Pillow talk: Dreams might be telling you more than you think

Kirk Baird

Wednesday, June 14, 2000 | 10:08 a.m.

For Christine Reynolds, the dream was always the same and always frightening.

Shortly after falling asleep she would dream she was lying on a bed while someone deliberately blew marijuana smoke in her face.

"I don't smoke and I'd get so high, I couldn't move any of my limbs. I'd fall out of bed and land on a pillow -- face down -- and suffocate because I couldn't move."

But her dream became more harrowing when she discovered she also was not breathing after awakening. It seemed something in her subconscious was trying to get a message through.

"I'd try to wake myself up," said the 35-year-old Las Vegas resident. "The weird part is that I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn't wake myself up to stop the dream."

The torturous ordeal left her both gasping for air and scared.

Unfortunately, Reynolds found if she went back to sleep immediately the dream would return. Her only recourse was to get out of bed, divert her mind for a while -- usually by watching television -- and then, after an hour or so, she would try the process again.

"It got so bad, I didn't want to go to sleep," she said.

If there was a meaning to it, Reynolds was unaware what it was.

Finally she started to analyze what the dream meant and what -- if any -- message her brain was sending her.

Reynolds said she was about a year into a relationship that "just wasn't it; we weren't good together," when the dream began. Several months later when she ended the relationship, the dream stopped immediately.

Reynolds said she knew she was suffocating in the relationship and didn't want to admit it, so her repressed feelings were emerging in dream form.

"It's difficult in a relationship to break it off -- especially if nothing bad is going on," she said. "I was trying to find a way out. (My dream) helped me to determine that and to find ways to do that."

Robert Koettel, associate professor of psychology at UNLV, who teaches and researches dream interpretation, said Reynolds' dream is a typical example of how dreams symbolically represent life situations.

"Nothing in her dream talks about her relationship, but it's a symbol of her relationship, and she made the connection."

Which is what many, including Koettel, think dreams are: A conduit from the subconscious, and a way of accessing deeper consciousness and instincts and feelings more than in everyday thoughts.

It's an idea started by noted psychologist Dr. Carl Jung, one of the pioneers in dream interpretation. In his groundbreaking book, "Man and His Symbols" -- one of the first of its kind -- Jung stated that dreams are the symbolic language of the soul and that the soul contacts the ego consciousness through the dream images.

In other words, what we dream may tell us more about ourselves than we want to admit.

It's a belief many people share, said Charles McPhee, president and founder of dreamdoctor.com.

Dream interpretation remains popular at the grass-roots level, he said, despite recent scientific suggestions from a Harvard professor, Dr. Alan Hobson, that dreaming is nothing more than "random, nonsensical productions of the brain."

"Every warm-blooded creature on Earth has (dreams). This has caused a lot of focus on the biological causes of dreaming. Dr. Hobson has gotten a lot of attention, but other excellent scholars have done excellent work and disagree" with his findings.

Including McPhee.

A former director of the Sleep Apnea Patient Treatment Program at the Sleep Disorders Center of Santa Barbara, Calif., McPhee authored "Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams: A Guide to Awakening Consciousness During Sleep" (Henry Holt and Co., New York, NY: 1996). He asked the publisher if they could put an e-mail address on the jacket sleeve so that readers could contact him about their dreams.

The response was so overwhelming -- 5 to 600 dreams were submitted in the first year alone -- he decided to create the Dream Doctor website. In March of 1998 the site was launched, and since then it has grown from relative obscurity to having 150,000 pages accessed each month. He said dreamdoctor.com receives 35,000 new hits each month, and is growing by 10 percent in the same amount of time.

Many of those logging on to his site sending him their dreams as well: McPhee said Dream Doctor has 75,000 dreams from people in 75 countries electronically archived now, with plans to soon make them available to the public.

"What we've done is demonstrate there's an international audience interested in dream interpretation," he said.

What's it all mean?

Dreams can be interpreted literally, but often there's more to the message than what first comes to mind.

"I don't try to make dreams rational, because I think they are part of the nonrational part of our being," Koettel said.

He said he discourages people from trying to makes sense out of dreams; rather they should try to "live with the images of the dreams and see where that leads them."

"Maybe there is some connection between what we saw on television the night before or read in the paper, but that doesn't take us anywhere as far as working with the living imagery or the symbolism of the dream. What it does is short-circuits the process, it makes us satisfied that we explained it away."

And then there are the common elements or themes in dreams many interpret as universal symbols, such as flying, McPhee said.

"If you get five or six dreams about flying, you get a sense of what flying dreams mean. Five or six hundred dreams (and) you get a really good understanding of flying as a metaphor for empowerment."

