“Die Traumdeutung aber ist die Via regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten im Seelenleben.” – Sigmund Freud. (The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind)
-Dreams are secret, hidden desires concealed by bizarre and wild imagery. How can we understand the crazy imagery? There is actually a key to deciphering the dream imagery. And no, it is not the symbols in those big dream books of symbols. Those actually can add to the confusion, because they are often wrong. The true key to our dreams are our personal and particular connections (our “associations”) to the dream images. Then once we understand dream mechanics, together with the associations, we can unlock the secrets. When you tell your therapist (who knows about dreams), they will ask you and be paying attention to these associations.
The dreamwork is fascinating because it deals with the unconscious, and by definition we are not aware of our un-conscious. Think about it: if we think we know something, we are conscious of it. So unless we’ve already done psychoanalytic work, it very well could be wrong. Understanding the unconscious is like trying to detect dark matter in the universe. We cannot detect it directly. We can only detect it by way of how the dark matter exerts an effect on the rest of the system. This is similar to how our associations can detect the meaning of our dreams. The unconscious is the dark matter inside of your mind.
Working with a psychoanalyst who knows you and your story well, along with your associations to the dream, and with enough focused effort, the analyst and patient (often called an “analysand”) can get to the bottom of the dream. The other interesting thing is, that along with the hidden wishes, there are inevitably connected (also often hidden) fears and anxieties. These fears lead to an inhibition of the fulfillment of our wishes and lead to the frustrations in life. Now, the other aspect of fulfilling our wishes is dealing with reality to satisfy our desires (because often reality does not cooperate), and that is also an important part of treatment. But it starts with knowing what you truly want and what your scared of and dreams offer a singular window into our minds.
