The Wonder Of Dreams

The Wonder Of Dreams; An Original Approach To Interpreting Them

Dan Gollub

I became interested in my dreams after a woman I knew seemed to speak to me in the dream as if we were having an actual conversation. Was that dream telepathic? I didn’t know, yet how extraordinary the dream seemed regardless. Subsequent dreams didn’t include any potential examples of telepathy, but each was intriguing in its own way. What did my dreams mean? How could I understand the wonderful messages they surely contained?

I read Freud’s book on dream interpretation. Would that help me figure out my dreams? It didn’t. They were still mysterious. I read other literature about dreams. Nothing helped. I’d have to find my own way to analyze them. After six months of seemingly unproductive efforts I had an idea. Dreams might follow an emotional pattern.

After another six months I’d concluded this: dreams begin with what the inner self loves, continue in the early-middle section with what is desired, proceed in the late-middle section with what is undesirable, and end with what is hated.

Now some of what I’d read in Freud’s book made sense. Dreams do contain wish fulfillment—in their first half. The second half of dreams instead shows what dreams don’t want to happen. Dreams do indeed contain symbols—and the meaning of those symbols can be clarified by identifying which section of the dream they appear in. Does a symbol appear in the dream’s very beginning? It’s a symbol for something the dreamer loves.

I hoped so much that other people’s dreams would follow that same emotional pattern. I began asking others about their dreams. It was harder to identify that pattern in what they told me—I lacked the intimate knowledge I possessed about the topics and depictions in my own dreams—but yes, it seemed that the love-desire-undesirable-hatred pattern was in their dreams as well.

I can’t fully describe the excitement I’ve felt. If anything can redeem a life that’s gone wrong at times, this can… I’ve made a discovery that’s eluded others for the thousands of years of recorded history… Everyone will be able to benefit from this discovery. They’ll learn what their inner emotions truly are. They’ll find that the messages in their dreams warrant all of the interest and wonder people have felt about their dreams down through the ages…

The basic technique in analyzing your dreams is simple. If you remember a dream from start to finish, divide it into four parts: the beginning; the early-middle; the late-middle; and the ending. Look at the content in each part with the awareness of the emotional significance it theoretically possesses. Does the beginning truly seem to have connotations of love for you? Is the early-middle what you desire? Is late-middle what’s undesirable? Is the ending what you hate?

But although that technique is simple, the analysis often won’t be. Dreams can contain complications. In addition to symbols, dreams can include unusual uses of speech or language. The sentiments dreams depict can seem weirdly out of touch with true reality.

More efforts on my part followed. I was able to find the necessary guidelines for understanding the dream complications I observed.

The next step was to publish my dream interpretation approach. I wrote an article hypothesizing the existence of the love-desire-undesirable-hatred pattern in dreams. I began contacting editors of psychology journals. The odds were probably against me—I had no status in society and the article I’d written didn’t contain any statistics which would “prove” the validity of the dream pattern—but finally I succeeded. I had to pay page costs for the article, but so what? It was a sacrifice in an utterly good cause. After the article was accepted for publication I waited hopefully and also nervously. Would someone else publish an article about the dream pattern before my article appeared? Would I be a second fiddle to another person’s greatness?

No one published such an article. My article appeared, after months of time progressing too slowly. But no one paid any attention to it. It wasn’t cited in other people’s articles or books about dreams. I wrote other articles about my dream interpretation approach and managed to get them published. No one has cited any of those articles either.

The world is still in ignorance about my dream interpretation approach. But that will change. People are capable of recognizing the truth, even if it’s not officially labeled as such by the highest-ranking members of society.

A few illustrations of dream analysis according to my dream pattern theory and my dream complication guidelines follow.

A man dreamed this: “I went horseback riding. The horse took me through beautiful scenery. When it was time to go back I chose a different way, became lost, and came to some barbed wire which blocked the path. The horse became restless and tried to throw me.”

The man loves horseback riding. He desires riding through beautiful scenery. It would be undesirable to become lost and come to some barbed wire which blocks the path. He would hate it if the horse tried to throw him.

