Dream Analysis and Interpretation Paper

Dream Analysis and Interpretation Paper

Jade Zhang

Everyone has dreams every day, various and exceedingly dreams. We usually hear about people talk about how miraculous their dreams are, and how deep impression the dreams made. Unfortunately, people seldom remember their dream when they are awake. How does the dream made? Why does people sleep? Dreams usually show about the information or experience of people’s life, they are usually used as a ‘form of communication and expression of information about the dreamer and their life’ (Eudell-Simmons & Hilsenroth, 2007: p 331), we can feel and image it, but we don’t know what that is. When people is full asleep, the brain is also entered into a state of relaxation and rest, but some of the brain cells are not. A slight stimulation can cause their activities, make them feel excited, then trigger dreams. During the time of metapsychology development, a lot of contributions of dream are done by professional psychologists such as Freud, Jung and Deirdre Barrett. This paper will take some examples of dream to analyze by their theories.

The first dream that I remember was not about myself, but was in the first person. I was in a place without borders, all around are black, I couldn’t find direction because it was so vast. The ground was red, blood red, it made me feel oppressive. I can’t control my behaviors, I conscious of I was going forward but the background didn’t change, it was still black, I walked through the way continually, there was surrounded by thorns and sword. Finally, I saw my Samoyeds fall in blood, her blood was all over the place. That was so scary. This dream that I had was occurred in one week after my parents sent the dog away, because they don’t have enough time to keep the dog, we made the hard decision and I was crying. After I had this dream, I told to my mom and she called the master one week later. Unfortunately, our dog got lose, may be died. For Barrett’s theory, Barrett (1996, p. 3) notes that one pattern several researchers have found is that dreams immediately following a traumatic or disturbing event are often a fairly literal reenactment of the event, followed by ones that become more metaphoric or symbolic over time. It means my ‘trauma’ of the dog trigger this dream, this ‘traumatic’ event cause my nightmare. The dog’s leaving is the stimulus that cause I have the ‘trauma’ in my subconscious. In my dream, I can’t control to keep moving seems the dream reenact the manifest content again and again, then the dog fall in the blood seems to be the metaphoric or symbolic of I worried about my dog.

The second dream that I had is in English, when I was after running, coach was chatting with us, she asked for me have I ever been dreamed in English, because she used have a student who was international student and spent one year studying in America. Once she had a dream was in English after she had been there for a long time, also there was a teammate agreed with coach, because she has an international friend has the same experience. I never dream in other language or my dream seems soundless but I can feel I have a conversation in the dream, it was new for me, and I think I should work hard on my English. After I back home, I forgot that. Then I have a dream in English, it was about I playing roller coaster with somebody who I couldn’t see his face, we were talking in English, the only one part that I remember was he invite me to have lunch with him, but I refused. When I woke up I realize that I had dream in English. In Freud’s theory, that he thought the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awaken the dreamer. (Rycroft, Charles. A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin Books, 1995, p.41). He believed that manifest content is the dream as memory and related, ‘Freud’s position that dreams are meaningful and understandable’ (see Greenberg & Pearlman, 1999). It means my desire and wish which in my subconscious cause this dream, because I keep speak other language (English), it affect my language system, and cause my conscious about language, I wants to work hard on English, it disguised wish fulfillment to push me work hard in my dream, then the dream mix the fact and imaginary which I wants together, express in metaphorically and I had impressive effect.