What Are the Best Sites for Dream Interpretation?

[Monique]

Do you guys know some good websites to look up dream interpretations? I was just searching through Google and couldn't find any website that looked reasonable.

Last night I had a nightmare about a tiger chasing me up flights of stairs and even up on ladders, apparently that means that I have to face difficult situations and overcome obstacles, which about fits my situation right now. It's the first time I've had that dream, so it made me interested in keeping track of my nightly adventures some more

 

[hamster143]

"Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. "

http://www.psychwww.com/books/interp/chap06e.htm

 

[lisab]

I think dream interpretation is all in the eye...well, erm, brain of the beholder. What a tiger represents to you may not be the same to everyone.

When I try to figure out what a dream means I give it two seconds' thought, and whatever comes to mind I figure that's close enough .

 

[Monique]

"Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. "

http://www.psychwww.com/books/interp/chap06e.htm

lol, where did you dig that up? That interpretation would never have crossed my mind.

 

[sshzp4]

Lucid dreaming, anyone? Its ubercool. Exhausting, but fun. And there's never bad endings.

 

[Borek]

http://www.dreamota.com/dream-dictionary?letter=T

If chasing you or another for the kill, what is there in yourself that you are trying to get rid of?

 

[Monique]

I think dream interpretation is all in the eye...well, erm, brain of the beholder. What a tiger represents to you may not be the same to everyone.

When I try to figure out what a dream means I give it two seconds' thought, and whatever comes to mind I figure that's close enough .

I don't know about that.. some dreams are just too strange. There seem to be some dreams that occur in populations that are very symbolic and they represent some deep psychology, like dreams where you lose your teeth. I've never studied the subject, so I'm no expert.

 

[leroyjenkens]

It would be hard to study dreams, since you can never know what someone else dreamt. You always have to take their word for it.
Whenever I have a dream, I remember the basics of it for about 10 minutes after I wake up, then it gets more and more nebulous as time goes on. At the end of the day I've probably forgotten just about all of it.
I'll hear people tell me about their dreams they had a few days ago and they're giving me detail after detail. Makes me really doubt they actually dreamt that and instead just like to hear themselves talk.

 

[Andre]

Hang in there, Monique, I hope things go better soon.

 

[drizzle]

I don't know about that.. some dreams are just too strange. There seem to be some dreams that occur in populations that are very symbolic and they represent some deep psychology, like dreams where you lose your teeth. I've never studied the subject, so I'm no expert.

Try to not interpret bad dreams! I won’t tell you what it means.

I think dream interpretation is all in the eye...well, erm, brain of the beholder. What a tiger represents to you may not be the same to everyone.

When I try to figure out what a dream means I give it two seconds' thought, and whatever comes to mind I figure that's close enough .

Haha, you’re quite right Lisab, the beholder’s environment does have some effect on shaping the meaning of the dream. However, I believe there are other natural symbols [bugs/sun/animals/rivers/mountains…etc] which have an exact meaning… IMHO.

 

[DanP]

Do you guys know some good websites to look up dream interpretations? I was just searching through Google and couldn't find any website that looked reasonable.

Last night I had a nightmare about a tiger chasing me up flights of stairs and even up on ladders, apparently that means that I have to face difficult situations and overcome obstacles, which about fits my situation right now. It's the first time I've had that dream, so it made me interested in keeping track of my nightly adventures some more

confirmation bias.

 

[Proton Soup]

i don't think there's much to be gained from dream interpretation, absent some divine intervention a la joseph and the pharaoh.

just randomization of recent experiences, things that are on your mind.

 

[Danger]

I had a nightmare about a tiger chasing me up flights of stairs and even up on ladders, apparently that means that I have to face difficult situations and overcome obstacles

Or it might just mean that I finally finished building my tiger costume.

 

[AUK 1138]

you really can't interpret your dreams very well. there are "common" meanings for some things but they fail to take into account all the other things going on, so it's basically a moot point. basically, if i could let go of an apple and have it not drop and said it was because it experienced no gravity, would you believe me? it's one explanation and under some conditions may very well be the explanation, however i could come up with countless other ways to do the same thing, one being a table.

