My father is a psychologist and he assists some of his clients with dream interpretation. I'll relay to you what he relayed to me about it. He says it can be a varying thing, usually specific to a particular person. Any book that offers direct translation of a given thing always symbolizing something is baloney. If someone sees a cat in their dream, to a cat lover it would be a good association, if someone dislikes cats it would be a bad association. Everything you see in your dreams is specific to you. When helping people interpret their dreams, you simply lead them to their own conclusions. Most of his clients are easy to assist with this, because they discuss a lot of their lives very openly with him, so it’s easy to see the parallels. For instance one client was in a race car in a race but didn't have control over the speed and there were other race cars in hot competition. After going back and forth with the guy for a bit it became clear that the racecar represented how his life was going too fast for him, juggling too many things at once, everything always competing for his time, but he was so set in his ways that he didn't know how to slow down. It’s specific to you, because it IS you. It is your thoughts buried in your subconscious that for some reason or another feels that you need to experience. Some dreams that you don't remember still effect your mood when you wake up, because you experienced it and it altered your state of mind. This is what often accounts for "waking up on the right/wrong side of the bed", when that happens you probably had a good or bad dream close to when you woke up. Method: A simple method that’s good to pinpoint what represents what for yourself is to say "part of me" after every sentence describing your dream. For example: The racecar (part of me) was speeding out of control on the track (part of me). The race car being the part of his life that was moving fast and the track was his out of control life. Usually whatever part of your life first comes to mind when you read it like that is what the different things and situations in your dreams mean. Then you piece these things together. There is no 100% accurate way to read dreams, but the key is to think about how it applies to you. Ask yourself: Is there something lurking in my mind that I don't want to admit to myself that’s expressing its self here? How is this dream something I might need to see right now?
dreams are many different things. psychologists are like people with a hammer. nails really do exist, but not everything is one. =^^= .../\...
