 Let's turn to a practical issue and that is the process of recalling dreams By now you should all agree that we all dream every night Some of you may find that you can't recall your dreams or have an idea about last night's dreams when you wake up But it seems to slip away from consciousness within a few minutes of waking up So what can we do to enable us to recall our dreams? The first idea I have about this is that you should always keep a dream diary next to your bed Also, make sure you have a pen or a pencil to write with now Use the diary and the pen for nothing else other than dream writing So don't use it to make notes on a project or to write up a grocery list See the diary and the pen as being very unique They are there only for dreams Every time you look at the pen and the diary you remind yourself that they are there to record your dreams The sight of these objects acts as a prompt to you each night as you go to sleep Those of you who have a partner in bed may realize that they don't really enjoy you switching on the bedside light At 2 a.m. In the morning so buy yourself a small flashlight or even better still a simple headlamp You should be able to buy a small headlamp from an outdoor or camping supply shop for about $20 So when you do wake up and want to record a dream you flick on your headlamp and you don't disturb your partner The next thing to be aware of is that you need to remind the ego That it is going to be recording a dream when you wake up and that this recall is going to be just the facts So before you shut your eyes in bed tonight say to yourself I am going to dream tonight when I wake up from the dream whether it be during the night or in the morning I will recall my dream and be able to write it down It is almost as though you have to give the ego a little reminder that this is what is going to happen from now on When you do awake from a dream put on your headlamp and begin writing just record the dream Don't edit it Use whatever words you recall as there is no need to tidy up your grammar or your syntax. I Do this each and every day and later on in the day. I type up my dreams on my laptop So I have a good record of them Very very important though when you do write the dream up or type it up Don't edit anything if you dream of some strange word write the word down and don't use your spell checker on your computer to correct the spelling Very often we have strange words in dreams some being combinations of words often that don't make sense to us initially When you get round to interpreting these words, you'll see that the psyche is creating new words with a purpose Also, if there are any numbers in the dream try to write these down exactly as well So if you dream of buying a glass of wine for $30 and 45 cents Write this amount down as you will soon find that the number is tied into something quite specific Some of my patients keep a tape recorder next to their bed and simply press record and speak out their dreams They then transcribe these recordings later on the next day. I Do have some people who use their laptops to record their dreams This takes a little more skill and there is always a possibility that something doesn't quite work and Trying to sort out a computer or a computer program at 2 a.m. Can be quite frustrating When I was in Zurich doing my analytical training, I used my laptop for a short while Including one night when I typed out a very lengthy very important dream And I found out the next morning that the laptop wasn't even switched on at the time I had used it so I went back to my trusty dream diary and special pen Another very important issue is that you must provide the context or the conscious attitude that the dream is responding to Remember that the unconscious is giving a commentary in the form of a dream to respond to a conscious attitude Well, what exactly is a conscious attitude? The simplest way to write this is to report what was going on for you for the past two days prior to the dream What were you worried about? What decision did you have to make? Who were you thinking of or who did you have dinner with or a phone call or a chat session with? Finally always write the date of the dream. I Write the date of the night that I went to sleep So if today is the 15th of March and tonight I have a dream even if it appeared in the early hours of tomorrow morning I write down the date. I went to sleep in Something else to pay attention to is that sleep is easily disrupted So there are a number of important behaviors. You need to manage before you go to sleep We can refer to these as sleep hygiene practices The first is that you should really try to avoid any stimulants during the afternoon. I Feel that if you have any caffeinated drinks after two in the afternoon, you often will have disturbed sleep The second thing is to avoid strenuous exercise for at least two hours before you go to sleep and In the same vein try not to have a heavy meal just before you go to sleep either The third thing is to be very careful about what you watch on TV or read just before you go to sleep Reading a horror story or Watching CSI in Miami just before you go to sleep may affect your ability to get to sleep and to stay asleep throughout the night So there are some practical ideas about how to recall your dreams Let's turn now to the types of dreams we can have Not all dreams are equal Most of our dreams are compensatory dreams meaning that the unconscious compensates for the conscious attitude with a dream Some of these dreams may be Complementary this means that the dream complements the conscious attitude Other types of dreams are traumatic childhood recurrent and prospective a Traumatic dream is the psyche's attempt to rework a traumatic event that you may have experienced Those of you that have had some trauma in your lives such as a car accident or an assault Will often dream of the incident Sometimes the dream is an exact recall of the incident But at other times it is an attempt to rework the incident These dreams can feel like movies you rent on DVD that have alternate endings that you can watch The psyche is just trying to make sense of something intense and the unconscious is working on the event while you sleep Bear in mind that there is never a time that the psyche at some level is not working Even while you're asleep So for those of you that are having to deal with trauma remember that the psyche is working away at the trauma Even when you're unconscious This can of course be quite disruptive for you especially when you feel that you are getting a grip on the trauma So treat these dreams as the psyche's attempt to heal Pay attention to the details of the dreams as the psyche is trying to give you direct information on the Unfinished working through of the trauma Another type of dream is the childhood dream Most of us can recall a powerful dream that we had as a child Often one that repeats itself I think that Freud made a superb observation and one that Jung himself seemed to agree with That some childhood dreams are about wishfulfillments The child has a powerful desire for something say an object or