Thanks to Fillyjonk for finding this one.
Dreams and dreaming is a fascinating topic to me but to most other people, apparently, not so much, judging from the non-reactions I get when I try to start a discussion about it. I think there are probably two reasons for this: One is that most people don’t remember their dreams and the other is that they might be worried about what their dreams might reveal about them. All my dreams reveal about me is what I’ve already openly admitted – that I read and watch a lot of science fiction.
A lot of people believe in dream symbolism and interpretation. I think all that’s just a bunch of hooey, about as scientific as astrology and voodoo. What I think happens is that while you sleep your neurons fire randomly, stimulating memories, thoughts, imagination and feelings and mixing them up together in strange ways to create the internal movies we call dreams. If you dream about a baboon, for example, it probably just means that you’ve been watching Animal Planet a lot. Considering some of the absolutely ridiculous interpretations on that site I can understand why someone might not want to talk about their dreams to someone who believes in that nonsense.
July 22nd, 2009 - 10:25 am
I can usually “find” stuff in my dreams that I was thinking about, reading about, observing, or whatever during the previous day. Sometimes it may be something that almost escaped notice in my conscious mind.
I do think it’s perhaps sometimes possible to solve problems in one’s dreams, and I’m still willing to leave open the mystical possibility that people who have died may be able to contact you (I know it sounds strange for a scientist to say that, but I’ve had some vivid dreams about people I cared about who had died).
But as for them being a big window on the psyche, not so much. Or maybe I believe that because what the window on my psyche would mean is that my psyche is very cluttered, messy, and random.
July 22nd, 2009 - 10:41 am
I do think dreams are likely to be a “window on the psyche” but not in the way that dream interpreters generally think. Like you said, you see stuff in your dreams that you’ve been thinking about or that you observed and forgot about but it’s your mind not some mystical, universal symbols that apply to everyone.
As to contact from beyond… well, I don’t know. I won’t claim to know everything and I am open to all kinds of remote possibilities but still mostly skeptical.
July 22nd, 2009 - 9:09 pm
I’ve been known to post my own dreams in excruciating detail, but I never actually try to analyze them: the idea that A means X and that B means Y might have a nice resonance to it, until three nights later when I meet up with B again and clearly it means Z.
July 27th, 2009 - 7:10 pm
I’m quite interested in dreaming and try to keep up with scientific work on it. To date, little progress. There does seem to be some agreement that we dream about stuff we repress during wakefulness. Which is why you can rarely dream about what you most want to dream about.
I had some success with lucid dreaming but Jung scared me away from it (somewhere he writes, essentially, “Don’t mess with your subconscious”.)
July 28th, 2009 - 5:56 am
Careful, Ken. It wouldn’t take much encouragement to get me to post more about my dreams.
When I can remember them. I haven’t been remembering my dreams as well lately as I normally do.
March 7th, 2010 - 11:11 am
Freud believed that each dream means something, deep in the mind. I guess as you read science fiction you will have some interesting dreams. Love the blog and keep up the great posts.