We know that man cannot live without dreaming, and being deprived of dreams can cause psychological imbalance and difficulty in coming to terms with reality. We also know that dreaming takes place in colour, even though it may not be remembered in colour after the dreamer has woken up : this is probably because dreams are so fleeting that only their most important features are remembered, and this may not include colours.

         Why is it so important for us to dream, given that the actual meaning of the dream is often impossible to determine? Psychology has helped to answer this question : dreaming is a kind of safety valve, because it allows us to live out our desires, including those which are completely secret, as well as our hopes, our fears and our frustrations.

           When we dream, we are able to free ourselves from many of the tensions that build up in our everyday lives. We can camouflage aspects of ourselves or our lives which we have trouble coming to terms with, in the form of images which are less disturbing to us than reality itself is.

            Dreams express problems, anxieties and states of mind; they recreate in symbolic form experiences we have had which have struck a particular chord in our subconscious. An event or a word whose meaning we did not appreciate at the time can be shown to us in a different form in our dreams, giving us a better understanding of its significance.

             A dream is a representation of our inner world. In it every person, every image is a sign, a word in a language which we do not fully understand, but which is capable of being understood. THis dream language can consist both of personal symbols, created by the person dreaming, or universal symbols, relating to the outside, material world and common to everyone because they exist in everyone.

             Inside us, there is a part of our personality which we barely understand and which we give little space to express itself. At night, the Ego, the rational part of our minds, takes a back seat and our unconscious can reveal itself to us and communicate with us.