 

[AUK 1138]

I'll hear people tell me about their dreams they had a few days ago and they're giving me detail after detail. Makes me really doubt they actually dreamt that and instead just like to hear themselves talk.

have you considered the possibility that they are smarter than you? If i remember my dreams i tend to be able to recount most details for a good amount of time.

 

[jobyts]

"Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. "

http://www.psychwww.com/books/interp/chap06e.htm

It's not the ladder and stairs that are the representation of sexual act. Representation of the sexual act is the Tiger (woods).

 

[hamster143]

lol, where did you dig that up? That interpretation would never have crossed my mind.

That's the dream interpretation classic, "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud, 1899.

P.S. interestingly, that exact same line is quoted in the Wikipedia article about the book (I didn't put it there, I swear.)

 

[DanP]

That's the dream interpretation classic, "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud, 1899.

Better watch a porn movie. Better technology, same content

 

[leroyjenkens]

have you considered the possibility that they are smarter than you? If i remember my dreams i tend to be able to recount most details for a good amount of time.

I could just as easily say I'm smarter because my brain doesn't waste energy remembering pointless things like dreams.
Sounds deliberately offensive to go straight to "smarter than you".

 

[Loren Booda]

Carl Jung has respected works on dream interpretation.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I'm suspicious of dream interpretation. It may be that there is meaning to general themes like going to school or work naked, or being chased, or falling. However, something specific like a tiger could just be some free association related from the brand of cereal you had for breakfast.

 

[lisab]

I'm suspicious of dream interpretation. It may be that there is meaning to general themes like going to school or work naked, or being chased, or falling. However, something specific like a tiger could just be some free association related from the brand of cereal you had for breakfast.

Absolutely agree.

For example, when I think of 'tiger' I get a strong emotional response against cruelty, because for me: tiger = circus = people who force animals to perform to "entertain" people (something I detest).

Others won't have that association. Someone else might have an association related to Danger's tiger pajamas. It might actually be a pleasant emotional response .

So how can there be general guide for dream images?

 

[Loren Booda]

The best dream interpreter is the dreamer herself. Evolution of metaphor and meaning move me.

 

[lompocus]

I happen to think that it's utterly impossible to have even a broad template for applying really obscure meanings to specific things in a dream. Everyone associates one thing with another, and another, and it becomes a string of syllogisms that don't work for everyone.

What I really want to know is the chemical or biological reason behind dreaming. You need to sleep, but why dream?

 

[alt]

I think that dream interpretation benefits the bookseller more than anything.

I suppose there may be specific generic images of a religious nature for religious folk, but aside from that, I really can't see how a dream of a tiger can mean one thing only to all people.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

True story,

The other night I dreamt that I walked into my office and there were flies everywhere.

As soon as I awoke, I understood the meaning of my dream: I had forgotten to take out the trash.

 

[runner]

Throughout our waking period we are relegating all kinds of thoughts to our unconscious mind. These are feelings and moods that for one reason or another we do not wish to process at that time at the conscious level and instead suppress or store in the unconscious mind. So to use the analogy with the computer, the conscious mind is like the active processor, and the unconscious mind is the reservoir that stores vast amounts of data (thoughts and ideas in the mind). The conscious mind represents just the tip of the total mind.

When we sleep, some of these thoughts of concern to us, bubble up to the surface in disguised forms as dreams. We have about 4 or 5 dreams a night. We usually remember the last dream only if we wake up within a 10 minute period after having the dream; otherwise it's forgotten. When they do dream research, they can wake up the person precisely during the dream phase by observing their REM wave activity.

Some generalizations have been made about dream behavior that account for some of the interpretations, just as for other forms of waking behavior that are used in mental therapy for instance. I don't necessarily discount them.

