Recurring Dreams I

I don’t know what meaning, if any, you place on dreams. Despite having an advanced degree in psychology, I had to do my own learning about dreams from a psychological point of view. Despite years of reading I’ve only waded in ankle deep. However there several ways of looking at dreams.

Freud basically hypothesised that dreams stem from repressed desires and emotions and that dreams are a way of giving life to these urges. Jung’s idea was that dreams are more spiritual in nature and delve into the collective unconscious to reveal to us areas of our lives that are blocked or giving us difficulty. Recurring dreams show up repeatedly to demand attention, suggesting that the dreamer is neglecting an issue related to the dream. In this way dreams tell us what is causing the problem and give us a solution.

More modern ways of understanding dreams propose that dreams are nothing more than our mind trying to make sense of the semi-random firing of our neurons as sleep repairs and restores our entire body. There are other theories but that will be the subject of another blog.

I have had many recurring dreams through my life and each of the theories can be equally applied to all. However not all make sense. For example, from the age of 5 or so until 19 I had a recurring dream of being a soldier in WWII. My unit was fighting the Nazi’s and they were advancing, out defences offering some resistance. In all of those dreams there was a part were I was hiding behind a tall concrete wall and I could hear the march of jackboots getting closer and closer. Some dreams had the enemy crash through the wall with their tanks or drop bombs with their Stuka’s. There was a little anxiety associated with the dream but not as much as you’d expect considering the circumstance. The dream never reached a conclusion.

Now it makes no sense that this dream would be some kind of wish fulfilling mechanism. Who would wish such a nightmare. If the dream was reconsidered as symbolic then there could very well be some deeper meaning of which I have yet to unravel. This would also make sense if viewed as the brain interpreting random neural activity. The dream being so vivid could have easily laid down neural pathways that were triggered and hence reinforced when certain neural patterns were activated. However, there is nothing as far as I am aware written from a scientific perspective that dreams can be windows into past lives. And there never will be until past lives and reincarnation are established scientifically

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