The Dream Dictionary from A to Z [Revised edition]

Throughout medieval Europe, even though the early Christians respected dreams for their spiritual significance, the repressive control of the Roman Catholic Church put a stop to any attempts at dream interpretation. By the end of the 15th century dreams were regarded as no longer significant, and a century or so later even Shakespeare called them ‘children of the idle brain’. The ‘dreams are meaningless’ school of thought persisted well into the 18th century.

During the early 19th century, when the restrictive influence of the Church began to wane and the members of the Romantic movement – in their quest for spontaneous expression – rediscovered the potential of dreams, a revival of interest in dream interpretation began. Popular dream dictionaries, such as Raphael’s Royal Book of Dreams (1830) trickled into the mainstream and set the stage for Freud and Jung, the two giants of dream interpretation whose theories continue to influence the way dreams are interpreted today.

The Revolution of Freud and Jung

Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.

– Sigmund Freud

Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1858–1939) opened the door to the scientific study of dreams with his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). At the time, when prudish attitudes were prevalent, he caused general outrage with his controversial theory that dreams are wish-fulfillment fantasies that have their origins in our infantile urges, and in particular our sexual desires.

Freud believed that the human mind is made up of the id (the primitive or unconscious mind), the ego (the conscious mind which regulates the id’s antisocial instincts with a self-defense mechanism), and the superego (which is the consciousness that in turn supervises and modifies the ego). According to Freud, the id is controlled by the pleasure principle (the urge to gratify its needs), and the instinct that the ego finds hardest to manage is the sexual drive first awakened in childhood. The id comes to prominence in dreams, when it expresses in symbolic language the urges repressed when we are awake. Symbols are used because if these drives were expressed literally, the ego would be shocked into waking up.

To interpret a dream successfully, the symbols need to be uncovered and their true meaning discovered. The way that Freud suggested doing this was a technique called ‘free association’, or spontaneously expressing the responses that immediately spring to mind when certain words relating to the dream are put forward. The aim is to limit interference from the ego to discover the dreamer’s unconscious instincts.

Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1965), although an initial supporter of Freud’s ideas, could never fully agree with them. He felt there was far more to dreams than hidden sexual frustration, and put forward the theory of the ‘collective unconscious’: a storehouse of inherited patterns of experiences and instincts common to humans and expressed in dreams in universal symbols, which he called ‘archetypes’.

According to Jungian theory, the psyche is made up of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious, and when a symbol appears in a dream it is important to decide whether it relates to us personally or is an archetype. The way Jung suggested we do this is by a technique called ‘direct association’, i.e. concentrating only on the dream symbol when you think about the qualities associated with it.

Jung speculated that the unconscious mind projected dream symbols in an attempt to bring the conscious and unconscious mind into a state of balance he called ‘individuation’. According to his theory, the only way the unconscious mind can express itself fully is in dreams, so it will flood our dreams with symbolic messages that reflect our current progress in waking life. These messages can bring comfort and guidance, or bring repressed urges to the fore, but their aim is the same – to encourage personal growth and self-development. However, before we can benefit from such intuitive wisdom, we first of all need to understand the language of symbols.

Other Important Dream Theorists

If you can dream and not make dreams your master …

– Rudyard Kipling

Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler (1870–1937) suggested that dreams are all about wish-fulfillment because they allow the dreamers to have skills and powers denied to them in waking life. According to Adler, ‘The purpose of dreams must be in the feelings they arouse.’

Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls (1893–1970) believed that dreams project hidden aspects of our personalities and the best way to interpret them is to use a non-interpretative interviewing technique. In other words, you ask your dream character or object what they are trying to say. Then you try to adopt the dream’s mindset and answer the questions.

Noted Australian dream expert Gayle Delaney suggests using an interviewing technique that addresses questions such as ‘How did the dream make you feel?’ or ‘How can you connect your dream with your waking life?’ Some dream theorists believe dreams deal with problems we can’t solve in waking life and offer solutions. Looking at them in the light of waking day, and believing them to be full of insight, we may sometimes come up with new ideas or insights while studying and interpreting them.

Thanks to the work of Jung and Freud and other influential dream theorists, dream interpretation is now accessible to everyone. It’s more popular today than it has ever been, with people from all walks of life using their dreams as unique and personal sources of guidance and inspiration, or as tools for change, growth, and personal development.

Dreams can offer us profound insights into what is preoccupying us and, although they are likely to forever remain mysterious, interpreting them can be healing and empowering, help us understand ourselves better and shape the decisions we make in our waking lives. As we’ve seen, there are different approaches to the interpretation of dreams and you’ll find a fusion of all of these in this book.

