Dream Interpretation: Can we put our trust in those who heal through dreams? by Anna Murray

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.” -William Dement


The average person spends a total of about 6 years dreaming. For about two hours each night images, sounds, emotions and thoughts flit across our sleeping mind, beyond the realms of our conscious awareness, leaving nothing behind but a bare residue. But are these apparently random images, a medium of connection to an ethereal spiritual world, or do they hide the secrets of our very nature?

The belief that the state of dreaming is a lofty form of communication with the divine has persisted throughout history even into present day New Age dogma, as it were. Not only do accounts and stories revolving around dreams or visions account for about one third of the Bible and subsequent Christian doctrine: a prime example being that of St Patrick, who learned through a dream of the boat waiting for him in Wicklow. Classical civilisations such as the Greeks and the Romans used dreams to seek advice and inspiration from their gods, while the Aboriginal faith lies in the Dreamtime – where the past, present and future are all happening simultaneously, and can each be accessed through your dreams. Even now, New Age-ist philosophy places great emphasis on the awareness of dreams, making them a channel for the spiritual and for healing. More contemporarily, theories of this nature have deteriorated in the face of modern thought and the tide of scientific advancement. The 1953 discovery of the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep phase incited a great deal of study into the processes of sleep itself and thus of dreams (known as oneirology), both scientifically and psychologically, eventually leading to the practice of dream interpretation being incorporated into the field of psychoanalysis.

The scientific credibility of psychoanalysis in its own right is to this day hotly-contested: there are so many arguments both for and against its many aspects it’s difficult to know whether the practice is one we can trust. Giving it in essence the benefit of doubt, the question still remains as to whether analysing our dreams will actually prove to be of any benefit to us. When asked, Richard Roche, lecturer in the department of Psychology here, explained from his point of view the theories surrounding the study of dreams:
“Well there’s really two views of the whole issue of dreams – Freud and his followers (including Jung, who later went his own way and became even wackier) would have said that dreams reveal unconscious desires or motivations that you can’t really express consciously. Remarkably, this whole idea seems to have been largely based on a single incident that happened to Freud one night – he was dreaming of being in a hot desert and when he woke up he realised he was thirsty.”

Despite the fact that Freud has become almost an in-joke to the profession –sex, Oedpius, more sex – he was the first to do any significant research into the field of dreams. His book, The Interpretation of Dreams, is still considered by some to be one of the greatest publications in the field of psychology. According to his theories, dreams had to be interpreted through a particular language of symbols, as the disparity between the conscious and unconscious mind meant that ideas could not be transmitted directly and had to be “censored”. A student of Freud, C.G Jung believed his teacher’s views to be somewhat simplistic, that dreams reflected not just unconscious wishes but the entire unconscious, represented by archetypes. This is essentially the basis of modern interpretative thought, however, he ascribed to dreams the ability to contain philosophical truths and even telepathic visions: though it would be derided today by most, it initiated a new school of thought in the study.

Since the now infamous Freud and Jung paved the way for future research, dream theorists have been proposing new concepts almost weekly. Most notable are those of Hall (1953), in which dreams were seen as representations of personal conceptions, and required a parallel mode of thinking and the use of cultural metaphors in interpretation. In 2005, a Biblical theory over 2000 years old was adapted by Alan Harmony, which dictates that it is the associated words and syllables that require analysis, not the images and objects themselves.

However, Richard goes on to explain that as it becomes increasingly necessary for the study of psychology, therapy and analysis to be corroborated by un-falsifiable scientific evidence, these theories are given little credence in practice.
“On a scientific point of view, the contemporary view on dreams is that dreaming is related to memory processes. Various studies have shown that, if you learn new material, your recall of it is better after sleeping compared to people who were tested again after the same interval but didn’t sleep. It’s thought that the process of memory consolidation (strengthening or laying down memories in a long-term trace) happens during sleep and that dreaming may represent a sort of “internal replaying” of the events that happened the previous day.”
And so another belief falls prey to and is massacred by merciless science. Both theoretical and experimental evidence shows that the area of the brain apparently involved in the process of dreaming, known as the hippocampus, is also that responsible for memory. People who have had this “sea-horse shaped” structure removed, or those in which it does not function properly have serious difficulties with memory. Remember the film Momento?

Yet flying in the face of this are psychologists and various types of therapists, reputable or not, certified or not, determined to prove that Freud and Jung were on to something at least. One of these is Paul Bradley, a Kilcock-based psychologist who incorporates the concepts of the original theorists into his practice, and who last week gave a convincing seminar on the subject here in Maynooth. To a room of 23 amateur dream enthusiasts (92% of which were female, interestingly), Paul expounded on not only the virtues of using dream interpretation as a therapy, but explained to the oneirological virgins of the small group the history, concepts and details of dreaming itself.

Although originally very sceptical of the idea, repeated personal insights and many happy clients were enough to convince him that a part of our selves communicates, sometimes directly, sometimes totally obscurely, through the images, ideas and patterns of our dreams: as he himself takes care to highlight “dreams are here to help you! Dreams are useful because they expand the barriers. They are the language of your subconscious mind – and when I refer to your subconscious mind, it’s the same as your psyche, your intuition… ”
“Your attitude to dreams in terms on interpretation…is very important. Let’s say for example that I perceive dreams to be total nonsense, that there’s no relevance: to do that interpretation for someone, it would be very very hard because the dreams would be all mixed up with very little pattern or continuity, as if the dreams are reflecting the attitude. But if you go to the other extreme and say dreams have all the answers: what’ll usually happen is that you’ll get very ambiguous dreams, with no definition. So it’s important to position yourself somewhere in between. And I’ve been in both camps so I know what it’s like. Dreams require your active conscious participation, both in sleeping and awareness of your daily life.”

There are still few psychologists, counsellors or therapists who use dream interpretation as a standard therapy: are they holding on to an outdated concept, or are these the enlightened few? In the mind of most, abstract scientific fact holds less import than the satisfied testimony of real people, and where the practice of dream interpretation may be all but dismissed in one view, it is embraced by many. In the face of a lack of concrete evidence, an inability to see firsthand the inner workings of a dreaming mind (inventors, get thinking), all we have to judge on is our faulty, unscientific personal experience. Which would you rather trust?