International Journal of Psychology and Counseling.

ISSN 2278-5833 Volume 7, Number 1 (2017), pp. 15-22

© Research India Publications
http://www.ripublication.com

Dream Interpretation and Understanding the

Unconscious

Mudita Raj
(Student)
My college address is, Banasthali Vidyapeeth, Banasthali,
Tonk, Near Jaipur, Pin code – 304022, Rajasthan, India.

Abstract
Dreams can be defined as a succession of images, ideas, emotions and
sensations which usually occur involuntarily, while sleeping. Many
Psychologist such as Freud and Jung believe that dreams are a road to
unconscious. I have here analysed,the dreams of a patient of paranoid
schizophrenia, a patient of dissociative identity disorder and a patient of
postpartum depression so that we can better understand their unconscious and
hence apply that knowledge to psychotherapy, so that it can go on more
effectively.
I have also tried to analyse the dream of a mentally healthy person, who is in a
distressful situation presently.
Objective:
To analyse the dreams of following people to understand their unconscious
better:
 A patient of Paranoid Schizophrenia
 A patient of Post-partum depression
 A patient of Dissociative Identity Disorder
 A mentally fit person (presently in a distressful situation)
16 Mudita Raj

INTRODUCTION
People today have become very selective about interpreting the meaning of their
dreams, they are more likely to believe and assign meaningful symbols to dreams,
which are in line with their daily lives. This phenomenon is called motivated
reasoning. Motivated reasoning is an emotion based decision making phenomenon.
The earliest recorded attempt at dream interpretation, comes from the Babylonian epic,
"Epic of Gilgamesh", where mother of Gilgamesh helps him in interpretating his
dreams.
Following this, Akkadin, tabulated a list of omens and called them Iškar Zaqíqu,
(Zaqíqu is the dream god).
Asclepieions (temples) were constructed by ancient greeks to cure sick people, here
dreams were considered omens from the devine.
Aristotle, was the first thinker, to believe that dreams are already a constituting part of
psychology, he believed that a dream is not just a divine 'god-sent' phenomenon but is
a manifestation of law of human nature.
In Psychology, over the time a lot of work has been done on dreams and their
interpretation, but the most significant is Sigmund Freud's Dream Interpretation.
Freud's Dream Interpretation
Sigmund Freud, in his book, "The Interpretation of Dreams", first argued that all
dream content happen because of motivation of wish fulfilment, and while a
professional tries to interpret the different factors of a dream, she or he should pay
attention to the activities, that happened, in the preceding day. This, he called, "Day
Residue".
He further stated that special attention, should be paid on the dreams of working
adults, as their dreams are subjected to distortion, which leads to the dream content
being heavily hidden by the thoughts present in the unconscious. (This factor becomes
all the more important today to professionals, as now days media heavily influences
thought patterns and distortion increases, hence the real significance, remains
concealed.)
Freud, believed dreams to be compromises, which according to him are, "A disguised,
fulfilment of repressed wishes."
Freud also states that, "Individuals entirely disregards the apparant connections
between the elements in the manifest dreams and collect the ideas that occur to you in
connection with each separate elements of the dreams by 'free association' according
to psychoanalytic rule of procedure. From this material you arrive at the latent dream
thoughts, just as you arrived at the patient's hidden complexes from his associations to
his symptoms are memories. The true meaning of the dream, which has now replaced
Dream Interpretation and Understanding the Unconscious 17

the manifest content is always clearly intelligible."

Freud, also talked extensively about nightmares, he believed, nightmares were the
result of failure of "dream work", rather than contradicting the "wish-fulfilment"
theory, such phenomenon showed the reaction of "ego" (level of consciousness) to
awareness of repressed wishes. (Traumatic dreams were eventually admitted as
exception to the theory.)
Freud famously described psychoanalytical dream interpretation as the, "royal road to
the knowledge of unconscious activities of the mind."
Jung's Dream Interpretation
Carl Jung, believed Freud's dream interpretation was rather narrow in scope and
limited.
Jung believed that dream interpretation had a much wider scope and can represent the
whole of unconscious both personal and collective unconscious. (Collective
unconscious term coined by Jung, refers to the unconscious mind of the same specie.)
According to Jung, dream material can be analysed in two ways, subjective and
objective:
 Objective Approach: Every person in the dream refers to the person they are.
 Subjective Approach: Each person is a representation of an aspect of a
dreamer.
Gestalt therapist support the subjective approach and say that inanimate objects in a
dream can represent aspects of the dreamer.
Jung believed many archetypes appeared in the dreams as symbols or figures. Each of
these represent an unconscious attitude which is hidden.
Jung specially warned professionals to first understand the client's personal situation,
then attempt dream interpretation.
Hall's Dream Interpretation
In 1953 Calvin S. Hall developed a theory according to which dreaming is a cognitive
process. He said that dreams were simply a collection of thoughts that an individual
thinks while sleeping and that these are visual representations of personal conception.
He said while analysing dreams, one should keep in mind the cultural backgrounds
and thoughts.
Frarday, Clift et al Dream Interpretation
In 1970s, Ann Frarday published books on 'do it yourself' dream interpretation.
A very important finding that has emerged from Frarday's writing, is that she notes,
one finding has emerged pretty firmly from modern research namely, that majority of
18 Mudita Raj

