Helpful Concepts for Dream Interpretation

As previously mentioned, dreams are not merely dreams—they serve as portals to the unconscious and are laden with symbols and meanings. Because they bypass our internal editing processes and conscious defenses, they offer an unflinchingly honest representation of our lives. Dreams can bring new and wider perspectives on situations and offer insights that change the trajectory of our lives.

Working with a therapist well-versed in the language of dreams enlarges and deepens our understanding of a dream, but it’s not strictly necessary. Upon learning a few basic concepts, even novices can begin understanding the language of dreams and benefit from insights gleaned through methods of dream interpretation.

Dreams Are Filled With Symbols

To begin, first note how symbols function in dreams. Dreams express meanings through metaphors; they are not clear and straightforward nor nonsensical or meaningless, even if that’s how they appear at first glance. A patient might say to me, “Oh, I dreamed about spaghetti because that’s what I had for dinner last night,” but my response is, “Why spaghetti specifically?” Of all the food they ate yesterday, why did their mind latch on to spaghetti and not toast?

The specificity of dream elements matters because they act as symbols conveying unconscious meaning, attitudes, perspectives, and desires of the psyche, according to Jung. They paint a picture of the past, present, and future—depicting what has occurred while also pointing to where one’s psyche is headed, expressing future developments. Spaghetti may relate to many things, such as a romantic dinner in the past, a trip to Italy, comfort, family dinners, and a future culinary aspiration.

The mind is not attempting to obscure information in a dream because dreams are not the realm of the conscious mind—dreams belong to the unconscious and the body. Both are communicating the only way they can: through images and sensations. These images and sensations become symbols; some are universal—what Jung calls “archetypes,” or typical figures like “the mother” or “the hero.”

At the same time, symbols can also be deeply personal. In our previous example, spaghetti could symbolize comfort or distress depending on childhood experiences. But dreams are complicated because multiple meanings can coalesce into one symbol, a concept known as “condensation.” Freud notes that condensation combines multiple ideas into one manifest symbol in the dream.

Let’s consider how this is reflected in a patient who dreamed about bees. In working with this dream, I would first note the patient’s affect in the dream and inquire about specific feelings. Next, I would explore personal, subjective associations to dream objects while considering universal and objective meanings. When asked about “bees,” perhaps the patient shares her father died when she was young—she recalls feeling as if she had been stung in her chest upon learning of his death.

She describes how her mother raised her, and speaks admiringly of her mother as a” sweet woman who had to work a lot.” She felt like she was on “Team Mom” because she was her mother’s primary support. On a personal level, she associates the bee with stinging, sweetness, hard work, and being on “Mom’s team.” These personal associations resonate with universal meanings for bees which often symbolize hard work and teamwork.

When synthesizing these layers of meaning, we can postulate that, condensed within the symbol of the bee, is the patient’s gratitude for her hard-working, sweet, Queen Bee mother. Yet, it also expresses the stinging pain of losing Dad and the challenge of growing up in a “colony” where she was on “Team Mom” and suffered from insufficient “Dad” energy.

Dreaming Essential Reads

Nightmares No More

Are You Dreaming Right Now?

Symbols must take into account a person’s life history, experiences, development, traumas, wounds, and personal myths to be accurate. That’s why dream interpretation websites can be a helpful start but they are not comprehensive because they lack the necessary subjective element. As you engage in dreamwork, observe what emerges from your imagination, and start writing down associations—ideas, memories, reactions, images, and sensations.

Sometimes, uncovering what’s related to a symbol can be difficult because the essence of the dream thought is not directly represented in the dream. Freud refers to this as “displacement,” or shifting the emphasis from important to unimportant elements of the dream. The mind detaches from the original “idea” and represents itself through another element, making the dream hard to decipher. Dream displacement is like a secret code where one word means another.

Let’s say you dream of showing up to an event in bedraggled clothes, and you feel ashamed. The shame could reflect a conflict between social standards and a part of yourself that you don’t think lives up to them. Transferring the feelings about the authentic aspect of yourself onto the dirty dream clothes is displacement.

The concept of dilation is another way dreams can express something that remains unresolved in your mind, something that you might dream about frequently. Also known as enlargement, this is when one issue spans several dream symbols and dreams. Over several days, you may have three dreams about elderly women that you imagine represent your grandmother whose health is failing.

Finally, Jung identified when aspects of our personality remain unexpressed or imbalanced in our waking lives, they manifest in dreamland through a mechanism known as compensation. Compensation acts as a “corrective mechanism” that restores balance to our psyche. If your conscious mind is too one-sided, you may have dreams expressing the opposite viewpoint. This demonstrates the self-regulating function of the psyche, which strives for wholeness and attempts to reconcile the opposites.

Perhaps you’re timid and struggle to stand up to your boss. You may swallow your words and say “yes” to all their requests, no matter how unreasonable. In your dreams, you might be a dictator, ordering around subordinates to compensate for your lack of assertiveness in the daytime. This is your psyche’s way of creating circumstances where you can express your desires. The mechanism of compensation enables you to evaluate and develop this underdeveloped side of your personality, which can foster individuation and encourage more wholeness in your personality and life.

By understanding that your dreams are filled with meaningful symbols, and your psyche is trying to achieve wholeness, you may question what you can uncover in your dreams. How can you understand what your unconscious is trying to convey? The answer may surprise you in more ways than one.