OH always says that no-one can interpret a dream better than the dreamer, and I think it’s true; whatever theories psychologists may have, you know best what’s really going on. When I was so rudely awoken this morning I was bang in the middle of a very vivid dream, one of those where it takes you a moment to realise you’re not in a theatre about to do a performance, you’re in bed. In Loughborough. And it’s time to wake up. Ugh. I usually try to write down these dreams before I forget them, because they seem important – and if we no longer (since Freud anyway) interpret dreams as portents from the beyond, we do recognise that they have something to tell us, usually something our conscious mind has pushed to the background while it gets on with more important stuff. (Or so it would have us believe.)
Interpreting a dream is not so much about what happened – though that matters too – as how it felt. What was the atmosphere in the dream? What was I feeling? You can feel threatened even if good things are happening, or vice versa (incidentally I think one of the most brilliant bits of plotting in Harry Potter is in The Prisoner of Azkaban when, during a Divination class – a subject generally seen as worthless – Ron reads Harry’s tea leaves and concludes, ‘You’re going to suffer – but you’re going to be happy about it.’ At the time it just seems silly but in the end this is the essence of the plot: Harry suffers, but he’s happy about the outcome.)
Anyway. As we all know a dream can contain the most delightful elements and yet feel unaccountably threatening, like a film where the characters are walking happily along a beach but sinister music is building in the background. So. This dream from which I was so abruptly awoken was generally a positive one, though there were elements of doubt in it: I was giving a performance of poetry to a large audience; I’d waited a long time to get on stage (that figures) and when I arrived I realised I’d lost my set list. But the audience was very friendly and an enthusiastic fan knew all of my work off by heart and suggested poems for me to do.
So all in all I see that as a positive and hopeful dream, albeit with a bit of anxiety thrown in.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
I quite agree that’s impossible for anyone other than the dreamer to correctly interpret a dream, although I would suggest that it’s wise not to jump to hasty conclusions. A whole industry has grown up offering neat and, IMHO, useless interpretations of dreams based on obvious triggers, whereas like you say, how we feel at the time matters equally as much as what actually happens. I occasionally worry that the weirdness of the dreams I actually remember is an indication of some sort of mental decline, but I always manage [so far 😉 ] to reassure myself that, where our mental landscape is concerned, there are no boundaries. I think it’s also worth remembering that even dreams that seem negative can have a useful message, which might work subconsciously, but it will nevertheless be there. Cheers, Jon.
My dream ended this morning with me watching a group dance to the song “Back to life [back to reality]” (by Soul II Soul)… or at least I thought it did… I was actually still dreaming and dreamed I woke from that dream to then search for the song on Youtube… and when I did finally wake properly (assuming I’m awake now) I did indeed look up the song. I recently re-watched the Inception movie and have been working my way through a book which provides various ideas and perspectives about the film and dreams… I have also been reading a book about “Social Dreaming” which encourages the sharing of dreams. (All this is probably playing havoc on my dreams right now!) I find it can sometimes be helpful to get another’s suggestions about the meaning of our dreams, but only we know what feels right regarding interpretation.
By Sharing of dreams you presumably mean telling others on a group? There is a Facebook group which OH and I belong to where people do that
The process outlined in the book is more about building on some sort of group consciousness, for the benefit of things like creative projects or social cohesion, rather than us focusing on dreams from only a personal perspective.
Oh right, that sounds interesting. I’d like to take a look some time
Dream interpretation seems like quackery to me, but one thing that annoys me is being rudely woken in the middle of a dream I’m enjoying. I can never get them started again.
I agree, you can never go back to a dream