The recollection process seemed simple to me when I initially thought about keeping a dream diary or journal. I quite often think about the dreams I have had upon waking and I neglected to realise that the process of documentation might be quite different to simply recalling a dream. The mechanisms involved in writing down something as abstract as a dream are rather strange.
Upon waking from a dream the most imposing memory is of the emotion that the dream evoked, it's imprint staying for some time after other parts of it are forgotten. After this I start to recall the events and piece together the events. I sometimes have a strong impression of the last part of my dream and when recalling this I start to remember what came before. It's a lot like as if you were asleep at the start of a film and stated to slowly wake as you reach the end.
What I end up with inside my head does not always lend itself well to writing. I find that dreams can skip from one thing to another and sometimes I am not even sure that I am recalling events in order, just that it seems like the most logical order I can come up with. This again relates to Gestalt theory as dreams are often so surreal that our waking brain will have to work hard to make sense of what has occurred. I find myself writing things like:
"My dream kept flitting between..."
"In the next bit of the dream..."
"...was very jumbled..."
"The dream changes and then..."
"...a little dream interlude..."
Sometimes I am unsure when writing down my dreams if I am inventing the bits in between the parts I can remember. I find sometimes that I recall having small dreams almost like commercial breaks in a larger dream. I wonder if I invent notions like walking through a door, or up stairs, or travelling somewhere in order to make sense of one dream ending and another beginning? This is especially important when writing dreams down. To 'play' them in your head is not the same as explaining them on paper.
[needs link to Dream Theory post, quote from pg 41]
I had been concentrating on the content of my dreams, analysing it for meaning and looking for patterns. I often go through phases of dreaming about a particular place, person or event. Sometimes parts of the dream are merely imprints of things that I remember from that day. These things have often passed by in my waking world without drawing much attention from my conscious mind, but they seem to have got the attention of my unconscious enough that they are recalled.
There are quite a few areas to look at:
- Who is in my dream?
- Where does the dream take place?
- What emotions do I feel during the dream?
- Is there anything 'mundane' that has been selected from my conscious mind?
- Putting the dream in the context of your waking life.
- Symbol analysis, looking for archetypes.
I keep feeling that it might be helpful to have someone other than myself to make an analysis of my dreams so that I don't miss something that is glaringly obvious from the outside. Analysing oneself can never be done in an unbiased way as we will naturally see things only in our own context. If I could find someone well versed in psychology maybe they could give a differing insight into the dreams and their potential meanings.
Although I am investigating my dreams and unconscious mind for this project I also realise that the knowledge that I may gain from this could help me to understand myself better. Its my opinion that knowing yourself is the pathway to understanding others.
As I now have quite a few entries in my dream journal its probably time to start looking for themes that are repeated. I will start by isolating the people, places and scenarios that occur and taking note of how many times each of these things occur. It might help to simplify things by distilling 'river' 'sea' and 'swimming pool' into the umbrella title of 'Water'. This way I will be able to deal with a large number of dreams and be able to get a general picture before I look into it in more depth.
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