the dreams is some way a reflection of things that have pre-occupied our minds.
In 2009, research scholars, Carey Morewedge and Michee Norton, in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology found that most people, think that, "their dreams
reveal meaningful hidden truths."
In a cross cultural study conducted where people from the United States, South Korea
and India participated it was found that 74% of Indians, 65%of South Korean and
56% Americans believed their dream content provided them with meaningful insights.

CASES
CASE:1
Name: Raunak Awasthi (Name changed)
Age: 18 years
Occupation: Student (Preparing for JEE)
Father's occupation: Business Man
Mother's occupation: Housewife
Sibling: 1 Sister
Family type: Joint
Disorder Diagnosed: Paranoid Schizophrenia
Raunak Awasthi is a 18 year old boy, who has taken a drop year to prepare for
engineering entrance exam. He is from Bhopal and has been living in Kota for two
years now, this was his third year. He lives in a hostel owned by Bhalla family. He
has a sister and lives in a joint family, he is not very attached to his parents but is very
close to his paternal uncle.
He started by complaining of recurring dreams, which involved him walking in
crowded lane, people would look at him and laugh at him, sometimes they would
poke fun at him, sometimes they would suggest him alterations to his routine,
sometimes they would mock him. He further said he dreams that two people are
following him, one a male and one a female, he says they are probably brother and
sister and they specially mock him a lot.
He further added that initially, in all these dreams, the public and the brother sister
duo first seem very impressed by him but then something or the other happens and
they start mocking him. These dreams started recurring to a level that he started
avoiding sleeping. He started taking medicines and drugs to avoid sleeping and
developed a "self-induced insomnia".
Dream Interpretation and Understanding the Unconscious 19

He came to the hospital, when, he started hearing these voices even when he was
awake. These voices had become directional in nature, they kept giving him
instructions of different sorts, and were mostly offering constructive criticism about
his routine, his attendance to the classes etc. These voices had become so dominant
that at times he started answering back to them. He stopped going to classes and
started becoming weaker.
When he came to the hospital for treatment, he was visibly distressed and started
shaking while talking and giving us his case history. The doctor then prescribed him
medicines to stabilise him and started giving him psychoanalytic therapy. He asked
him to maintain a journal, where he was to write his thoughts, feelings, actions,
dreams, and what the voices say.
On later analysis of the case, it was found that, he did not share a healthy relationship
with his sister, and there was too much competition within his family i.e. there was a
lot of social comparison prevalent in his family. Moreover we also found that his
sister was the preferred child amongst the both of them, hence there was a factor of
jealousy involved.
Following the approach of Gestalt psychologist and Jung, we understood, that the
people mocking him in his dream are all representing his friends and family, who
mock him or comment on him, while he is awake.
Further the brother-sister duo are actually representative of his sister and himself,
where he tries to mirror the routine of his sister to become the preferred child.
Once we completed our interpretation of his dream, his irrational beliefs and thought
patterns could be identified and therapy could then be coupled with the medication,
for overall wellbeing of the patient.

CASE 2
Name: Heba Ali (Name Changed)
Age: 32
Occupation: House wife
Husband's occupation: Service
Disorder diagnosed: Post partum Depression
Family type: Nuclear
Heba is a 32 year old housewife, she lives with her husband and a daughter, she has
recently given birth to a daughter. She says she doesn't want to touch her and feels
like crying after looking at her. She has given up all desires of nurturing the new born.
20 Mudita Raj

She further complains of loss of appetite, sleeplessness and restlessness. She also
dreams of repetitive nightmares, where she sees her, younger daughter using some
spells or magic potions to gain the affection of the entire family. In some dreams, she
complains that she has become invisible and her family forgets her. She also
complains of losing her voice in her dreams and her new born baby laughing at her.
When we try to interpret all these dreams we see a common pattern, i.e. within all her
dreams, she seems to become a victim of neglect from chiefly her husband.
On later sessions with her it was found that her husband is a very busy man and she
stays at home alone usually, but when she was pregnant the second time, her husband
paid extra attention to her, he even took leaves to take care of her.
She unconsciously harboured the belief that, for her husband their second daughter
had become more precious and she would lose her importance when the child would
be born and would hence face a lot of neglect. This irrational belief was leading to her
disorder.
As Freud said, "Dreams are a royal road to unconscious." through Heba's dreams we
could understand her unconscious and hence also catch the irrational belief, and we
could administer CBT properly and efficiently.

