I would extend Jung's statement to read: dreams are the way the unconscious mind communicates information about our reality to us.
From the work of many researchers, including myself, it's become evident that dreaming is a continuation of our cognitive processes.
And as a thought process, it entails generating ideas and of conceiving what our minds perceive and experience.
The resultant dream images are the embodiment of those conceptions.
Our perceptions plus our history become our conceptions Psychologically, a conception can be described as a piece of knowledge, a composition of current and past experience which has meaning to us in some way.
Though a concept ultimately derives from experience, it's not dependent for its existence on the reception of sensory impressions from the external environment or from our own bodies.
In other words, conceiving is an autonomous process that requires no direct sensory input.
It may be contrasted with perceiving, which is a process that's directly dependent upon sensory stimuli.
We perceive a sunny, summer scene when we look outside and process visual, tactile and auditory patterns and percepts (the actual data our physical senses perceive), which is the raw material for the formation of a perception.
However, we can have a conception of a warm summer day any time we think of a bright, blue sky, warm weather and singing birds.
We can conceive of summer at any time, but can only perceive summer for a few months of the year.
The language by which our dream source conveys and/or brings information to our waking awareness is infinitely more creative and elegant than the language we share with others, but is still essentially tied to the same format.
The main difference in the languages is one of time.
Our dreams have to get our attention, impart a message and make an impact in short bursts throughout the night.
And they do this through a variety of common linguistic and sensory tools:
• Metaphor • Synecdoche • Metonymy • Irony • Allegory • Parable • Fable • Euphemism • Onomatopoeia • Personification • Satire • Antithesis • Hyperbole • AnalogyOur dream source is exceptionally inventive and astute at finding ways to get the message or concept across to our awake mind in as comprehensive and efficient a way as possible.
It makes use of homonyms, synonyms antonyms, acronyms, puns and 'double entendres' in addition to the metaphors and figures of speech already discussed.
A dream character is often swapped for someone or something else with the same name or 'personality.
' This can create some interesting scenarios for you to sort through.
As an example; let's say that, in your dream, a huge guy named "Bill" shows up at your front door and hands you an envelope.
You're stressed about this person showing up just before you're about step into the shower.
After thinking about it a while you realized that a huge bill (debt) shows up at a most inconvenient time.
I consider my sense of humour, dry and somewhat lacking, but my dream source seems to have a pretty good one.
Jokes occasionally show up in our dreams, both to get the point across, and to remind us to take the time to laugh.
A woman dreamt that she walked down the aisle only to find Tom Cruise, the actor, waiting to marry her.
She laughed to herself.
She considered her fiancé to be a good-looking man, but, he was no Tom Cruise.
"I'm not supposed to marry you!" she exclaimed in her dream.
"Have a little faith, why don't you," Tom assured her.
After some thought, she realized that she'd been worried about her husband-to-be's feelings for an ex-girlfriend.
She was afraid her man would keep on "cruising.
" Our dream source gives us letters, numbers and shapes.
It provides us with signs --road signs, store signs, street signs-- that show us where we're going wrong, when we're heading in the right direction, and even when we've completely derailed ourselves.
They can be straightforward and easy to understand, like an arrow pointing right or backwards, or they can be more like those vanity plates you see on some cars; the ones that say IMGR8 or FUN4U.
As well as giving us words, numbers and phrases directly, the dream source also likes to play with the order and sound of words.
The rhythm of the sentence or story structure, the arrangement and pattern of shapes and numbers and even the addition of colour and music all contribute to the construction of your personal dream vocabulary.
The basic premise of popular psychoanalytic (Freudian) dream theory is that the purpose of symbolism in dreams is to transform one object (the percept) into another object (the concept) in order to convey to the dreamer their conceptions of the referent object in a more palpable manner.
Cow is substituted for mother because the dreamer's conception of his mother is that of a cow-like person, i.
e.
, nurturing, docile and domesticated.
Similarly, a gun may be substituted for male genitals because it symbolizes the dreamer's conception of the penis as a dangerous, powerful weapon.
However, I don't believe there is any transformation going on at all.
Why would we need to transform our mothers' into cows? Freud had some messed up ideas based on HIS own conceptions and cultural references.
Our dreams are a source of information for us, and us alone.
Our dream source provides us with an important message at the time we need it.
So, there's no point in repressing, transforming or disguising the content.
Symbolism doesn't even enter the picture until after we attempt to bring the imagery in our minds out of our heads.
And then we use the only tools we have available to us; language.
During a dream we're given a holistic image, or group of images, (or patterns) which represents the information our dream source is trying to convey.
In the awake state, our brain is trained to separate patterns and then interprets them as physical objects.
From the moment we're born, we're taught to processing information this way.
So when we perceive the imagery in our dreams, we process it the same way; as separate units of information.
The images we perceive in the sleep state must be translated from within our current conceptual framework.
Based on our past experiences, our current knowledge and cultural influences, and our likely future direction and actions, we then generate a story around the imagery which helps us make sense of what we experience.
The story isn't the dream.
It's our waking mind's way of understanding the content of the dream.
With every effort to record a dream, we're essentially, trying to interpret a subjective language that follows its own set of rules with an objective language that's been built on different conventions.
In order to bridge the two we need only find the analogous concepts within both.
By paying attention to the words we use, the rhythms we find, the puns we recognize and the phrases we find interesting, we begin to understand how our dream source speaks to us.
By comparison and association, by reference and description we can learn the personal language of our dreams.