Illustration © Kaitlynn Copithorne
From time to time I dream of swimming. Nothing unusual there, except that I can’t swim. Sometimes I am navigating a vast lake with the deftness of an Olympian, and others, I am in an indoor pool, flailing, sinking to the bottom. Sometimes that’s okay though because I can breathe underwater. But what does it all mean?
What are dreams?
The average adult sleeps between seven and nine hours a night, but we only dream for around two hours of that having several dreams that last for five to twenty minutes. Whilst dreaming can take place during any sleep phase, we have our most vivid dreams within REM sleep. Dreams are often considered the language of the unconscious mind, but there is no universally accepted definition of what a dream is. Many psychotherapists agree that they are a neurological phenomenon, a way for the mind to process memories and events.
Very few people nowadays base important decisions on revelations gained via dreams, but up until the 18th century, they were seen to belong to the realms of the spiritual.
A Brief History of Dreaming
The Ancient Greeks believed the gods communicated their will with mortals through dreams and that some had portentous capacity. Greek myths are rife with prophetic dreams, for example, Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey explains that dreams of significant meaning come to her through a gate made of horn. This is how she knows to pay attention to her dream in which fifty geese are killed by an eagle. In her waking life, Penelope hosts fifty unwanted suitors, and just as in her dream, Odysseus returns to kills them.
This had a cultural impact seen in the “dream vision”-form used in the literature of the Middle Ages. This literary device involves a dream being recounted and deemed to reveal knowledge to the dreamer. In a British Library article, Mary Wellesley explains that “the flexibility of the rules which govern the world of dreams meant that the form could be used for consolation, advisory literature, religious and philosophical explorations, courtly comedy, social critique, mystical experience, or feminist polemic. Dream visions are, therefore, some of the most captivating works of the medieval period.”
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and with it, the Bible’s teachings. According to the Bible, dreams can be a mode of receiving divine instruction:
By a dream in a vision by night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, and they are sleeping in their beds: Then he openeth the ears of men, and teaching instructeth them in what they are to learn. That he may withdraw a man from the things he is doing, and may deliver him from pride. Rescuing his soul from corruption. (Book of Job, 33 14-17)
Likewise, in the Book of Numbers, God says, “I will appear to him in a vision, or I will speak to him in a dream.”
In David Hartley’s publication of Observations on Man (1749), we see a shift in perception from dreams being spiritual to having a more scientific context prompted by the scientific study of dreams and how the unconscious is influenced. In this book, we are presented with three neurological/physiological ideas as to the causes of dreams. Those are: the residue of what has been observed that day; that they relate to the dreamer’s stomach and brain; that they are a product of the thoughts and actions during the day that can roam unrestrained during sleep. Dickens popularised the connection between meals and dreams in the character of Scrooge who insists the ghost of Marley is nothing but a bad dream, reasoning at him, “you may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.”
Dickens would no doubt have been influenced by Hartley’s text. During a period of unprecedented scientific and medical exploration, the occult deeply fascinated Victorian society. Dream studies were published and sat beside books and magazines. In Henry Fuseli’s painting, The Nightmare, a goblin-like creature, possibly a succubus, personifies a bad dream. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the dead return via nightmares and characters take instructions from dreams. We can see how, culturally, dreams are translated as spiritual, with a shift beginning to take place in the advent of dreams studies. This is exemplified later in Orwell’s 1984 where we see Winston fearful that his dreams will reveal hidden secrets to the Thought Police.
Sigmund Freud revolutionised psychoanalytical dream studies in the 19th century, and his theories are arguably the most well-known in Western science. Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams played a large part in influencing modern dream theory. His psychoanalytical theory which involves instinctive human drive and repressed desires spills into his dream theory. He believed that dreams are designed to be secretive, the product of hidden desires, leading to some questionable ideas involving wish-fulfilment and sexual taboo. His contemporary, psychoanalyst Carl Jung disagreed. He believed that dreams were revelatory, and he rejected Freud’s ideas about repressed sexual desire.
Dreaming today
Transpersonal psychotherapy is a contemporary area of psychology that bridges the space between psychology and the spiritual aspects of the human experience. Speaking with Dave Billington at The Dream Institute about his research into The Waking Dream Process, he says that, “…[it] brings together some techniques for re-imagining and re-visiting dreams with psychotherapy techniques for focusing attention on the physical sensations to process emotional experiences. It is undertaken in a transpersonal context, meaning that the experience being explored is seen as having physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects and outcomes. The Waking Dream Process and transpersonal psychotherapy as a whole draw on modern psychotherapy as well as practices and perspectives from what are known as the wisdom traditions—those aspects of global religions and spiritual traditions that teach how to be happier and live better—or hedonia and eudaemonia.”
With lockdown provoking a slew of hyper-vivid dreams that had many questioning their cause and meaning, there is no denying that the subject of dreams continues to captivate us. During lockdown my dreams also took on a hyper vivid quality that left their aftertaste long after waking and had me questioning what was bringing them on. Dave Billington at The Dream Institute explains that the origin of dreams is not necessarily the focus when exploring them further but rather, “We ask, 'Why has this dream arrived now?' and 'What is this dream bringing to me (my conscious self)?’” This view encourages us to look at our waking life and dreams as connected. For example, is there something worrying us in our waking life that is playing itself out in our dreams? Billington goes on to say that:
"The classic ‘anxiety dreams’ are nice clear examples of this. We tend to have those dreams of being unprepared for school exams, or finding ourselves undressed in front of colleagues, or trying to speak and having our teeth fall out, when there is a current anxiety or stress. The dream reflects our current feelings, or we might say it draws our attention to them and gives us the opportunity to address them directly. When a person can start to understand their dreams in this way, then more subtle experiences can also start to come to consciousness via their dreams and not only help them respond better to current stressor or mental/emotional difficulties, but also guide them toward greater mental/spiritual wellbeing.”
Whether you believe that dreams are a message from beyond the waking realm or simply a highlight reel of events from your day, there is no denying the otherworldly quality they possess.