By Natasha Larkin

Counsellor / Career Coach

Dreams are a part of our sleeping time. We never know what to expect - good, bad, scary or even weird dreams? Maybe you are someone who finds it difficult to remember your dreams? Are you someone who wants to remember the dream due to its great story or forget it, thanks to its weird or sad plot!! Do you try and transport back into the dream to finish it off? Have you ever felt the dream was so vivid that it feels in real time?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a dream is a "series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep." (dream noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com)

Cultures around the globe can interpret their dreams differently. Psychologists and sleep experts study the meaning of dreams. The most famous psychologists were Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. They believed dreams were important in the understanding of the unconscious mind so offered expansive work on the interpretation of dreams. Even though Jung began as a student of Freud, they did take different approaches. Freud interpreted dreams as manifestations of repressed desired and unfulfilled wishes. Jung understood dreams as important tools for personal growth and self-realisation. In summary, the most fundamental difference in Freud’s and Jung’s dream theories was: “Freud’s approach looked backward and focused on the causal sources of dreams in early life experiences. Jung’s approach looked forward and tried to understand where the dreams might be leading, and what they might reveal about the individual’s future life development.” (5 Key Differences Between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung - Mental Health General).

Carl Jung saw Dreams as symbolic expressions of the unconscious and believed that they contained valuable information about a person's psyche and their current life situation. Jung believed that the symbols in dreams had universal meanings and were a reflection of the collective unconscious. 

Like Freud, some people currently believe that dreams reflect the unconscious mind. Freud believed dreams represented buried memories and one’s deepest desires. Others believe that dreams can help us solve problems and relive events, or that the images symbolise things that are significant to us.

Both Freud and Jung agreed that dreams are valuable allies in healing people suffering from various kinds of mental illness. They both used informative theories and they both went beyond the limits of brain science to seek insights about the nature of dreaming in mythology, history, and art. Both of them believed a greater knowledge of dreaming could help us better understand the philosophical mysteries of how the mind and body interact.

Dream in Counselling / Psychotherapy

If you are curious and wonder how we use this in therapy, it does vary with techniques but in psychoanalytic theory, dreams generally represent wish fulfilment, unconscious desired and conflicts. Dreams contain both manifest an underlying subject. During a dream analysis session, the client will share their manifest content with the therapist and the therapist will use ‘free association’ which is described in the Oxford dictionary as ‘the mental process by which one word or image may spontaneously suggest another without any necessary logical connection,’  (free association definition oxford dictionary - Search (bing.com). Symbols will be filtered from the manifested content and then with free association, will be explored through emotions and thoughts that are not yet consciously acknowledged. Examining your dreams in counselling or psychotherapy can help you tap into unexpressed emotions and shed light on issues that you may have been putting off looking at consciously. 

How can you remember your dreams in preparation for a counselling or psychotherapy session? You could use a few techniques such as journalling them as soon as you wake up. Sometimes it helps to put a post it note asking the question “what did you dream”? Keeping the same sleep patterns is helpful too.

Some of us take a more biological approach. If we look at Dreams from another perspective, key takeaways from ‘The Sleep Foundation’ are very interesting:

• "The average person spends about two hours dreaming each night.

• Multiple dreams can occur throughout the night and across the sleep stages.

• The most vivid and more easily remembered dreams typically occur during REM sleep.

• There are several theories as to why dreams often seem longer than they really are."

• (https://www.sleepfoundation.org/dreams/how-long-do-dreams-last) 

We have learnt from their description that most dreams happen during the rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep. This is also known REM cycle. During your REM cycle, the brain activity is high, similar as if you are awake, which is why your brain creates stories that seem real. Dreams can feel very real while we are in the dream state and sometimes even after we wake up, especially if they bring on negative emotions. Even though Dreams can occur during other cycles of sleep, they tend to be less vivid and memorable than REM dreams. Have you wanted to or not wanted to remember your dreams? If you happen to awake during the REM phase, there is a higher chance that you will remember the dream after you wake up.

In an article called ‘REM sleep depotentiates amygdala activity to previous emotional experiences’, it is stated dreams are used for emotional memory processing take place in REM sleep, while dreams that relate to experiences in our waking lives are usually associated with theta brainwaves.  (van der Helm E, Yao J, Dutt S, Rao V, Saletin JM, Walker MP. REM sleep depotentiates amygdala activity to previous emotional experiences. Curr Biol. 2011 Dec 6;21(23):2029-32. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.052. Epub 2011 Nov 23. PMID: 22119526; PMCID: PMC3237718.) In other words, dreams can be good for our mental performance as theta brainwaves are “typically associated with deep relaxation, meditation, creativity and problem solving”. (What Are Theta Waves and How Do They Affect The Brain? | My Brain Rewired).

So, next time you DREAM, it does not matter if you are in a good or weird dream as they can improve your memory, give you access to your unconscious mind, enhance your intuition and achieve deep relaxation. Dream away….

If you are interested to work on your dream with a counselling professional, book in a session with me.