CASE 3
Name: Vineet Jain (Name Changed)
Age: 28
Occupation: Unemployed
Education: Diploma in polytechnic
Marital status: Married
Family type: Joint.
Vineet Jain is a 28 year old man, he lives in a joint family, he recently lost his job, so
his family decided to take him to an astrologer. The astrologer told him he was meant
for a different devine purpose, and will be doing great deeds. He further told Veneet
to start worshipping Lord Hanuman, twice a day, and told him to establish a
relationship with him.
Vineet followed the instructions of the astrologer very strictly, he didn't miss even a
day. Things went on smoothly in the beginning, but later problems started. He started
having convulsions and started behaving like God Hanuman himself. He said
Hanuman has chosen him to work for him. He started applying "sindoor" on himself
and wore various string and beads. Scared of all this development his wife brought
him to the hospital. When we questioned him he said, he becomes Hanuman and has
Dream Interpretation and Understanding the Unconscious 21

future visions. He said Hanuman comes here on earth to rescue mankind through him.
We then asked him, when did all of this start, he answered saying a few months after
they had met the astrologer. We further asked him how did all of this start, he
answered that one day after offering prayers to lord Hanuman, he went to sleep, and
dreamt of the astrologer taking him to Lord Hanuman, and when he bowed down to
him in order to show respect, the Lord hugged him and entered him. He woke up
feeling stronger.
These dreams continued for a long time and slowly he started believing he was
Hanuman and changed his behaviour pattern completely. He now has phases when he
is Hanuman there are phases when he is Vineet.
Through Vineet's Dream, we understand archetypes of Jung and the effect of culture
on the unconscious of a personal. Within Indian culture we take astrology very
seriously and hence we see, the effect of the astrologer's prophecy on Vineet.

CASE 4
Name: Shravan Kumar (Name changed)
Age: 43
Occupation: Unemployed
Disorder diagnosed: None, he is mentally fit

Shravan Kumar is a 43 year old healthy man, who has just lost his job and is in
distress, he doesn't suffer from any mental disorder. He says he has repeated dreams
of his college days, where he would, try to catch up on his pending work and his
friends decide to not help him, he keeps struggling to complete his work and while
struggling he falls in a pit, and from the pit he calls his parents, but no one shows up
and then his mother comes but she is not able to help him and he stays in that pit. He
wakes up at this point.
If we analyse each element of this dream, we find that his seeing his college is
basically his missing his old carefree days, then we move on to the next element
where he sees, he is trying to complete his pending work and his friends refusing to
help him show that how he is trying to find opportunities but is failing to do so, and
then finally him falling into a pit shows, his fear of falling in a desperate situation and
not able to come out of it, then his mother not being able to pull him out, shows his
fear that no one can help him in this situation.
22 Mudita Raj

CONCLUSION
Through my interpretation of people's dreams, I have found that dreams can help a
professional to better understand a person's unconscious and hence provide better
therapy and the client also becomes more receptive to therapies. Dream interpretation
also help in strengthening therapeutic alliance, and helps a professional provide more
client centric and goal oriented therapies. Dream interpretation when done with full
involvement of the client, helps the client to better understand themselves.

REFERENCES
[1] Oppenheim, A. (1956) The interpretation of dreams in the ancient Near East
with a translation of an Assyrian dreambook. Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, 46(3): 179–373. p. 247.
[2] Thompson, R. (1930) The Epic of Gilgamesh. Oxford: Oxford University
Press
[3] Freud, S. (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Avon, 1980.
[4] Jung, Carl (1934). The Practice of Psychotherapy. The Practical Use of
Dream-analysis. p. 147. ISBN 0-7100-1645-X.
[5] Calvin S. Hall. "A Cognitive Theory of Dreams". dreamresearch.net.
Retrieved 7 October 2010.
[6] Faraday, Ann. The Dream Game.
[7] Clift, Jean Dalby; Clift, Wallace (1984). Symbols of Transformation in
Dreams. The Crossroad Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8245-0653-7
[8] Morewedge, Carey K.; Norton, Michael I. "When dreaming is believing: The
(motivated) interpretation of dreams.". Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology. 96 (2): 249–264. PMID 19159131. doi:10.1037/a0013264.