Famous Dreamers

Through the centuries, the dreaming mind has been said to be the source of countless insights, revelations, and even history-changing guidance. Here are just a few well-known examples:

Julius Caesar attributed his decision to cross the Rubicon and march on Rome with his army to a dream, in which he saw himself lying in bed with his mother (his seers told him she represented Mother Rome). And his wife Calpurnia saw his assassination foretold in a dream.

St Francis of Assisi had a dream in which Jesus Christ spoke to him from the Cross, telling him to ‘set my house in order’, and so went on to found the Franciscan Order of friars.

Dante reported that the entire story of the Divine Comedy was revealed to him in a dream he had on Good Friday in 1300. When he died in 1321, some of the original manuscript was lost. His son Jacopo recovered the manuscript thanks to a dream in which his father showed him exactly where to look.

Genghis Khan is reported to have received his battle plans in dreams. It is also said that a dream told him he was ‘a chosen one’.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his famous poem ‘Kubla Khan’ after waking from an opium-fueled dream.

Robert Louis Stevenson was convinced his best stories, including the main device in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, came to him in dreams. Suffering as a child from nightmares, he reportedly learned to control his dreams so he would no longer have nightmares. He said his dreams inspired all his writings.

Days before he was assassinated, Abraham Lincoln dreamed of loud wails coming from the East Wing of the White House. When he investigated, he was told by soldiers on guard that they were weeping for the President, who had been assassinated. Days later Lincoln’s body was laid in state in the East Wing so people could pay their last respects.

Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz was a chemist working on the chemical structure of benzene. His data made no sense to him because benzene (we now know) does not behave like a ‘long string’ molecule. While dozing in a comfortable seat, Kekulé saw in a dream the image of a snake biting its own tail. He woke up and immediately understood the mathematics of the benzene molecule – which has a ring rather than a long-string structure.

Italian violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini composed one of his greatest works, ‘The Devil’s Trill’, after a dream he had in 1713. In the dream he handed his violin to the devil himself, who began

to play with consummate skill a sonata of such exquisite beauty as surpassed the boldest flights of my imagination. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted; my breath was taken away, and I awoke. Seizing my violin I tried to retain the sounds I had heard. But it was in vain. The piece I then composed…was the best I ever wrote, but how far below the one I heard in my dream!

Elias Howe wrote that he understood the central notion of his invention of the sewing machine in a nightmare in which he was captured by cannibals. While dancing around a fire and preparing to cook him, the cannibals waved their spears. Howe’s dreaming mind noticed that the head of each spear bore a small hole through the shaft. The up-and-down movement of the spears and the hole in each spear remained with him when he woke. The idea of passing thread through a needle close to its tip, and not at its widest point, was a major innovation in making sewing by machine possible.

One night in 1816, Mary Shelley, her husband, and a group of friends were challenged to each write a ghost story. That night Mary dreamed of a creature that would later become the monster created by Victor Frankenstein in her yet-to-be-written novel.

Niels Bohr said that he developed the model of the atom after he had a dream that he was sitting on the sun with all the planets whizzing around him and hanging by the thinnest cords.

Paul McCartney heard a haunting melody in one of his dreams, confirmed that none of the Beatles had heard it before, and wrote it down. It became the tune for the song ‘Yesterday’.

In 1964 golfer Jack Nicklaus told a reporter how his dreams helped him practice and significantly improve his golf swing.

Dream Types

To all, to each, a fair good night. And pleasing dreams and slumbers light.

– Sir Walter Scott

Understanding what type of dream you had can help you to interpret it. Just as there are different types of music – classical, rock, jazz – there are different kinds of dreams. Although dream types can blend and merge, modern dream researchers tend to break dreams down into one of the following categories:

Afterlife Dreams

Dreams about departed loved ones can feel incredibly real and bring tremendous comfort, healing, and reassurance to the dreamer, encouraging them to believe that perhaps in some unseen realm the departed loved one lives on. Psychologists believe such dreams are products of grief, but whether they are or not research has shown that people who dream of departed loved ones tend to deal better with their grief than people who do not.

Amplifying Dreams

These can exaggerate certain situations or life attitudes in order to point them out sharply for the dreamer. For example, someone who is very shy may dream that they have become invisible.

Anticipating Dreams

These are dreams that may alert us to possible outcomes in situations in our waking lives – for example, passing or failing an exam. We dream the most likely scenarios, or what our fears about these situations are.

Auditory Dreams

These are dreams where you recall sounds or hearing something, rather than visual symbols. Many artists and musicians have experienced these kinds of dreams and used what they heard as inspiration for their work. Sometimes the sound you hear may be the sound of a narrator telling you what is happening in the dream. When this occurs your dreaming mind wants you to concentrate on the narrative or story being told. (Be aware that sometimes external noises from your sleeping environment, like a phone ringing, can creep into your dream.)

