Conversely, we might begin by addressing the straight-forward meaning of the dream. A story is being told and what is the message (or set of messages) embedded in this story. What is the point of the story? What is the closing statement: “and this tells us that . . .”) Human beings are natural story-tellers and these stories can sometimes be true and at other times be something of a “tall-tale.” At the very least, the stories are telling us (and other people) important aspects of our own self and life experiences. In many ways, the one thing that remains constant in our life is the narrative we retain about who we are and where we come from. Dreams might complement these daytime activities. Our campfire tales might be lingering on in our dreams like the fireside coals. We only have to give these story-based coals a little stirring during the night for them to ignite and tell us something about ourself.
We might also engage the dream as part of an ongoing drama regarding our own psychic development. As Fromm and French (1964) have suggested, we might be using some of the dreams (especially late at night) to grapple with childhood-based focal conflicts (such as our independence from parents or our problems in exhibiting anger or acting out aggression). I notice that certain themes that appeared in my dreams for many years no longer occur. Either I have successfully addressed the focal conflicts in my life or my psyche has simply given up trying to help me out: “lets’ forget about these challenges conflicts and just let this old man rest in peace!”
In the Morning
Many of us wake up without any recall of the dreams that were produced by our psyche during the previous evening. As I have already noted, this does not mean that the dreams have no lingering impact. We may still experience the emotional fall-out of one or more of our dreams—a hazy sense of disappointment or even anxiety. Something is foreboding. Perhaps, we wake up with a bit of lightness and vague sense of joy. We don’t know from where it came–but there is an expectation that this will be a good (or bad) day for us. We have a “premonition” that seems to have no obvious choice—is it based on a dream?
There are some mornings (and many mornings for some of us – especially as we grow older) when we can recall our dreams. And there are times during the night when we wake up with full (if temporary) retrieval of a dream that just was enacted by our psyche. At times we are disappointed that the dream can to an abrupt stop. A primitive wish was being fulfilled. Interesting solutions to a vexing problem was just about to be revealed. The entertaining action scene was disrupted just when we were about to complete a heroic act of bravery.
On the other hand, we might feel relieved that the dream came to an end. I personally still have dreams involving my travel to a meeting in the United States or to a workshop I am conducting in another country. Travel delays are encountered, along with long waits for breakfast at an overcrowded hotel. I have forgotten my power points. Or my colleague never shows up when my training program is about to begin. I wake up and realize that I am in my bed at home and that I retired from this “crazy” travel-dominated career a decade ago. I smile and fall back to sleep. Or I get up, wander into the kitchen, and make breakfast for myself (no waiting in a hotel line to eat!).
When we wake up in the morning, there is often not only an emotional residue, but also the remnants of an interesting idea. We must do something, given that this remnant sometimes is tapping on our shoulder when we wake up. It is tempting after waking up to do what was “recommended” in the dream. We might even believe that an action that took place during the dream actually occurred in the real world. We believe (at least temporarily) that our friend actually was offensive in their interaction with us. We “know” that the new website we designed in our dream is actually in place. I must confess that I was recently the victim of this web-site fiction. Having dreamed in great detail about this design process, I raced to my computer when I woke up to see if the website redesign was actually done. I was disappointed to find that this occurred only in my dream; however, the dream did motive me to do the redesign work and I did use some of the ideas I recalled from this dream.