A woman reported that as a child she had dreamed this in the last half of a dream: “I was falling and falling. I was terrified. And I wanted to scream but was unable to do so.” That dream content appeared in the last half of her dream, so undesirable and hatred messages were being conveyed. It would be undesirable to be terrified about a situation such as falling. Regarding the hatred message, it might appear that the wish to scream was related to falling. The dreamer had a different explanation, though. “As a child,” she said, “I wasn’t supposed to express my feelings. It wasn’t until I was 16 or so that I began speaking out.” So the wish to scream evidently was a consequence of being forced to suppress her feelings, and she hated being unable to express herself freely.

For whatever reason, most displays of sentiment in a dream are opposite to emotional reality.

A woman who was significantly overweight dreamed this in the last half of a dream: “I recited, ‘I like peanut butter and jelly. I like peanut butter and jam. I like peanut butter and mustard. And I like myself just as I am.’ And then I laughed heartily.”

Her words in the undesirable section depicted her conscious capability about her undesirable eating habits and a complacency about being overweight. Her laughter in the dream ending was opposite to the inner pain she felt about eating too much and being overweight. She inwardly would hate that inappropriate merriment.

Here is another dream which superficially seems to have a happy ending. A woman dreamed: “I am in an empty old hotel. I have inherited it from someone famous—maybe Buffalo Bill. I’m standing in the bare room, oak floors, large windows, sunshine, warm breezes. I am in a beautiful white floor-length summer gown. I am in the body of an old school chum I thought was attractive. Enter a man named Henry—another school chum, but someone I was less fond of, except in the dream he’s tall, sensual, appealing. He takes me in his arms and tells me Black Bart has discovered he can lay claim to the hotel if I am not married. I am upset at the idea of losing the hotel. So Henry asks me to marry him, and we go to the justice of the peace and all ends well.” The dream ending shows the dreamer marrying, for financial reasons, a man she hasn’t particularly liked, and it seems on the surface to predict they would live happily ever after. That plot is in the hatred section, though, and the true message is that she would hate such a marriage. If she were in one, that inner sentiment undoubtedly would cause the marriage to turn out badly.

A sentiment in a dream will only be genuine if the dream figure displaying the sentiment simultaneously speaks. As one illustration of this, a woman dreamed in a dream ending: “I turned to a bully who had tormented me all through grade school, began crying, and said, ‘They told me to be afraid of you and I believed them.” The words, the accompanying crying, and the location of that content in the hatred section reveal she hated and regretted the unnecessary fear she’d felt toward the adversary, who likely would have been responsive to affection or friendliness.

This was the first half of a woman’s dream: “Grandmother and I were walking down a street that turned out to be a dead end. Just as we got to the end, we discovered it. A nice man was there, and we asked permission to cross by the little pond in his yard and go through to the next street. He said we could and helped us across. I commented on how clear and clean the pond was. He was pleased. Then he showed us his baby seal. I asked if I could pet it. ‘Of course,’ he said, and I began petting it and playing with it. Then his wife began talking with me. It wasn’t clear what she was saying but she continued to talk with me. The seal became a baby.” The man’s words and his related behavior shows the dreamer’s wish that a property owner would be permissive and kindly while she and her grandmother were going for a walk. That’s simple enough, but the wife’s verbal behavior might appear confusing. What is the purpose of dream speech which doesn’t include specific words? That plot was in the desire section, however, and the accompanying message is that the dreamer would desire being spoken to in a friendly manner, and it might not matter what the conversation was about. The desire section in that dream also reveals that the dreamer has a wish to play with a cute, affectionate animal such as a seal. But then the seal changes into a human baby. The dreamer’s wish to interact with a pet animal evidently is a sublimation of a stronger wish to respond maternally to a human baby.

Reader, your shortest, simplest dreams might clearly seem to follow the love-desire-undesirable-hatred pattern. The understanding of those dreams—and of the longer, more complicated ones—can do you a world of good. You can have that dream feedback about your inner emotions available to you every night. And it can all begin tonight.