Cathartic Dreams

Such dreams evoke extremely emotional reactions, when the unconscious is urging us to release pent-up emotions we may feel unable to express in waking life. For example, you may find yourself bursting into tears on a packed commuter train in your dreams, or you might punch your irritating neighbor or tell your boss exactly what you think of them.

Childhood Dreams

Dreaming about your childhood may reflect a childhood dynamic that hasn’t been worked out yet and requires a resolution. It may also suggest a need for greater spontaneity in your waking life.

Contrary or Compensatory Dreams

In these types of dreams, the unconscious places the dreaming self in a totally different situation to the one we find ourselves in waking life. For example, if your day has been filled with unhappiness and stress due to the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship, you may dream of yourself spending a carefree, happy day by the seaside. Your unconscious may also give you personality traits that you haven’t expressed in waking life. For example, if you hate being the center of attention, you may dream about being a celebrity. Such dreams are thought to provide necessary balance, and may also be suggesting to you to incorporate in your waking life some of the characteristics that your dream highlighted.

Daily-processing Dreams

Also known as factual dreams, daily-processing dreams are dreams in which you go over and over things that happened during the day, especially those that were repetitive or forced you to concentrate for long periods – dreaming about a long trip or a tough work assignment, for example. These kinds of dreams don’t tend to be laden with meaning, and most dream theorists think of them as bits and pieces of information your brain is processing.

Daydreaming

There is a big difference between daydreaming and dreams when you are sleeping, even though the physical state we enter when we daydream has much in common with the relaxed state we assume during sleep. However, when you are daydreaming, you are not actually asleep. When you are asleep, your defense mechanisms are down and you are psychologically more vulnerable. In other words, we shed the masks we wear in public. Therefore, what is expressed in dreams (as opposed to daydreams) is probably a better representation of who we are, not just our waking hopes and fears. Those feelings and thoughts we might be unwilling to acknowledge in waking life often surface boldly in dreams. Dreams we have when we are fully asleep also speak to us in the powerful language of symbols, whereas the language of daydreams tends to be more tangible, reflecting events that have a clearer reality to them.

Epic, Cosmic, or Life-changing Dreams

These kinds of dreams are extremely vivid and rich in archetypal symbolism. They are likely to be the dreams that you can’t forget for many years after you have had them. When you wake up you feel that you have learned something profoundly important about yourself. See also 10 COMMON DREAMS YOU SHOULD NEVER IGNORE, here.

False Awakening

It is thought that many reported sightings of ghosts are caused by false awakenings, which occur when you are actually asleep but are convinced in your dream state that you are awake. This is the kind of vivid dream in which you wake up convinced that what happened in your dream really occurred.

Incubated Dreams

This is when you set your conscious mind on experiencing a particular kind of dream. For example, you may ‘incubate’ a dream of a loved one by concentrating on visualizing your loved one’s face before you sleep, or you may ask for a dream to answer your problems immediately before going to sleep. The theory is that your unconscious responds to the suggestion or request. See also Dream-maker, here.

Inspirational Dreams

Many great works of art, music, and literature have allegedly been inspired by dreams, when the unconscious brings a creative idea to the fore. For example, English poet and artist William Blake said that his work was inspired by the visions in his dreams.

Lucid Dreams

These occur when you become aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. It takes time and practice to stop yourself from waking up, but it is possible to learn how to become a lucid dreamer and control the course of your dreams. See also Dream Catcher, here.

Mutual Dreams

This is when two people dream the same dream. Such dreams can be spontaneous or incubated, for example when two people who are close decide on a dream location together and imagine themselves meeting up before going to sleep.

Nightmares

These are dreams that terrify us or cause us distress in some way by waking us up before the situation has resolved. Nightmares occur during REM sleep and typically arise when a person is feeling anxious or helpless in waking life. Once the dreamer has recognized what is triggering this kind of dream, and worked through any unresolved fears and anxieties, nightmares tend to cease.

Night Terrors

These are similar to nightmares, but because they occur in deep sleep (stage four of the sleep cycle) we rarely remember what terrified us, although we may be left with a lingering feeling of unexplained dread.

Out-of-body Experiences

Also known as astral travel or projection, out-of-body experiences are thought to occur at times of physical and emotional trauma. Researchers tend to dismiss the idea, but those who experience such dreams say that their mind, consciousness or spirit leaves their body and travels through time and space.

Past-life Dreams

If you dream of being in an historical setting, some believe this is evidence of past-life recall. Most dream theorists dismiss the existence of past-life or far-memory dreams, or genetic dreams (when you assume the identity of an ancestor) as evidence for past lives.

