Find the Meaning of Your Dream Symbol
Step 4 of the Five Step Method of dream analysis
In the game of Charades, to say “sounds like” without words, you circle your ear with your hand and lean toward others as if listening. This conveys the message “sounds like”. That is exactly how dream images speak to you. They are a pantomime of visual messages. They “act out” a message because while you sleep, you don’t use words. All the brain has as a tool to convey a message is an image. Learning theory in psychology points out that the image is the basic building block of a memory, so what is stored in the brain is “a set of images”. A dream symbol is such an image used to get a message across, but in a very deliberate way. The brain picks the image that will best convey a message.
When trying to figure out what a symbol means, pretend you are playing a game of Charades. You can also check out what the founders of psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung did to decipher symbols. Both were enthusiastic dream analysts who interpreted their own dreams daily, as well as dreams of patients.
Freud’s Method to Understand a Symbol:
Go back in time
Over a hundred years ago, Freud correctly observed that images in dreams relate to something from your past which had an emotional impact on you. For example, someone may have attended a funeral with red roses at the service. Later, that person dreams of red roses. The red roses became a message connected to sorrow, sadness, and loss, but in the dream, it is now about a new matter such as loss of an opportunity or sadness about a friendship gone bad. Someone else may have received yellow roses from her husband on a special occasion. For her, a yellow rose now carries the emotional impact and of love, caring, and friendship as qualities she experienced from her husband. When this second person dreams of a rose, it is a message of feeling cherished and appreciated. Two people dream of roses, but because their past associations are different, to one it means loss, to the other, feeling loved.
That is how symbols work by the Association Method and is a key technique to get at the meaning of a dream symbol. Symbols are pictures that jog your memory. Think of a symbol as “emotional shorthand”, a memory linked to an incident or feeling in the past. Let yourself go back in time and feelings to that past association, and the meaning falls into place.
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For example, I once grew a miniature grapefruit tree I from seed. One day, I saw it in a dream at its baby height of six inches. As I looked closer, I was devastated to see a white bug on its shiny dark green leaves and because I knew the bug would eat the new shoots and destroy the plant. To interpret the dream, I went back to my associations with that plant in real life. It needed a great deal of perseverance to grow, but I was rewarded with something beautiful that I valued. This was an association of: “Something lovingly and patiently cared for that brings joyful results.” I asked myself what, in my present life, needed my careful attention and if not tended to, would risk being destroyed. What in real life paralleled this story line and association? It was about a coworker. Creating a friendship with this person had taken much care and patience, just as had been true for the plant. As I pondered the dream, I saw that I had a “budding resentment" which had begun to resurface and “seriously bug” this relationship. The resentment, like the bug in the dream, could destroy the hard won rapport we had built up. Via association, the dream was clearly telling me to let my resentment go so that the good in the relationship with my coworker could survive. I took the dream’s advice!
SUMMARY OF FREUD’S METHOD
OF THE MEANING OF A DREAM SYMBOL
1. Pick a symbol and see what past memories
and feelings it brings up.
2. Review the past event and feelings around
it.
3. Summarize those past associations as if it
were a story line.
4. See how that story line fits into a current
area of your life.
5. Note how the past association brings
insight to a current life situation.
Carl Jung’s Parallel Association Method to Understand a Dream Symbol: What the Image Generally Conveys
Instead of going backwards, see what meanings a symbol has for you in general. For example, to many, a dog can mean: loyalty, friendship, love, openness, good-natured, protective and so on. You do not have to go back to past memories for these meanings, it is what a dog means to you now. Check out how your current feelings relate to a symbol.
Images as Playing with Words
The overall story line gives you the overall message, but symbols add specific information, bringing depth to the message. Think of symbols as “Talking in Pictures”. Like a collage or game of charades which are visual puzzles, your dream psyche uses picture segments to fine-tune a message. A great example is a dream of a clock with wings dashing out the door as a pictorial way of saying:” Time is running out”.
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