adds new context to the finger gun scene.

New explination with added context:

New analysis of Derek's dream with our ne information and context about Derek's life.

Derek gets dropped off by 2-3 of his colleuges, and checked his wallet to make sure he's got enough rand. (Possibly his brain associating the concept of money with his childhood currency, instead of his current one, also relates back to feelings of not belonging in his new country, and feeling like a foreigner) They leave, and in the next scene, he's in an unfamiliar garage. Rifling through random stuff, sorting things..(Day's residue, He'd recently moved to a new house, and he and his wife had recently began discussing "getting the garage sorted out" ) Coming across a shelf. On that shelf, he finds a pen that he fixates on, (Pen maybe represents a desire, but it's also connected to an old memory of when he stole a pen from his uncle. It's yellow due to the day's residue of thinking about his yellow screwdriver in the garage that needed to be fixed and used for a project.) That he refers to as a "special enscribing tool" (He calls it this due to the day's residue of falling asleep to an audiobook, where a character was enscribing something with a similar tool.) Derek looks at the pen and wonders if he should take it. (Memory of stealing the pen getting more prominent, guilt starting to creep in, the pen is tiny, representing how much this memory is weighing on him.) While he is thinking baout this, a family walks in. Derek is excited to see this family, seeing it as an opportunity to learn about American families. (This family represents his Aunt and Uncle, who he was happy to get the opportunity to visit. The opportunity to learn about American families also represents Derek still not feeling comfortable or confident in his new country, and nervous about fitting in.) They sit down at the table for supper with Derek. Once Derek notices the father, he also notices that Paulie from the Sopranos is also sitting at the table and is closest to him, and he looks scary. (The father represents both Derek's uncle and his father-in-law, and so does Paulie to some degree. Paulie and the father are one in the same, and Paulie having the role of a powerful and intimidating right hand man to Tony, the more threatening crime boss, is symbolic of the resentment Derek's subconcious imagines his uncle having towards him, as well as being an enbodiment of the stress of being a good host for his father-in-law. The idea of the resentment from his uncle feels foreboading and threatening to Derek, and appears to him as a powerful and intimidating figure. The notion of this perceived resentment looms over him and takes power over him. This is also why Paulie is sitting so close to Derek, this issue is large in his mind, and prominent in the memory the dream is pulling from nd recalling. Also why he looks so scary.) On Paulie's face, near his nose, he's got a scar that looks like a double puncture, Derek notes being put-off and uneasy by it. (Day's residue, he watched a movie and a tv show that night that both featured a character with a similar scar that he thought about for a bit. Other association, the double puncture resembles the double points on the pen. This symbolizes the idea of the concept of the penharming or causing pain to the father/paulie, who is a stand-in for his uncle. This is because he imagines his uncle being hurt or betrayed by his actions involving the pen, thus is why the uncle is upset here. He feels put-off by the sight of this scar, because it further amplifies the feeling of guilt.) Paulie looks at derek, and Derek tries to be nice. At some point, the father puts his hands together and points a finger gun at him. He finds it threatening and menacing (The finger gun is perceived as a threat in the context of the dream, I first thought it stood for the fear of what paulie represents, which is part of it, but with the added context of the theme of guilt, it can also be read as "pointing the finger" so to speak. Paulie, his uncle's perceived resentment, pointing to Derek, as if to say "you're guilty" in a way that also happens to resemble a weapon. ) Derek gets up, saying he should be going. The father says, "you should stay." Derek says, "Just for five minutes", and sits back down on an old school floral chair. (The one saying this is the father, representing Derek's uncle himself, rather than Paulie, representing the idea of his resentment. This could mean, that through this dream, Derek's subconcious came to terms with this event, and knows his uncle will forgive him, the chair representing comfort and things being okay. It could also be his concience telling him not to try and escape the situation.)

Extra details = more additions remembered

The garage is his, but it doesn't feel like it is, relating back to the feelings of unfamiliarity and lack of belonging.
white shelf matches one in his real garage.
Repitition: At the beginning of the dream, he told the drivers to "wait five minutes" and at the end of the dream, he told the father he would stay for "only five minutes", which is a phrase he often says to his kids.

Comparing Freud and Jung's theories

Freud

Let's review, a common idea from Freud is that dreams often represent a desire or wish, especially one that may be unattainable. They are also a type of thinking, that can only take place in the unconcious, where thoughts can flow more freely, and are not controlled or shaped by the concious mind. Let's elaborate on what Freud beleived about dreams a bit:

• Unconcious is a storage for the psychological instincts you can't bring out in daily life, and most symbols in dreams are basic drives or desires you're repressing.
• Wish fulfillment that can't be done conciously, or in waking life.
• Some can represent repressed sexuality or sexual frustration, preventing you from reaching certain milestones in life, which can cause neurosis, which is primarily caused by clashing instincts.
• Dream symbols come up so we cn hit developmental milestones, that we otherwise may not be able to.
• repressions mostly come from childhood truama
• Dreams are also intended to keep you asleep longer
• Dream symbols relate only to the specific person having the dream, and their life and psyche, and their individual meaning.
• Dreams are a continuation of what you were thinking about or talking about in daily life, and your physical body can impact your dreams.
• Freud didn't believe in paraphychology, he believed dreaming's only purpose is physiological.

In his book, he also talks a lot about dreams pulling from memories, or even reliving memories or uncovoring memories within dreams, which we'll be getting to soon.

