How to Interpret Dreams

Have you ever had a dream that you just could not figure out for the life of you? Sometimes dreams can be so bizarre that they seem completely irrational and uninterpretable. However, my genius psychology professor in college taught me a very unique way of interpreting your dreams that you won't find in Carl Jung's or Sigmund Freud's over-hyped dream interpretation books.

The method for dream interpretation that he taught me seemed to make much more sense than any interpretations I found any where else.

There are three steps in his method of dream interpretation. Identifying what the characters mean, Identifying what the setting means and identifying what your mood means.

Let's take a look at each below.

Step 1

Identify what the characters mean. To do this, don't go grabbing your fancy 'dream dictionary' as that's about as useless as the mindless mass-publishing company who sold it to you.

According to my college Psychology professor, the characters in your dream all represent an aspect of YOUR personality. That's right -- while many dream interpretation books will tell you that the people in your dream represent the same people in real life, my clever professor taught that in reality, they represent YOU. After all, if you see your friend Billy Bob Joe in a dream that is generated by YOUR subconscious mind, why would it be an aspect symbolizing him? It is YOUR mind creating and controlling it, therefore it is an aspect of YOU. When my professor explained this logic to me, everything clicked! For the first time I heard a dream interpretation theory that actually made logical sense!

So, the first step in interpreting your dream is to write down ALL of the characters in the dream and all of the actions they were performing. For example, if you had a dream where your best friend killed himself, this would simply symbolize that the aspect of your personality that REMINDS you of your best friend is fading away or is being washed away in other aspects of your personality.

Another great example is if you have a dream where your teacher is yelling at you, this would symbolize that the aspect of your personality that is seeking wisdom and knowledge is frustrated with you not taking any initiative to grow or learn.

As you can see, once you have this theory down, it's very easy to interpret without flipping through the pages of some useless dream interpretation guide. All you have to figure out is what the character symbolizes about yourself and what the action it is performing means to YOU.

After all, who could possibly do better at interpreting YOUR dream than someone who knows you better than anyone else? YOURSELF.

Step 2

The second step in identifying the full meaning of your dream is taking a thorough inspection of the setting it took place in.

Figuring out what the setting means is just as simple as finding out what the characters mean. The setting is the place where your subconscious mind thinks you need to understand the meaning of the dream the most.

Let's go back to our example of the dream where your teacher is yelling at you. If that took place in your class room, then bingo -- you're simply not taking enough initiative in class and your subconscious mind is trying to tell you this. However, if your teacher is yelling at you at the gym in the weights section, then this means you're not taking the initiative to learn some important information that you need to really excel in your fitness goals.

Let's also go back to the example of the dream where your friend Billy Bob Joe kills himself. What was the setting that he killed himself in? Maybe you don't even SEE him kill himself at all in the dream -- maybe you just hear about it from someone. So in the dream, if you show up at work and a co-worker tells you that your friend Billy Bob Joe killed himself than this means that at work is where you are losing the part of your personality that reminds you of your friend. Maybe you're taking your work too seriously and your subconscious mind is trying to tell you that it is crippling another important part of your personality -- the part that resembles your friend.

Step 3

The final step in comprehending the full message of your dream is take note of the mood you feel while experiencing the dream. The mood simply conveys your subconscious mind's opinion on the message it is telling you.

Once more I'll refer to the examples of dreams in the previous steps to further illustrate what I mean by this. In the dream where your teacher is yelling at you, if you feel stressed out and nervous than this is how your subconscious feels about you not taking your initiative to learn seriously. It sees your lack of motivation in personal development as a threat to you.

However, let's assume that when you find out your friend Billy Bob Joe killed himself in the other dream you feel happy. This means your subconscious mind is telling you it is a good thing you are losing the personality traits that reflect your friend. Maybe he is immature and gets into a lot of trouble in real life. Your subconscious mind would just be acknowledging it was a good thing you are becoming less and less like your friend.

So as you can see these opinions on dream interpretation are WAY different than the kinds you find in the mass-published books. However, I personally find them to be more accurate when using them to interpret my own dreams.

Give this style of interpretation a try on one of your own dreams and I'm sure you'll agree the interpretation makes sense for you.