Physiological Dreams

These dreams reflect the state of your body, so, for example, if you have an upset stomach you may dream that you are being violently sick. These dreams may highlight the progress of serious physical conditions, or in some cases predict the onset of them. Alcohol consumption can also affect your dreams, increasing the likelihood of vivid but often disturbing dream images. (Sometimes these types of dreams are called ‘Healing Dreams’.)

Psychic Dreams

The great majority of dreams are symbolic and interpreted psychologically, but a tiny percentage of dreams may fall into an utterly unique category of psychic dreams or night visions. Psychic dreams include dreams of departed loved ones and dreams that are precognitive and offer glimpses of the future or warning signals. Other dreams which fall into this category are dreams that appear to be empathetic or even telepathic, in that the dreamer seems to be somehow sensing what is happening to someone else. Shared or mutual dreams – in which people describe dreaming the same dream – dreams of unborn children, and dreams where your spirit brings spiritual help or healing to others are other types of psychic dreams, or dreams that can bring healing and comfort but which experts struggle to explain rationally. Distinguishing features of psychic dreams is that they often feel real and have no plot or storyline. They also are the kind of dreams that bring great comfort and reassurance and you are likely to remember them for days, weeks, months, or even years after you have had them. See also Can You See the Future in Your Dreams?, here.

Psychological Dreams

These are dreams that bring things we would rather not think about to our attention. They make us face an aspect of ourselves or our lives that might be hindering our progress. They are often about our fears, anxieties, resentment, guilt, and insecurities. For example, if you dream you are running round and round on a hamster wheel in a cage, unable to stop, this could suggest that in your waking life you are taking on too much and not giving yourself enough time to relax.

Recurring Dreams

Dreams that recur typically happen when the dreamer is worried about a situation that isn’t resolving itself in waking life. When the trigger in waking life is dealt with, the dreams usually end. Recurring dreams can also occur when a person is suffering from some kind of phobia or trauma that has been repressed or not resolved. If this is the case, the unconscious is urging the dreamer to consciously acknowledge the issue and deal with it.

Sexual Dreams

In dreams, sex can reflect a desire for companionship or sexual frustration in waking life. But it is more likely to represent a hoped-for reunion with a part of ourselves that we are not yet expressing but need to integrate or acknowledge within ourselves to become whole.

Signal or Problem-solving Dreams

These occur when you have gone to bed mulling over a problem and found the answer in your dreams. This could be because your unconscious has already solved the problem and ‘sleeping on it’ gives your unconscious a chance to express itself. Many famous inventions were allegedly prompted by a dream. For example, Scottish engineer and inventor of the steam engine James Watt (1736–1819) dreamed of molten metal falling from the sky in the shape of balls. This dream gave him the idea for drop cooling and ball-bearings. The model of the atom, the M9 analog computer, the isolation of insulin in the treatment of diabetes and the sewing machine were all ideas that sprung from dream inspiration.

Telepathic Dreams

This is the kind of dream when someone you know appears in your dream in acute distress, and you later learn that that person was experiencing a real-life crisis at the time – such as extreme unhappiness, an accident or even death. It is thought that telepathic and empathetic dreams are a meeting of minds between two people who are close to each other emotionally.

Vigilant Dreams

These are processing dreams that involve your senses. For example, if your cell phone rings or a picture falls to the floor while you are asleep, the sound may be incorporated into your dream but appears as something else, such as a police siren or a broken window. The smell of flowers in your room may also become a garden scene in your dreams.

Wish-fulfillment Dreams

These are the kind of dreams in which we quite literally ‘live the dream’: we might win the lottery, date a celebrity, ooze charisma, or simply go on a long vacation. In these kinds of dreams our unconscious is trying to compensate for disappointment or dissatisfaction with our current circumstances in waking life.

Walking and Talking in Your Sleep

Sleepwalking or moving about while asleep is an attempt to put a dream into action. Most likely you have grown out of the habit – if you ever had it – but if an occasion arises which is very stressful, you may, like Lady Macbeth, re-enact the nightmare in this way. Talking in your sleep springs from similar causes to sleepwalking. It is an attempt to carry a dream on verbally. You are more likely to walk, talk, or move in your sleep when you are under mental pressure. Most of the time this is totally harmless, but some sleepwalkers and talkers can put themselves in real danger. Precautions should therefore be taken. Make sure windows are closed and, if stairs are a hazard, doors locked. If you’re really worried about your sleepwalking, seek advice from your doctor. If someone you live with sleepwalks, don’t try to wake them – just guide them quietly and gently back to bed.