Dreams as expressions of unconscious desires

Altruistic Muse

Altruistic Muse

Community Member
MBTI
INFJ
Enneagram
4?
When I was a kid, I used to have dreams about being given new musical instruments as presents. This was at a time when my clarinet had given me a taste for a world of potential auditory delights. I was particularly upset one morning when I had a very vivid dream concerning a gleaming new cornet. I was so sure it was on my shelf. Man, life is full of disappointments... Over the years, though, in my experience at least, dreams have become less about simple material wants, and more about manifestations of complex emotional and psychological desires, and often, I suppose, suppressions. Take yesterday, for example. I was having a great day! I struggle with lust and flirting usually. But I was praying, I was doing well, I felt in control!! I like to be in control. Then I go to sleep, and I dream about seducing a priest!! How much worse does it get than that??? For me I have this thing about power... I like the power I get from flirting, and thinking "I could get this guy if I wanted to". I never do anything bad! But it's there in the back of my mind...Now in real life, I try to overcome this. I consider it one of my triumphs to have an awareness of weaknesses and to stand up to them. Yesterday I managed. And then it gets followed up with a dream like that!! Incidentally the seduction was emotional, an opening up much like Samson and Delilah... That's what I crave, people opening up to me...it's just as bad as sex in the long run... Argh I just find it a frustrating reminder of all that is left to address!!! Irritating dreams.... Haha rant over, sorry guys... :)
 
I wish I could remember my dreams. . I'm certain I have them and when I do they are very draped in symbolism. . taking a great deal of thought ot unravel. . I fin ddreams very insightfu, if a bit odd at times. . I think it's our head working out stuff during the quiet times of sleep. . but not having all of the brain to use to do the probem solveing or pondering, hence the wierd stuff that creeps inso often times.
 
Altruistic Muse said:
s... Over the years, though, in my experience at least, dreams have become less about simple material wants, and more about manifestations of complex emotional and psychological desires, and often, I suppose, suppressions. Take yesterday, for example. I was having a great day! I struggle with lust and flirting usually. But I was praying, I was doing well, I felt in control!! I like to be in control. Then I go to sleep, and I dream about seducing a priest!!... :)
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There are those who say that the unconscious plays a compensatory role. If one uses their ability to repress an idea that is coupled to an emotion, they can successfully put it out of consciousness for a time but it will rise up again somewhere. The fact that you are ranting about this is positive in that you looking at it consciously and not ignoring it. There are those who would advise you to treat these unseemly parts of your self with compassion and without judgment.
 
Altruistic Muse said:
When I was a kid, I used to have dreams about being given new musical instruments as presents. This was at a time when my clarinet had given me a taste for a world of potential auditory delights. I was particularly upset one morning when I had a very vivid dream concerning a gleaming new cornet. I was so sure it was on my shelf. Man, life is full of disappointments... Over the years, though, in my experience at least, dreams have become less about simple material wants, and more about manifestations of complex emotional and psychological desires, and often, I suppose, suppressions.
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This sounds very familiar. I started tracking my dreams in 1985. I was five years old. By no means have I written down even one-tenth of my dreams, but I record the ones I remember about once or twice per week. When I was in my early teens it was closer to one or two per waking.

Around my tweens (yes, I hate that word too) I began to have dreams about receiving musical instruments (I play saxaphone, guitar, and piano) but they were never the ones I could actually use. Vividly, I can still see the trumpet that was on my bed. When I awoke it took a few minutes of foraging around my room in a stupor to realize that it wasn't there. It was only a dream. The other recurrence was/is shoes. My sleeping brain has a frackin shoe fetish that my waking brain has not. In a dream a few weeks ago I was wearing a pair of Air Jordan IV. Delectable.

Some people cannot remember their dreams, but often I can not forget them (I understand that I have multiple dreams per night that I will never cogitate).

I suspect that as we learn more about the brain we will find that dreaming does not satisfy one or two or even a few goals or purposes but that dreaming is hard-wired into our brain so that if one did not dream, hundred or even thousands of other processes would suffer or be interrupted as a consequence.

