Dream Psychology

Dreams are fascinating aren’t they? At least our own are to us. There are tomes and tomes written about dreams and what they might mean.

This isn’t a post about my dreams as such. If you try telling anyone about a dream you’ve had the general reaction is ‘so what?’ And that’s fair enough. What this is, is a bit of analysis of the relevance of dream interpretation, by taking a few of my recent vivid dreams, looking up the interpretation, and seeing if it holds water.

Dream 1: The Window

A fairly tepid dream with not much going on. In the dream I was lying on the living room floor, I sometimes do this when my back is playing up, so it seemed perfectly natural. Just laying on the floor watching TV when I noticed someone at the window. A builder. They were removing the window, replacing it.

In real life the window does need replacing but it’s low on the priorities. It turned out that the work had been booked by the previous owner and was already paid for. I left the builder to get on with it.

The dream then moved to the kitchen, which was more like a staff kitchen. My colleagues were there from a previous job. In real life, my relationship with these colleagues was not good, but in the dream we were friendly enough. We chatted small talk things, and eventually we came to my news. In real life I have had a somewhat important breakthrough. I shared my good news, and they did not care.

There was also a middle aged Indian lady with a walking stick. I did not know her, but she seemed to want me to talk to my colleagues.

Dream 2: Cellars

The second dream was a little more abstract, and was one of those recurring ones. The sort about finding extra rooms in your house, I get that dream often, but something I have only just realized as I write this is that home has always presented itself in my dreams as the old family home, but not anymore. Home is now my own house, where I live now.

In the dream there was a mix of it being extra rooms, but the rooms were also underground, in the cellar. I did become aware at some point in this dream that it wasn’t real. Our house is way too small for the amount of unnecessary stuff we feel compelled to retain, and my subconscious must be conscious of it.

The cellars were a bit like the undercroft of a station or something. With rooms splitting off from a central corridor. Most of the cellars were like void spaces, but others were filled with storage boxes and lit by candles, the perfect place to sit and share ghost stories with friends.

In the dream, I was also worried that the naked flames might start a fire. This danger was ever present in the dream.

The dream did move on though, to the upstairs, and the main feature was the front door that would not lock. A builder was required to fix the door before it could be secured.

Dream 3: Business

In the third dream I went into business with a couple of other parents I know vaguely from the school. What was surprising though, in the dream, was that the joint bank account of my wife and me was suddenly renamed to the business of  those parents and was several thousand pounds overdrawn. Naturally, I was a bit miffed and felt betrayed. I was also unclear if we had just a business arrangement or were having some sort of affair.

The scenery then changed to what I assume was some sort of leavers ball, and my business was somehow involved in the arrangements. It was early and the party had not got going, and guests were people that I knew from my own school, though I’ve long since forgotten all of their names, I recognised them as such.

The party soon picked up though, and whatever was my role in this business venture was complete and I was free to mingle and drink beer. I remember bumping into someone from university, who explained that she had broken her nose twice since the last time we had met. Bizarre.

Then there was the eating of food. Lots of food, curry and Chinese dishes by the bucket load. What I noticed about the food though was that it was very much like a variety of frozen meals I used to buy, but have not seen for almost twenty years.

And then I joined the dance floor with a partner that had been giving me the eye throughout the night, but what was meant to be the start of a beautiful and elegant dance led to my companion landing flat on her arse when I failed to catch her hand. There is a reason why I don’t dance in real life. People get hurt.

There was a brief incursion by an armed assailant at one point but that seemed to resolve itself, and the business was drawn to a close and we all went our separate ways.

But what does it all mean?

In the first dream, there was building work, and windows. To dream about windows can symbolise curiosity or new perspectives. The window was being replaced, and in real life I am about to embark on a new career . One that will certainly bring new perspectives.

To dream about colleagues is apparently a sign that one is doing well at work. This seems to be the case at the moment. And perhaps these particular ones appeared because they held me back. I will take their dreamy disinterest in my news at face value and remember Matthew 6:7, to not cast pearls before swine, and be grateful that the dream allowed me to say what I wanted, but without giving them the opportunity to trample it.

The second dream had more familiar dream imagery. That of the extra rooms appearing in the house. This is understood to signify parts of our psyche developing. As we grow as individuals, the house of the mind expands. This fits with the career change. The cellars too. To dream of a cellar relates to our belief structures, and accessing our inner self. This might signify my relationship with God, and that I have one now. Or it might just be that the cellar was cool.

Ghost Stories in dreams is a puzzler. I couldn’t find anything about that. But the dream about the front door not locking is indicative of vulnerability and insecurities, which is pretty accurate for my current situation. Giving up the secure and familiar for something new is always daunting.

The final dream seemed to have a lot more going on. Going into business suggests facing a challenge. Yup. The potential of the affair may represent insecurities, and I’ve always got those. The debt suggests a sense of obligation, and I currently have a lot of those, not least in my current job.

The dancing suggests happiness, but I did drop my partner. I felt like I had let them down, which can mean that I need to revisit my choices. Possible.

Meeting an old friend can reflect a desire to connect with the past, nostalgia. Last weekend was spent visiting a railway museum and an outdoor Victorian museum. We rode vintage trams and enjoyed old style fish and chips. Nostalgia is a lifestyle choice for me, but I don’t think it’s something my subconscious would care about. The broken nose, again relates to vulnerability and losing control, which is exactly where i am right now.

There is a lot of interpretation here, but what I have found, just by searching up the main themes from my dreams is that they do translate into a common language. That we can interpret our dreams and derive meaning from them in an intelligible way.

I have written at length previously about the meaning of sex in dreams. And I find the whole subject fascinating. Something that I will probably revisit many times.