 

[Evo]

The other night I had a dream that a bulldozer was next to my apartment and it started a landslide and destroyed my place.

I woke up, went to the bathroom, sprained my ankle, and was lying in bed until the sun came up. Then I heard a strange noise outside, so I ran out and there was this guy in a bulldozer dumping dirt into the severely eroded areas among the rocks holding up the hillside next to my apartment (the land has been sliding down). What a mess! The bulldozer dug big ruts in the grass and tore everything up.

I told Kurdt about this amazing coincidence and he said "pffttt".

 

[runner]

The other night I had a dream that a bulldozer was next to my apartment and it started a landslide and destroyed my place.

I woke up, went to the bathroom, sprained my ankle, and was lying in bed until the sun came up. Then I heard a strange noise outside, so I ran out and there was this guy in a bulldozer dumping dirt into the severely eroded areas among the rocks holding up the hillside next to my apartment (the land has been sliding down). What a mess! The bulldozer dug big ruts in the grass and tore everything up.

I told Kurdt about this amazing coincidence and he said "pffttt".

Be glad it wasn't a so-called "dream of prediction," and your house is still standing. Btw, I don't think there's any scientific basis yet for "dreams that predict."

It is quite a coincidence that a bulldozer appeared in your dream and also the next morning. Also that after your dream, you "wrecked" your ankle. Sometimes there are subtle clues that we gather from our environment that later on show up in dreams... like the erosion going on outside the apartment. And then there's the possibility that the dream is totally symbolic for some other issue that's lurking beneath the surface.

 

[Borek]

It is quite a coincidence that a bulldozer appeared in your dream and also the next morning.

Evo may have heard something about a bulldozer going to show in the place and don't remember it consciously.

Also that after your dream, you "wrecked" your ankle.

Nothing strange in it, after all, Evo is Evo

 

[collinsmark]

What I really want to know is the chemical or biological reason behind dreaming. You need to sleep, but why dream?

I often wonder the same thing. Speaking of which, not too long ago I had a dream that I was investigating that very subject. Weird, huh? Dreaming about dream studies.

In my dream I had discovered that, contrary to other theories, that dreams occur as a form of a distraction. In the process of sleeping, the brain processes and reorganizes memories. And in the physical/neurological sense, it involves various neurons. It's the process involving what things end up getting stored as long term memories and what things do not, and it involves changing chemistry of particular, related neurons in the process. (I'm in no way stating any of this as true fact: this was all simply part of my dream -- I haven't actually discovered any such thing in real-life.)

So, in the dream I had, I had discovered that when the brain is processing a particular memory, it produces a dream in order to distract the active part of the brain from accessing that particular memory while the associated neurons are being processed/manipulated. While others had theorized that while dreaming, the mind thinks about the very things which are being stored in memory, I had discovered that dreams are a mechanism to temporarily inhibit the mind from thinking about the very things which are being stored in memory. [Edit: although dreams sometimes take on an overall theme regarding what is being stored in memory, the memory itself is seldom accessed directly due to the abundance of distractions.]

In my dream, I was going to write a paper about it, or speak at a conference about it (or something like that), but then I woke up.

Of course, it was all just a dream. So I take the whole thing with a grain of salt. I have no idea why people dream.

 

[AUK 1138]

I could just as easily say I'm smarter because my brain doesn't waste energy remembering pointless things like dreams.
Sounds deliberately offensive to go straight to "smarter than you".

well, i was being deliberately offensive. so, kudos.

 

[disregardthat]

I personally consider dreams to be the "random noise" of the subconscious mind forced into structured situations.

The other night I had a dream that a bulldozer was next to my apartment and it started a landslide and destroyed my place.

I woke up, went to the bathroom, sprained my ankle, and was lying in bed until the sun came up. Then I heard a strange noise outside, so I ran out and there was this guy in a bulldozer dumping dirt into the severely eroded areas among the rocks holding up the hillside next to my apartment (the land has been sliding down). What a mess! The bulldozer dug big ruts in the grass and tore everything up.