An aside- I love watching my cats and dogs in the midst of a euphoric dream. My pug paddles her feet and smiles.
 
From what I understand, REM (the sleep stage that brings about most dreams) also consolidates memories, knowledge gained, and associations made through the day; therefore, I think dreams are a product of these things - specifically, how the subject reacts to them. Perhaps a long-suffered anomaly will tinge one's dreams, to act as a warning? The brain has a sense of humor, don't take everything it does as a sign of some underlying malady.

(edit: Sorry if any of this was super-obvious; I've forgotten most of my information about this, unfortunately)
 
I don't entirely understand what dreams mean. I tend to forget most of them, but sometimes, something so bizarre appears to me that I have a hard time eradicating it from my mind.

I don't believe my dreams are linearly a representation of my unconscious desires, because I have dreamed some things that I wouldn't dare do in real life. But perhaps, through dreams, I can know what I am capable of when culture and traditions are not present to hinder or disrupt my train of thought.
 
[MENTION=1939]StudebakerHawk[/MENTION], thank you! I guess you're right, can't really do much about what you think in your sleep so not point feeling guiilty about it! Guess just noting it is the only way to go :).

@JungianTrip... too weird! I was goingt to write here about dreams I've had about shoes as well! There was one when I was a kid that I can remember. I had been trying to work out this fashionable way of tying my shoelaces, and couldn't manage it awake. But in my sleep, my brain clearly worked it out and I woke up knowing how! So maybe shoes have some significance? So odd. Yep I always got instruments I couldn't play as well :P.
 
so my dream of a bird being swallowed whole by a bear means........
 
A lack of freedom, of course! Everyone knows this! :)
 
Radiant Shadow said:
From what I understand, REM (the sleep stage that brings about most dreams) also consolidates memories, knowledge gained, and associations made through the day; therefore, I think dreams are a product of these things - specifically, how the subject reacts to them. Perhaps a long-suffered anomaly will tinge one's dreams, to act as a warning? The brain has a sense of humor, don't take everything it does as a sign of some underlying malady.

(edit: Sorry if any of this was super-obvious; I've forgotten most of my information about this, unfortunately)
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This.

It can be an expression of unconscious desire, but not always that.

Speaking about my experience..

The important thing, IMO, is, you THINK (and feel, in the non-MBTI sense) a lot. Whether it's positive or negative, your dream will be a sort of cinema, playing what you're thinking.....using, sometimes, weirdly related symbols, or one that has little to seemingly no connection to what you think at all.

I dream a lot about zombies. I used to wonder, WTF? Why am I dreaming the things I hated a LOT? Then I realized, unless I'd seen a work about zombies, the emotions I've been thinking generally before sleeping are -fear-. And I fear zombies like whoa.

I also dream a lot about my friends in school, but then I noticed a lot of times, my 'friends' are jumbling; middle school friends are meeting highschool friends in an amalgam of all my schools. I would say it's because my head doesn't discriminate from which box it's taking the symbols from.
 
I find it amazing how a mind can take pieces of one's day and one's thoughts and make them into something that seems realistic. Sometimes the mind reaches far back in the past to things you wish you did, but refused. I almost have to awaken during the dream to remember anything of it. If I don't write it down right then, I often forget bits and pieces of it later.

Can you further explain this? quote"Incidentally the seduction was emotional, an opening up much like Samson and Delilah... That's what I crave, people opening up to me...it's just as bad as sex in the long run... Argh I just find it a frustrating reminder of all that is left to address!!!" unquote

How is opening up to someone as "bad" as sex?
 
The other morning I was hypnogogically dreaming about an adobe bilevel house in a mountain forest. It was familiar but not from waking life but rather a memory of another dream. I took comfort in that thought.

Is the unconscious desire there a wish to return to a state of unconsciousness?
 
like most of mr. freud's theories, i don't buy it.

what are dreams? a bunch of chemical processes in your brain. probably contains some memories from the future too, seeing as how time is (probably) not linear but circular.

sweet dreams!
 
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