an experience and the psyche gives it to the child at night in the form of a dream Children too have other kinds of dreams that I'm discussing here So don't regard all your kids dreams as simple wishfulfillments The next type of dream is the recurrent dream This is often a dream that has the same actions or outcomes or the same themes to it We tend to get these dreams throughout our life What the psyche is doing in these dreams is drawing your attention to something very important that needs to be worked through a Good example of a recurrent dream And I'm sure many of you have experienced this type is a dream that repeats itself Exactly in the same way the very next night My sense of these dreams is that the psyche gave us a comment the first night But we didn't attend to it in the appropriate way In other words, we didn't interpret it and make a shift in our conscious attitude So the psyche simply said to the ego well my friend I sent you this movie to help you see what you need to change in your approach to life But you deliberately ignored it. So I'm going to make you watch it all Over again, so that maybe this time you'll get it Imagine if you went to a movie theater Watch the movie, but the very next night you went to the same movie theater and watch the same movie One assumes that by the end of the second viewing you've got the message The last type of dream. I want to deal with today is the prospective dream Now this is a form of a dream that is often misunderstood In essence the prospective dream is giving information or commentary about a future conscious attitude and Sometimes even a future event What the prospective dream is not is a fortune telling dream Beware literal understandings of dreams The prospective dream is a way that the psyche is able to make sense of the direction you're heading in With the way you are living your life and Gives you a commentary on where you'll end up if you don't begin to correct that conscious attitude What about nasty dreams? Wait, maybe I've skipped something here. What about those dreams? Where I do some very very bad things like hurting other people or killing pets or Sleeping with my wife's best friend. What about those kind of dreams? Well, these are not a separate category of dreams at all. Yes, but John you say What if someone found out that I was dreaming of killing someone else? Doesn't it mean that there's a real risk of me actually doing this Well, not really not not at all You also more than likely have dreams in which you fly without the aid of an aeroplane Does this mean you should report the nearest NASA office and say that you flew without any assistance? And maybe you can get the next shuttle off the ground to the International Space Station for free Or you may have dreams of a dragon Does this mean that they actually exist or you dreamt you were able to swim with blue whales To the depth of a thousand feet and not have to breathe or get crushed by the awful pressure Does this mean that you're likely to succeed in this form of swimming? The answer to all of these questions is clearly not We dream of the most incredible things We do things in dreams that we could never do in conscious life or commit atrocious acts that we would never contemplate doing in our everyday life These are just the normal healthy products of the unconscious The message the unconscious tries to convey to you comes in the form of some amazing scenes Imagine if we dreamt each night of a typed list of things we had to deal with and that was all the dream was about That would be so boring no dragons no flying no incredible sex The dream assembles its meaning in a wonderful colorful intense series of symbols We are not responsible for the nature of our dreams But we are responsible for listening to them and interpreting them and making changes to our conscious attitude So if you dream of doing something really nasty or cruel We know that the unconscious really grabs your attention and there is a stronger likelihood of you Interpreting the dream then if you read a typed list of things that you should do the next day in your conscious life So let's just summarize what we have covered in these two episodes on dream interpretation I Said in the previous episode that there are three very important ideas That one has to hold on to as you approach a dream interpretation The first thing is that the interpretation has to fit the dreamer So even if you feel competent in your dream interpretation skill and you are helping somebody else interpret their own dream if the interpretation that you offer to the dreamer is Not agreed upon or doesn't fit the dreamer then consider this interpretation wrong Because at the end of the day if the dreamer doesn't agree with the interpretation They're not going to make the necessary conscious attitude changes that the dream is requesting Second issue was the fact that I really strongly recommend against thrashing a dream and by thrashing a dream I mean over interpreting the dream so interpreting it far too in greater detail and Interpreting it to the extent that you end up with the dream feeling quite lifeless There's a very very common mistake. We all make when we start dream interpretation work The third thing I said that would be useful in your approach to dream interpretation was that the dream offers a comment Not a prescription So be wary of taking a literal approach to the dream if for example You dream of buying a new car. It doesn't mean that tomorrow morning You go down to the local car dealership and buy a new car in addition to the one you already have we then looked at the issue of sleep and We remember that we spend about a third of our life asleep and there are two major Physiological states in sleep one being non-rem and the other being rem Both of which have dreams occurring in them But it is the rem dream that is the one we tend to recall more easily Primarily because it's more intense We also know that while we're in either of these two stages of sleep There are very different physiological changes that we experience Non-rem is basically restorative sleep where the body heals and repairs itself and Rem is very active sleep in which we have these intense dreams in rem We have a form of skeletal muscle paralysis So we don't thrash around and hurt ourselves or someone else in our bed We also looked at some of the reasons why we spend so much time interpreting our dreams and The core 12 reasons that I gave in the previous podcast are that dreams provide the most direct access to unconscious material they Compensate and compliment our conscious attitudes They tell the situation of the psyche as it is right now Dreams are not distorted by eager defenses. Hence they provide very accurate comments They provide access to subjective inner experiences and They also provide pure symbolic or a magic representations of the archetypes Dreams can also provide very specific information to the analyst and can be really useful in diagnosing Aspects of neurotic conditions that we all suffer at some stage of our life Finally dreams facilitate healing and are essential to the individuation process