I told Kurdt about this amazing coincidence and he said "pffttt".

Is it not common that we react to noises and other sensations while we sleep and include the implied cause of them in the dream? For example, if someone are rattling with dishes while you are asleep this may cause you to find yourself in a gun-fight in your dream, or some other crazy thing. It might very well have been the bulldozer you heard, and by recognizing the sound it makes you included it in your dream. Not much of a coincidence other than that you recognized the correct cause of the noise.

 

[runner]

From: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/understanding_sleep.htm#dreaming

REM sleep stimulates the brain regions used in learning. This may be important for normal brain development during infancy, which would explain why infants spend much more time in REM sleep than adults (see Sleep: A Dynamic Activity ). Like deep sleep, REM sleep is associated with increased production of proteins. One study found that REM sleep affects learning of certain mental skills. People taught a skill and then deprived of non-REM sleep could recall what they had learned after sleeping, while people deprived of REM sleep could not.

Some scientists believe dreams are the cortex's attempt to find meaning in the random signals that it receives during REM sleep. The cortex is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes information from the environment during consciousness. It may be that, given random signals from the pons during REM sleep, the cortex tries to interpret these signals as well, creating a "story" out of fragmented brain activity.

 

[Evo]

I personally consider dreams to be the "random noise" of the subconscious mind forced into structured situations.



Is it not common that we react to noises and other sensations while we sleep and include the implied cause of them in the dream? For example, if someone are rattling with dishes while you are asleep this may cause you to find yourself in a gun-fight in your dream, or some other crazy thing. It might very well have been the bulldozer you heard, and by recognizing the sound it makes you included it in your dream. Not much of a coincidence other than that you recognized the correct cause of the noise.

if you read my post you will see that that the dream was hours earlier before the sun came up. So, no, I didn't hear anything in my sleep.

 

[disregardthat]

if you read my post you will see that that the dream was hours earlier before the sun came up. So, no, I didn't hear anything in my sleep.

That's quite overly dismissive, as far as I could know from your post the bulldozer could have been there while you slept as well; stationary before you noticed again. And you didn't mention hours at all.

 

[Evo]

That's quite overly dismissive, as far as I could know from your post the bulldozer could have been there while you slept as well; stationary before you noticed again. And you never mentioned hours.

Fair enough.

I woke up long before the sun came up. There was no bulldozer there at 3am when I let the dog out (and before I went back to sleep and had the dream). I woke up after the dream around 5am and was still awake when the bulldozer showed up at 8:30am.

 

[Evo]

It is quite a coincidence that a bulldozer appeared in your dream and also the next morning. Also that after your dream, you "wrecked" your ankle. Sometimes there are subtle clues that we gather from our environment that later on show up in dreams... like the erosion going on outside the apartment. And then there's the possibility that the dream is totally symbolic for some other issue that's lurking beneath the surface.

I think the dream is a funny coincidence, nothing more. But it is an example of how a coincidence can appear to have a meaningful connection.

If we're going to get into dream interpretation. I would say that the dream was about the upheaval in my life recently and that I have been "bulldozed", no choice in the matter and the *destruction* to home and life.

The fact that a bulldozer actually showed up later that morning and destroyed the yard was too funny too pass up relating.

 

[brainstorm]

"Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. "

http://www.psychwww.com/books/interp/chap06e.htm

This seems like such a far-sought interpretation to me, and then strangely it caused me to remember a famous quote from George Bataille's book, The Accursed Share:

"the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space"

I've never really understood this quote but maybe it is related to the same subconscious logic as a dream about being chased up ladders and stairs by a tiger actually being about sex.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I dreamt that Evo went through an entire year without injury. I am a firm believer in the predictive power of dreams.

 

[Evo]

I dreamt that Evo went through an entire year without injury. I am a firm believer in the predictive power of dreams.