Jung

We haven't talked much about Jung's theories, but here's a rundown of some of the basics. We'll elaborate a bit more later.

• unconcious mind can store ancestrial memories.
• unconcious isn't just a storage for repressed instincts, but contains our personal repressed traits, and has a connection to the "collective unconcious", things repressed by society or our peers.
• Collective unconcious can access symbols that are instinctual to everyone called archetypes, and can be universally recognized by many cultures, even if you haven't seen that symbol or haven't been told what it's supposed to mean before. This is where the idea of universally recognized symbol meanings comes from.
• Dreams are about getting in touch with your true self.
• Unlike Freud, Jung believes in paraphychology and more spiritual and metaphysical interpretations.
• Dreams are for individuation, you become a unique, seperate person in the first part of life, then experience ego trancendence, where you move past that and merge with something beyond yourself.
• Neurosis comes from the repression of all the traits that you consider to not be you or a part of you. Bad traits that you don't want to be associated with you, or your shadow.
• Repression happens throughout life with anything the ego doesn't want to be associated with the self.
• Dreams are to help you reintegrate the traits that you've been repressing.
• Dream symbols are a mixture of individual meanings picked up from daily life, and archetypal images with universal, widespread meanings.
• Dreams don't always connect to daily life
• Dreams can go between worlds

Similarities with both

• Everything we don't want/can't have in our concious mind shows up in the unconcious.
• Unsavory parts of ourselves and our psyche show up, often disguised, as dream symbols.

Personally, I think both have some good ideas, but I'm more on Frued's side when it comes to dreams being soley physiological. I think there's a lot of merit to Jung's theories of shadow traits.

Freud's Dream Theory

Here are some of my notes and/or analysis while listening to an audiobook of The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.

Chapter One

A: Dreams and waking life-

The dream is defined as the psychic activity of the sleeper. Aristotle veleived that dreams convert the slight sensations and external stimuli perceived during sleep into intense sensations. Freud goes more into depth on this in later chapters. Example: One may imagine in their dream that they are walking through fire, if their physical body becomes even slightly warm during sleep. Many others during his time beleived that dreams had a supernatural or spiritual purpose, or could be prophetic, warning the dreamer of future events or evil spirits appearing to lead them astray.

Quoting Hafner, our dreams are like a continuation of our waking life, and contain out thoughts and ideas that had recently been present in our conciousness. A term referred to earlier in Dr. Hook's lesson as the day's residue, describes the assertion that dreams will always link themselves to the previous day. Dreams will often lead us back into everyday life. We dream of what we've said, thought, desired, or done. Dreams are always influenced by the life experience of teh individual. We dream most frequently of things towards which our which our warmest passions are directed, showing us that passions have a heavy influence on the generation of our dreams.

The ambitious man dreams of the laurals he has won perhaps only in imagination. No matter how extrordinary the dream may seem, it can never detach itself from the real world, the dreamer's experience in it. Its most sublime, as well as its most ridiculous constructions must always borrow their material either from that which our eyes have beheld in the outer world, or has appeared in our waking thoughts.

B: The material of dreams; memory in dreams-

Dreams are born from memories of our concious experiences, but many things in the content of a dream cannot be immediately recognized in the waking state as being such. One can vividly recall a dreams content, but cannot recall any events or waking experiences coinciding with the content of the dream, and is unaware of what the dream is pulling from. Many, after pondering and theorizing long enough, can begin to restore the lost memory of former experiences that influenced the dream. The unconcious is aware of and can recall memories lost and forgotten to the waking mind.

Example: Del Boeff relates back to his own experience, he dreamt of the courtyard of his house covored in snow, where he found two lizards half frozen and buried in the snow. He picked them up, warmed them, and put them back into a hole in the wall that was reserved for them. He gave them some of a fern he found growing on the wall. In the dream, he knew the name of the plant was asplenium ruta morales. The dream kept returning after a digression to the lizards. He saw two other little lizards falling upon what was left of the ferns. Turning towards the field, he saw two more going towards the hole. Soon, the whole road was covored in lizards, all moving in the same direction. In his waking state, Del Boeff only knew a few latin names of plants, and nothing of any asplenium. To his suprise, he discovored that a fern of this name actually existed, except the correct word was "mararia", rather than "morales", which the dream slightly distorted, probably due to the length of time since the memory occured, and since he last recalled it. (Note: The incorrect name could also be a result of condensation. It could be that the word "morales" showed up in another memory in his stream of conciousness, possibly related to that one or similar to it in some way. Dreams often come from an amalgomation of several memories and thoughts, as mentioned earlier. This is the reason, according to Freud's theory, that things in dreams can start off as one thing and then morph into another. His subconcious could have pulled from a totally different memory and combined it with this one, causing the confusion with the plant name. What's said in a dream doesn't always have to directly relate to the memory it's pulling from, as I've seen myself. I had a dream not too long ago in which I was listening to a song in an unknown foreign language, and I asked a young girl nearby, as she was the one who played the song, what language it was in, to which she replied "Eucllides" the spelling is accurate to how I intuitively knew it to be spelled in the context of the dream. However, "Eucllides" isn't a real language. I looked it up to be sure, and all I found were references to the mathematician, Euclid, and Euclidian geometry. I assume my dream must have been recalling something like a math lesson at the same time as the memories it pulled from to create the rest of the dream, despite the memories being vastly unrelated.)