Which is part of the function of archiving the dreams: to help establish a meaning behind dream elements.

And though Koettel encourages people to interpret their individual dream, ("The meaning is within the individual experience ... the more we generalize about the dreams, the further we get from the meaning," he said) there are archetypes in dreams that reflect certain aspects of humanity.

For example, losing one's teeth in a dream may have something to do with feelings of losing one's vitality, because teeth are important to our health, he said. And flying dreams might correlate with power or potency or the feeling of exceptionality. "If I can fly, that makes me a pretty unique character," Koettel said.

McPhee also mentioned some other archetypes as well, including water, which is a barometer for emotions (e.g., smooth or rough and clear or cloudy), and falling, which indicates uncertainty about the future.

Then there are death dreams, where someone dreams of his own demise or someone he knows. On the surface, dreaming of someone's passing may seem to be a negative -- especially since people tend to interpret dreams as a premonition -- but, as with many dreams, all is not as it appears.

"Death in dreams almost never means (dying) literally," McPhee said. "It's a symbol for change and, curiously, rebirth."

For example, if someone dreams of a younger sibling dying, it usually means the younger brother or sister is simply growing up and changing -- in a sense killing off the person the older sibling knows.

McPhee also put to rest the notion that people cannot die in their dreams.

"We oftentimes awaken from dreams just before we meet our demise," such as when falling or being attacked by an assailant, he said.

Consequently there's a perception that if you die in your dreams, you will die in real life because your brain cannot cope with its perceived death. "It's just an old wives' tale, so to speak. The truth is people dream of dying all the time," McPhee said.

When analyzing dreams, there are other factors to consider as well. For example, when dreaming of a car, whether you are the driver or a passenger can indicate whether you feel in charge or not of your life. Also, if the driver is going fast, you may not feel that person is trustworthy.

Details, such as positioning and who's doing what to whom, are all important when analyzing a dream, McPhee said, as is the outcome: "Did you reach your destination, fight off the attacker, arrive at the other side of the bridge?"

Dream weaver

While analyzing dreams might be complicated, the process of dreaming isn't.

The human body sleeps in 90-minute cycles, McPhee said. It begins with deep sleep, followed by a period of light sleep, then REM (rapid-eye movement), which is the dream phase.

On average, people dream about 90 to 100 minutes a night, McPhee said, or about the same length as the average film. As the cycles progress, the dreaming sequences get longer. By the morning a person might dream as long as 35 minutes.

"I've recorded about 30,000 hours of human sleep in dream labs," he said. "Sleep has a physiological structure, it's so regular."

But why we dream is still up for debate.

It's possible there's some sort of neural discharge as a result of dreaming, Koettel said.

"When they do research in laboratories, they're able to detect differences according to REM, or brain activity, while dreaming," he said.

But nothing definitive has been determined as to the reason behind it, he said.

"I'm not saying dreams are helpful or essential to begin with," Koettel said. "For you they may be a reference to accessing your humanity. (And) that's the meaning I give to dreams."

What dreams may come

It's 6 a.m. and you're snoozing away. Meanwhile, your brain is a bustle of dream activity. Presented for your approval is a story Rod Serling himself would approve of: You find yourself in a crowded lecture hall about to give a presentation, when you notice you're missing your arms. They were there when you fell asleep, but in the nether regions of the mind they've suddenly disappeared. As you look out into the myriad faces of the crowd, you see they all resemble a sixth-grade bully who once taunted you unmercifully.

You feel yourself sinking at the podium, unable to speak.

You wake up startled and puzzled. What to do next?

McPhee has some tips:

If you find yourself still puzzled over the meaning of it all, then check other resources. Dreamdoctor.com invites inquiries about dreams. There are also numerous books available as well. Though McPhee hesitated to recommend any so-called "dream dictionaries," Koettel offered the following suggestion: "Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth" (Harper San Francisco) by Robert Johnson.

In addition, Koettel said the Las Vegas Friends of Jung meets once a month at the Krolak Center. The meetings, which are open to the public, usually feature a speaker followed by a discussion. Call 496-5730.

Ultimately, Koettel said, if someone is serious about interpreting their dreams, they may choose to keep dream journals.

"When you record dreams over a period of time, sometimes recurring dreams in the dreams' imagery may have to do with your health or important life decisions," he said. "And most of this material is interpreted symbolically.

"We're a pretty bottom-line culture. If you start working with dreams, you refine your sensitivity to symbolism."

Dreams have meanings on multiple levels, Koettel said, which rarely are tied into one direct statement.

"The dream may lead you to something about yourself you need to look at that you're not paying attention to in your waking consciousness," he said.

archive