 

[runner]

This seems like such a far-sought interpretation to me, and then strangely it caused me to remember a famous quote from George Bataille's book, The Accursed Share:

"the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space"

I've never really understood this quote but maybe it is related to the same subconscious logic as a dream about being chased up ladders and stairs by a tiger actually being about sex.

I've never read The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, and I'm not familiar with Bataille (only through internet searches), but it seems like these authors are spot on with the meaning of the phrase, in the context of his theories:

the tiger represents the power of consumption of life

the sex act... read on

See pg. 214 http://books.google.com/books?id=k0... in time what the tiger is in space"&f=false"

 

[zomgwtf]

I don't know about that.. some dreams are just too strange. There seem to be some dreams that occur in populations that are very symbolic and they represent some deep psychology, like dreams where you lose your teeth. I've never studied the subject, so I'm no expert.

I haven't read the entire thread but dream interpretation is bogus. I wrote a paper specifically on the psychology of dreaming a few years ago and that was my conclusion .

I think dreams are pretty important function for our brains but rather not get into that in this thread. I wouldn't bother wasting time on trying to figure out what secret symbols in your dreams represent. Especially considering you don't remember the VAST majority of your dreams.

 

[brainstorm]

I've never read The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, and I'm not familiar with Bataille (only through internet searches), but it seems like these authors are spot on with the meaning of the phrase, in the context of his theories:

the tiger represents the power of consumption of life

the sex act... read on

I read the Bataille quote from this link but it didn't contain any useful interpretation, as far as I could tell. If the tiger represents "the power of consumption of life," then the OP's dream of being chased up ladders and stairs by a tiger may mean that s/he is fleeing from the power to consume life. There may also be relevance to the fact that she is ascending, since attainment of higher altitude must have to do with exerting energy to attain a position where "it's all downhill from there." So, s/he may be experiencing his/her sexual desire as immanent yet inimical, as a consumptive force that has the power to consume all that s/he has achieved working her/his way up in their life. Sorry for the awkward "her/his" etc. I can't remember if the OP expressed her/his gender. I have the sense it is a she, though, because the whole issue of trading in your career to have a marriage/kids is still more a female than a male issue, unfortunately.

 

[alt]

I think the dream is a funny coincidence, nothing more. But it is an example of how a coincidence can appear to have a meaningful connection.

If we're going to get into dream interpretation. I would say that the dream was about the upheaval in my life recently and that I have been "bulldozed", no choice in the matter and the *destruction* to home and life.

The fact that a bulldozer actually showed up later that morning and destroyed the yard was too funny too pass up relating.

and earlier, you said;

I woke up long before the sun came up. There was no bulldozer there at 3am when I let the dog out (and before I went back to sleep and had the dream). I woke up after the dream around 5am and was still awake when the bulldozer showed up at 8:30am.

You have to ask yourself first and foremost, were there any clues, any hint of suggestion that would have led you to contemplate a bulldozer, before you went to bed.

If you can eliminate the possibility of clues or suggestions, then you would have to say that the dream of the bulldozer, followed by an actualisation of same, is in fact a very interesting event, and not easily explained. Just because the rest of the dream content does not quite match the reality, does not obviate the fact that the bulldozer element is, well, a direct hit. I have similar dreams often - the most recent;

Last night at about 4 AM, my 11 year old son came into our bedroom. He was hovering over my wife and I, eventually woke us up, and told us he was having a nightmare or something.

As soon as that happened, I had a clear and distinc recollection that about an hour or two before that, I was dreaming that he came into our bedroom and was hovering over us, exactly as he had done. The dream however, contained no content in relation to him saying anything to us.

How do I reconcile this ? I subject it to much critisism, taking into account the possibility of coincidence, prefiguring, etc.

Facts;

- Yes, kids do this sometimes, but the last time it happened was years ago, when he was maybe 6 or so.
- There is no other unusual or out of the ordinary occurance that I can recall that occurred to him earlier, that would have led to me prefiguring that he would have taken this action.
- Even IF something unusual HAD happened, it is still a stretch to say that I then prefigured he would wake in the middle of the night, walk into our bedroom and hover over us for a while.
- In fact, new and unusual things happen to kids often.
- But as stated above, this is the first time he's done this in many years.
- Therefore, the coincidence level here is miniscule.

