The Dream Results


     To Jung, dreams present us with symbols or archetypes that humanity collectively shares; our memories and instincts bubbling up. To Freud, it was about sex and our unconscious desires taking hold. On the other hand, it was in their analysis of each other's dreams that Jung realized Freud was sleeping with his wife and Freud realized Jung was sleeping with a patient. So is there a point to this introduction? No, but it's funny and sad.

Here's my analysis (if you're confused, see this):

• Dreams have a different 'vocabulary' than your normal consciousness
  
  What I mean by this is that you have a normal array of things you think about when you're awake, usually organized by where you are or what you're doing. If you're in a class, you think about taking notes, what your grades are, the subject being taught. If you're playing a game you're thinking about the next move or strategy for play.
  
  When you dream, the subjective or spatial organization disappears - not only does it disappear, but another 'dream-organization' presents itself, and this different organization persists from dream to dream, which leads to my next point.
  
  
• This dream vocabulary stays the same from dream to dream
  
  You will dream about the same things over and over and your dreams will follow consistant patterns from one subject to the next. As an odd sidenote, it is sometimes easier for you to recall what you've dreamed about while you're dreaming.
  
  This pattern appeared several times, even though I'd never really been aware of it (this does not include nightmare-type recurring dreams). One kind of pattern or 'symbol' involved the same type of heavy, weathered-metal images like cages and other wrought iron creations. Often I would forget what the dream was actually about, but my description would still record the symbol.
  
  As an example, I dreamed of a strange underground mall scene in the shape of a huge cube, forgetting about it for months and months as soon the dream was over. In the course of my experiment, I saw the same underground mall, and as soon as it appeared I clearly remembered having dreamed about it before.
  
  
• You will forget most of your dreams, even if you have written them down
  
  In reviewing the notes I'd made during the night, I found that I had no recollection of a particular dream, even though I had written a short description of it. Also, the descriptions are of little help trying to 'reconstitute' what I might have dreamed about.
  
  
• Interpretation of dreams is like reading palms or tea leaves
  
  If you think it's going to tell anything useful, think again! You'll just find a mish-mash of your hopes, fears, places you've been and people you've seen. You'll also see places you've never seen before, and those are the places I find most interesting. This also goes with the next point:
  
  
• Dreams lie to you
  
  They have this power to make things that are utterly unfamiliar seem everyday. Dreams aren't accountable to your senses or your memories, so you have no way of gauging what is familiar or true. Example: I was driving down the main street of my town; it felt like any other time I'd made this same trip, but nothing was as it should have been. The streets were different, the trees and lakes were different, everything had changed but I still felt at home. Likewise, it can make things that are most familiar to you seem like they are not. Have you ever dreamed that your mother was someone else?
  
  
• Nortriptyline suppresses cold-sweat, wake-up-scared type nightmares
  
  This is presumable the case with the rest of the tricyclic SRIs. It should be noted that change in their levels (particularly drops) can and often does create those same nightmares. If you don't know what Nortriptyline or SRIs are, I'll leave that as an excercise for you.
  
  

I can think of many more things I'd like to know that were left untouched by this particular experiment, but the methodology needs revising. It is very difficult to force yourself, in the middle of the night, to scribble down what you just dreamed about (if you can even remember).

Maybe for next time: lucid dreaming. You can direct what you want to do in your dreams, even fly. I didn't know this took any peculiar talent, but that's what the family says - I must be crazy.