The Meaning of Dreams: Their Symbolism and Their Sexual Implications

Each time someone dreams, their subconscious is sending messages to their conscious mind. When understood, these messages offer a remarkable insight into the dreamer's personality, their half-buried fears and hidden impulses. Unfortunately, since they come disguised in symbols not easily recognizable, dream messages are most often lost. This book, written by a professor of psychology after years of intensive case study, offers a lucid explanation of the meanings behind dream symbols. It is a book every adult in search of self-understanding should read, for it shows how the layman can decode their own dreams. And within our dreams lie the key to our hidden thoughts. From the book: During sleep the mind expresses itself in pictures. A dream is defined, therefore, as a sequence of pictures or images which embody the ideas or conceptions of the dreamer. The goal of dream interpretation is to discover the meaning of a dream by translating images into ideas. When this task is accomplished the mind is exposed to public view and becomes an object of scientific study. In the last analysis dreams interest us only because they enable us to extend our knowledge of humankind. They tell us things about humans that would be difficult to learn by any other means except by the specialized methods used in the treatment of disturbed people. Since these methods are not convenient to use in the study of a large cross-section of "normal" people, it devolves upon dreams to help us solve the riddle of the human being. During sleep, it is not uncommon for impulses that are kept in check during waking life to express themselves in dreams. Noting this fact, Freud came to the conclusion that the satisfaction of impulses or as he called it the fulfillment of wishes was the main reason for dreaming. It can hardly be denied that many dreams are motivated by sex and aggression, and this is the primary focus of The Meaning of Dreams.