"Nightmare" means a bad or frightening dream. The word nightmare is made up of the word night and an old English word for a kind of monster. The word was first used for an imaginary creature that people once thought sat on a person while s/he was asleep and made him feel that s/he could not breathe.
"Dream" means a series of thoughts or feelings that a person has while asleep. The word dream probably comes from an old German word that means "to fool or trick." Often dreams are so real that they fool us and make us think that something that was only a dream really did happen.Sigmund Freud, a well-known psychoanalytic psychotherapist, referred to dreams as "the royal road to the unconscious". Since Freud's seminal work, Die Traumdeutung ( The Interpretation of Dreams ), was published in 1900, interest in dream psychology has grown and many studies have been conducted till today.
"Unconcious" means 'not conscious', 'not knowing', and 'not done on purpose'...........Well, have you ever thought about the meanings of your dreams ? Dreams can become one of your best psychotherapists when you treat them so. Dreams indeed tell you many things which you are not yet aware of yourself. So why don't we take our time and think about the dreams everytime we saw them ?
I believe, you are (one of ) the only person who knows the exact meaning of your own dream, therefore you are the one who should analyze it. You will receive new information, find the real (or just another) aspect of yourself, in any case, it will definitely be worthwhile to take some time to think about yourself thanks to those dreams.......
There exists, however,a problem when you analyze your dreams on your own. Those who are pesimistic tend to interpret them, pesimistically..... If you think you have that kind of personality, try as much as you can to be optimistic. Every one of us needs BOTH "pesimistic" and "optimistic" aspects to become a well-balanced person.
For example, you saw a dream like 'you were chased by someone with a gun, you were running away horrifyingly, but finally you were attacked and killed.......' Then you wake up. Wow, some of you might realize yourself being under the totally depressed feeling. On the contrary, the rest will see this dream interpretting that "Good, I was not at least a killer." Or some even understand that the past of yourself passed away, now I should be reborn to start a new life.........
This is why we need to analyze the dreams with a help of a "specialist" who would see through us from different viewpoints. It isn't, however, impossible to analyze your dream by yourself, is it ? What do you think ?
I believe that it will be beneficial to spend even only a few minutes of your 24 hours to think about yourself and your environment through analyzing your dreams.
What else do you suggest that we could do?
Please bring your own ideas to the Forum of the Cross-cultural Counseling House!
You can learn how Aneres did her own Dream Analysis in "The World of Aneres"