I think that there's a lot more to this sort of thing than we think. Precognition is not out of the question.

 

[runner]

Has anyone here ever been confronted with a technical issue at work that you were struggling with, and then in a dream, the solution to the problem appeared? I have, and the solution in the dream was very clear and logical. According to research, the answer I received in my dream was the creation of my right brain hemisphere to a left hemisphere problem I was dealing with during my waking hours.

Though these parts of the brain are all active during REM sleep, it is important to know that the two hemispheres of the brain work unilaterally in dreaming. The right hemisphere of the brain actually creates and displays the dream, shown by an increase in blood flow and electrophysiological stimulation in that hemisphere during REM. The right hemisphere uses a form of visual-spatial and emotional language, which creates the themes and images of the dream through remembered emotions. These sorts of memories, such as those used as the material for dreaming, and those that later will become the remembered dream are called lateralized memories, for they are only remembered by one hemisphere of the brain, the right(1).

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1837

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Mom died in May. She was in my dream last night. I was hurrying along a long entrance road toward a large building. On the way some people were getting out of a van and walking into a smaller building on the same campus. One of these was Mom, in good health. We greeted each other and made a promise to meet again later that day. But as ...I went on my way, I knew that I was not going to be able to make that second meeting.

 

[runner]

Mom died in May. She was in my dream last night. I was hurrying along a long entrance road toward a large building. On the way some people were getting out of a van and walking into a smaller building on the same campus. One of these was Mom, in good health. We greeted each other and made a promise to meet again later that day. But as ...I went on my way, I knew that I was not going to be able to make that second meeting.

JS, do you think maybe it's about the realization that you will no longer see her and it's a way of coming to terms with your loss? I had a similar dream a long time ago, also after a loss.

 

[brainstorm]

Mom died in May. She was in my dream last night. I was hurrying along a long entrance road toward a large building. On the way some people were getting out of a van and walking into a smaller building on the same campus. One of these was Mom, in good health. We greeted each other and made a promise to meet again later that day. But as ...I went on my way, I knew that I was not going to be able to make that second meeting.

I have talked with people lamenting the loss of a friend or loved one and suggested that having that person inside you in the form of memories, dreams, etc. is a way of keeping them in your life. This person strongly insisted that this was nonsense and then went on and on about how terrible it was that they lost their life and how much she missed him etc. I don't understand the point of torturing yourself with the idea of loss when you can take comfort in knowing that subjective experiences like memories and dreams will always keep a part of that person with you. Why would anyone not treasure memories and dreams as opportunities to experience people that you otherwise wouldn't get the chance, either because of death or some other reason? An unrelated example would be meeting someone in a dream that you couldn't meet in person, like a celebrity. I saw a video on youtube where it recommended lucid dreaming as a way to kiss George Clooney. For someone who would really like to kiss George Clooney, isn't this an ideal solution? Why do people feel shame for seeking gratification through dreams? Why does materialism prescribe that people are supposed to let go of everything that doesn't exist physically and only seek gratification in what is available to them materially and not in what's not?

 

[Char. Limit]

I personally consider dreams to be the "random noise" of the subconscious mind forced into structured situations.



Is it not common that we react to noises and other sensations while we sleep and include the implied cause of them in the dream? For example, if someone are rattling with dishes while you are asleep this may cause you to find yourself in a gun-fight in your dream, or some other crazy thing. It might very well have been the bulldozer you heard, and by recognizing the sound it makes you included it in your dream. Not much of a coincidence other than that you recognized the correct cause of the noise.

I know this to be true. The other night, I dreamed I was playing Mario on an SNES and I dreamed that it froze up and kept emitting this strange beeping sound. I woke up to the same sound - the buzzer on my brand new alarm clock. First time I had heard it.