In the sacred texts of all cultures, they have a key importance. They appear to take a key role in the Bible, for example, repeatedly. Pharaoh’s dream in which seven skinny cows eat seven fat cows was interpreted by Joseph, who knew how to read the signs of the times in the unconscious of his ruler. But now, we do not have professional dream interpreters, at least like in those days when they were surrounded by mystery and mysticism.
However, they are neither more nor less than a part of our psychic life that usually escapes our awareness. This is its great advantage. Usually, we do not feel responsible for dreaming what we dream. In the same way, we can dismiss what they contain because it is “just a dream”. Something similar happens with daydreams, those in which we daydream but when we want to remember or recount them we forget.
Symbolism
From magic and divination, a code has always been sought that allows them to be deciphered. The idea was always to find a kind of dictionary of fixed symbols. And it is true that there is symbolism in dreams in the sense that what appears is not the direct expression (except in children) but a figurative form, in images.
In addition, in our conscious memory, which is what we can access, the meaning(s) usually appears displaced in a chain of similarities or associative links. We remember only what we can bear to remember.
For a dream interpreter, these symbolisms are not universal but are specific to each human being in relation to the experiences lived. That is why it is only pertinent to interpret dreams in the context of psychoanalysis to the extent that there we can learn the specific meanings for that particular person.
That wish! But what do I want?
Frequently, even from psychoanalysis, the meaning of dreams “as hallucinatory wish fulfillment” has been simplified. This is true and it is not true at the same time. All our psychic life is, ultimately, aimed at satisfying our desires.
What happens is that many desires remain unsatisfied in our daytime life. But not only our desires but also the problems we encounter to satisfy them or to achieve what we want, require an unconscious response. Desires and the problems to fulfill them are removed from our waking consciousness and reappear as soon as we fall asleep.
Consequently, dreams of wish fulfillment and dreams expressing the undesired consequences of said wish fulfillment (nightmares) appear. Often the dreams we remember are the ones that wake us up. These are the ones that make us anxious, either because they contain unintended consequences or because we can’t find a viable solution.
The big question remains, then… why do we dream? We dream because life in a complex world presents more variables than we can resolve in our conscious minds. Our daytime life leaves us with a multitude of unknowns to solve in our dream life.
And humans are not the only beings who dream. The more possible behavior options a species has, the more decisions to make, the more unresolved problems, and the more dreams!
Joseph and pharaoh
Returning to the dream of Pharaoh that I mentioned at the beginning, at that time Egypt was experiencing a long period of good harvests (seven years). The pharaoh, educated by the priests, could not ignore that this was usual in the history of Egypt and the Nile: that there were long periods of good harvests due to the flooding of the Nile, followed by long periods of drought. But it was the function of the Pharaoh and the priests to accumulate grain in deposits in good times to be distributed in dry times.
However, no pharaoh likes to have to know that he is going to have to distribute, in lean times, the wealth that he managed to accumulate and considers his own. This is what his dream tells her, which is nothing more than what his own mind says. It’s what he didn’t want to know but deep down he knew and didn’t want to see.
It also happens to us that many of the things we want to ignore since they oppose our desires, reappear in our worst nightmares.
We psychoanalysts –current interpreters like José- have the task of decoding them together with the analysand. This makes it possible to find some solutions for daytime life.