NIGHTMARES and What Your Dreams Tell You

As a psychology major in college I learned about Carl Jung.

Carl Jung, protege of Sigmund Freud, believed that dreams were a way we could become acquainted with our subconscious.  He believed they could provide a window to solutions to our problems, subconscious or not, and assist us in achieving wholeness. I believed I would love learning about dreams and their meanings. I have had bad dreams that have come true, brilliant and bright dreams that I have turned into children's books and illustrations, and nightmares that have shocked me awake to a dark room and rapid heartbeat.

Some dreams seem prophetic, and certain individuals gained notoriety due to dreams coming true. For example, Joan of Arc predicted her death in a dream, Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his death only a few days before his assassination, and Einstein's theory of relativity came to him in a dream.

Jung believed, as do many others, that dreams can represent feelings, relationships, fears or any one of many situations that are occurring in your life. But unlike his contemporaries, he did not believe that each specific dream represented the same thing for every dreamer.

For instance, if I dream of fire and look it up in the Dream Dictionary on the web http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/ you will see several interpretations, but each of these would be the same for any dreamer. Jung believed many things had to be taken into account if one were to interpret their dreams. He thought there was not one single correct way for a dream to be described. Personal judgement is heavily relied upon, how the person feels, and the most significant interpretation of the dreamer is more important than what a book of dreams may say or another person.

To help a dreamer reveal the true meaning of his dreams, Jung developed and believed that certain symbols were present in all the dreams of men and women, and had universal meaning. These are ancient symbols, recognized across generations and locations, and derived from the collective unconscious called archetypes.

The main archetypes Jung considered were:

THE PERSONA

The persona is the image we choose to present to the world. The word is a derivative of the Latin word masca, which translated means mask, spectre, and interestingly, nightmare. It is a representation of ALL the masks we wear in social situation--a protector of the ego, a guard to help us from being hurt. Jung believes the persona can take many forms and can appear in our dreams.

ANIMA/ANIMUS

The anima is the feminine inside the man that allows him to understand and communicate with women. The animus is the masculine in a woman, and allows her to communicate and understand men.

 THE SHADOW

The shadow can be considered our dark side. It is the side we do not like to consider on a day to day basis. Jung thinks when we get to know our shadow side, only then can we truly know our whole selves. If the shadow appears in a dream it sometimes shows as a monster, demon or creature.





THE SELF

The self is a product of individuation, it represents the psyche as a whole--it is a unification of the conscious and the unconscious. The self is both the whole and the center, or the ego, as represented by the picture.

Jung did not believe there was a limit to the number of archetypes. He believed they were endless, and some other examples are the joker or trickster, the Mother or Crone, the wise Old Man or Wizard, the child or divine child, and the hero--or these days, the Superhero. Any and all can appear in dreams.

There are also many types of dreams. We discussed the prophetic dream, and if the dream is good we hope it comes true, but another type of dream we can have is a nightmare, or night terror. We have nightmares because of anxiety or fear, and it is said up to 10% of adults can have nightmares every month--or more. These dreams can cause rapid heartbeat, sweating, vocalizations, sleepwalking and waking up with an intense feeling of fear. Seeing a scary image, reading a frightening book or watching a horror movie or television show can all cause nightmares. Children can experience night terrors and moan and thrash while experiencing the dream. They may hallucinate and think they see the creature that is horrifying them in their dreams.

In a lucid dream the dreamer is aware they are dreaming and the waking mind gains control. Please visit The Lucidity Institute to learn to control dreams, remember them, and do experiments like the The Light and Mirror Test:  www.lucidity.com

I have a friend who has dreams that cause her to experience a real  medical phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. (Click below to read a bit about her experience when a book caused it to rear its ugly head:   http://www.amazon.com/review/R28NG4E7W82B9R/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B009WR2BFO&nodeID=133140011&store=digital-text

This is almost the opposite of lucid dreaming because the dreamer wakes but can't move a muscle. They are conscious but cannot do anything about the weird events taking place around them. My friend saw an evil man in her room during one of these dreams and could not breath. She knew he was evil, but could do nothing.

And he began to move closer. She was awake in her own nightmare, helpless.

Read more about sleep paralysis here in one of my favorite magazines, WIRED:  www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/sleep_paralysis/

I remember as a child someone told me if you dream of blood someone will die. Not too long after I dreamt a girl I went to school with cut her father with a knife, and blood poured from the wound. Within two days a relative of a friend passed away, and I was SOLD on dream interpretation.

I read that water means anxiety, and the darker and deeper the water the worse the problems.  I read dreams of the devil mean you are sneaky and underhanded, and daisies mean a happy day will follow.

I bought a dream book and spent many afternoons looking up my own dreams and dreams of friends.

Although I do not look up my dreams any more, I sometimes try and interpret some dreams that are recurring.

Read 15 Interesting Facts About Dreams below--bet you didn't know that not everyone dreams in color...

 http://www.boredpanda.com/15-interesting-facts-about-dreams-dreaming/

Madness and Art

Van Gogh cut off his ear.

Sylvia Plath committed suicide.

Numerous entertainers have overdosed on drugs--accidentally or otherwise.

Shakespeare wrote of madness in Macbeth, and hinted about it elsewhere.

Edgar Allen Poe was questionably depressed or bipolar.

Some scientists believe the connection is clear--where there is creativity, there is the potential for madness. One European study linked the same genetic mutation that insights creativity to schizophrenia.

http://io9.com/5316544/has-science-proven-that-all-artists-are-crazy

It certainly seems that the creators of beautiful musical masterpieces like Mozart or Beethoven or breathtaking art like Picasso or Monet have a special vision or a different type of connection to another world. Some say it is because God is always speaking, and they are taking the time or have the ability to listen.

And of course there is the drug connection too. Do true creatives try and self-medicate with alcohol, heroin, or cocaine? Does their propensity toward drugs stem from wanting to expand their already wider ability to see the world in a different way--or a need to quiet the "voices" telling them what to write, paint, or sing.

Or do artists simply remove more of the social restraints that we and society have put in place from a very young age. We are a civilized nation, each of us fitting neatly into our roles and polite mores that have been dictated since our births.

Freud used "talking therapy" to get to what he considered to be the root of people's problems.  He asked that the filters be removed, even if it was momentarily, and to free associate, and say the first things that pop into our heads--even if they seemed crazy or frightening. Wild things were said! New discoveries were made about deep and mysterious problems. We would never say these things in normal everyday conversation--people would think we are....

What if we all tried to keep the filters down a bit. I'm not talking about the ones that keep us out of jail, but the ones that keep us from being embarrassed, or saying what we really feel, or doing what we honest-to-God want to do without the worry of hurting someone, disappointing someone, or being afraid and doing it anyway.  Maybe that is the only difference from the creative geniuses and everyone else.

Is creativity merely the ability to keep these filters down? Maybe those who can control them are lucky. They can write or draw or make music--or in some cases, all these things, and put the filters back in place when they need to function in a social or familial situation.  Are the poor souls who are locked away and forever confused between reality and another world simply lacking the filters at all?

At this point the jury is still out. Not all schizophrenics are artistic or creative, in fact some are simply and sadly paralyzed by what they experience. Not all madness is schizophrenia, and certainly not all artists are mad. 

Some days I wonder if we are not all mad, but not properly categorized yet.