Free What Did The Dream Dictionary Say About The Dream's Meaning? Essay Example

What was the dream that you used with the Dream Dictionary about (if you are not comfortable disclosing the dream skip this question and start with the next one).
I dreamt that I was cycling through a town or a village I didn’t know very well and suddenly I was caught up in a storm. I left my bike and tried to find shelter under a large oak tree but I soon became worried that the tree might be struck by lightning and so I started running towards what seemed to be the lights at the top of the road I was on. However, after running for a while and feeling exhausted by it, I realised I was in the middle of a woodland and the lights I had been running towards were in fact fireflies. I woke up feeling really worried that I would not find my way home.

It was difficult to decide what the main symbol in my dream was, whether it was the oak tree, the wood, the fireflies, the storm or the fact that I was lost. I decided that the last part of the dream was the most significant as everything seemed to have led up to this experience of being in a wood and feeling anxious because I had mistook the fireflies for village lights. I looked up the word ‘firefly’ and the Dream Dictionary indicates that to see a firefly in your dream ‘represents bright ideas that are coming out of your subconscious’ and that it can also refer to ‘flashes of ingenuity’. I then looked up ‘wood’ and this was rather contradictory, since it said that ‘to dream of a wood suggests that you are feeling dead and emotionless inside. Your behavior is too automated. You are not fully thinking things through.’

How might this fit into what you learned about dreaming in the chapter readings?

My dream seems to suggest I was feeling anxious and the experience of being lost was perhaps a way of expressing this anxiety. Sigmund Fred’s theory of dreams suggests that dreams are often remnants from the day before and they represent ways to deal with fears and conflicts. I can’t really recall being stressed or anxious before I had the dream but it is possible, like Freud’s theory suggests, that some of my worries about exams for example could have been responsible for the general atmosphere of the dream.

What dream theory would the dream best fall under?

I believe this dream could be better explained using Freud’s model, by which dreams may represent ways in which the dreamer tries to resolve conflicts and worries. I cannot remember what happened during the previous day and so I cannot be sure if the dream contained clues about my circumstances, as Freud’s theory would suggest. It is less likely that any of the symbols in the dream represented any significant archetypes, surfacing from the unconscious, as Carl Jung’s theory of dreams suggests.

Do you believe that dreams have real meaning? Why or why not?

I think some dreams might be more meaningful than others. Many people dream every night and it is hard to imagine that every dream we have, however nonsensical it may appear to be, has a real meaning. However some dreams may be more significant, especially if they accompany important events in one’s life, such as getting married for example. In this case it may be that the dream could hold clues about the way somebody is feeling but is unable to express or recognise during waking hours.

Do you see any problems associated with the Dream Dictionary and other websites like it? If so, what?

The Dream Dictionary is in my view a rather unhelpful tool when it comes to understanding your dreams as it offers conflicting meanings which may confuse somebody who may be feeling emotional or upset about something they have dreamt. The language used to interpret the dreams can be quite harsh and saying to somebody that they ‘are feeling dead and emotionless inside’ does not sound like a very good way to help them. By looking up the various words in the Dream Dictionary I did not feel that I got any closer to interpreting my dream, since the important aspect of the dream was how it made me feel rather than the material objects that made it up.