A thought on dream interpretation (no actual intrp)

[Jennings]

You certainly do not command my respect and I certainly do not understand why you should be sorry for myself (try reading Adler's psychology, "I'm OK you're not OK"). You are boasting again which is not part of this thread. I have a professional background and had been a college lecturer (among other roles) but, as an egalitarian, I do not feel the urge to use it as a badge of authority nor for social status. Would you be gracious and focus on the subject rather than on your need to exhibit your credentials? I am on this forum to learn and hopefully to assist others and not to be discredited by Lilliputians. Note too the 'figures of speech' in this reply which are metaphorical, poetical, and simple to comprehend, without the requirement of institutionalised thought processes intervening..

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

This is all getting rather heated. I must admit that threads about dream interpretation rarely get anywhere. Its not often you can get anyone to agree on anything

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[mythopoet]

Dear USBR

I agree. The strand has gone off-topic.

Best,
mythopoet

[unclesirbobbyrobson]

Its interesting what Bentone says

Actually the hardest part of dream interpretation is telling if a symbol is a symbol. Does a soldier represent something symbolic? If the ocean appears in a dream does it symbolise something deep and symbolic? Does a father symbolise MY FATHER, or someone elses father ior is it a symbol of some need for authority?

This is the hardest part of dream analysis. We are rarely given clues. The dream mind uses symbols and each time may use them in different ways. Its not easy. yet I feel its not impossible. I link dreams specifically to the day before. They can often relate to other times. But its best to start off assuming a dream represents your present state of mind. The n the snake is a symbol of something presently in your life... that deceiptful comment form yesterday, that difficult situation from yesterday. It makes sense for dreams to represent recent issues as they are thre things that immediately fill our mind. We are more worried about something that happened yesterday than some deep issue from our childhood.

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It is actually possible to understand what dreams mean. Simply look at the effects on people who have gone without sleep for a long time period. If you are deprived of sleep for several days then you will slip into madness. The reason for this is that sleep and dreams are linked to vital brain functions.

During the day we store up new thoughts and experiences within short term memory blocks. So if we are deprived sleep these become overloaded. The mind has no more space to store new feelings so these are merely forgotten.

During sleep vital brain waves emerge. Beta waves and theta waves are only ever detected within the brain at night. These help us process through those new feelings and experiences stored in short term memory. We integrate these new feelings into long term memory blocks. So if you do not sleep then you will not be updating your thoughts. You will not be building a bigger picture.

A dream dictionary that explores the variety of meanings in a dream symbol DREAM DICTIONARY
Dream symbolism and dream dictionary interpretation - How to interpret dreams Some tips
Dream symbolism - How to use dream symbols How to use dreams symbols

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[mythopoet]

Hi-

I'm responding to

...the hardest part of dream interpretation is telling if a symbol is a symbol. Does a soldier represent something symbolic? If the ocean appears in a dream does it symbolise something deep and symbolic? Does a father symbolise MY FATHER, or someone elses father or is it a symbol of some need for authority?

The domain of the dream is a night world. It has a mythical counterpart. Although this is not the ground of anything positive (Hades) it offers a consistent psychological attitude. (when I say positive, I mean nothing can be posited. It is better to think of the appearances within dreaming as eidola and not symbolon; it is better to think dream images reference a nowhere-here dimension)

Given this short relay it is perhaps a bit easier to imagine the psychology of the dream is not like that of the ego psychology which is rational and of the order of logical soul theory or theories. The dream soul will tend a consistent psychological attitude and step away from the body soul (egoic structure); the dreamer wanders away from the body-soul & sojourns into the dream.

The soul of the dream is the only ground of this field.

The dream meditation must adhere to this field.

The images of the dream, the eidolon must rever to this ground.

There is no outside this text.

Using mythic terms, Hypnos is the father of Morpheus, Phoebitor and Phantasos, the god of dreams, the personifyer of nightmare & the shaper of apparition. In other words, sleep fathers dreaming and dreaming mediates between sleep/Hypnos and his half-brother death/Thanatos in the domain of night/Nyx (great grandma). This part agrees with what dream research acknowledges initially. Dream is the guardian of the sleep that fathered it.

Morpheus, according to this point of view of dream-tending, governs the shape of human forms in dreaming, things like "ocean" belong to the soul of the apparition bearer, Phantasos while the guide to Pan's realm of nightmare is Phoebitor. This mythic point of view turns the dream from the point of view of the dream and not the point of view of the ego-soul. Whereas the tacit presuppositions of the particular theoretic psychological practice will place the dream in the dreamer and within his life situation, the mythic point of view, which is not a theory of psychology, places the dreamer in the dream alone.

Entering the dream is what one tends. This is to say, be come no thing. Transit from the material point of view to the psychical point of view and see the way the images see. See what the dream wishes to show you. It is an existence as living psyche is. Immaterial & mirrorlike it is the vale of soul-making. Three dimensions are two here.

I could imagine also through the soul in the word, symbol. The word, σύμβολον (sýmbolon) is first used in the Homeric Hymn To Hermes. Homer's mythic point of view tells... Hermes on seeing the tortoise exclaims συμβολον ηδη μοι "symbolon [symbol/sign/portent/encounter/chance find?] of joy to me!" before turning it into a lyre.

The word/image-idea expresses the throwing forth of the mind into the deep and ideational forms and shapes, the ideas that form and shape life but are so buried in it they must be pulled out into an abstraction (an eidos) for us to "see" them.

Eidos are images that remain invisible even as "I" "sees".

The realm of night is a realm of shadows. One begins to see the way to think when thinking with symbols. The mind throws forward and penetrates the imaginative layer of itself. The dream images are underworld images (skia).

Dream re-sembles reality living another way that is uncanny in its representation as if it is expressing through the very dark matter and dark energy cosmologists quarking the quantum physical world strum the lyre and sing i.e. the one organizing its self-expression around the value of absence (zero) as a representation of another kind of reality presence, as shades in a world without light (dark matter) through which shadows move (dark energy).

The mythic point of view (keeping a consistent psychological attitude toward the dream) in dream-tending allows the dream to belong to whatever psychological theory of dreams one likes (Freud, Jung, Adler etc. as well as those interpretations that wish to explain the prophetic, scientific, socio-cultural, etc) because these meta-stories are dream explanations and have another kind of goal than does the telos of the dream itself.

Metapsychological turnings explain, or try to explain the nature, function, dynamic & symbolism of the dream. What these tacit presuppositions indicate as symbol does not exist from the mythic point of view. The one consistent perspective of the night-view or "underworld" view regards the perspective of dream as image. Psyche is image.


I understand your attempt and, like many other ones, is no less valid nor more valid in understanding, as is my current fiction now.

Thanks for re establishing the focus of this strand.

Bless,
mythopoet