From: lagus@kruuna.Helsinki.FI (Krista Lagus)
Newsgroups: alt.dreams,alt.consciousness
Subject: Re: questions
Date: 1 Sep 92 22:02:55 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki (Finland)

elascurn@daimi.aau.dk (Lars R{der Clausen) writes:

   (Note crossposting!)

   valaris@swifty.dap.CSIRO.AU (Andrew Valaris) writes:

   >"Is there a standard defining symbols in dreams - eg. horses, lakes, etc. or
   >is this type of interpretation too shallow, or false. Do certain symbols
   >represent certain 'events' applicable to all dreamers, or are the symbols
   >specific for each person ? "

   Yes and no. I wouldn't buy a Dream Catalogue listing what every
   single thing I dream means. People are simply too different for
   this to work. But there are some symbols that are so deep that they
   mean the same for many people. I would say you should check you
   personal symbols first in most cases.

Agreed.

   An interesting idea I just came up with: Dream Catalogues are
   actually becoming LESS useful as humanity evolves. This comes from
   the greater indiviualism which is slowly evolving (You can f.x.
   see that in clothes trend - fifty years ago, most people dress the
   same - try looking at a crowd now!). When Freud first began
   interpreting dreams, people had less individuality, so the symbols
   where more common, and thus a Dream Catalogue could be justified.
   Nowadays people know themselves much more as individuals and less
   as members of some groups, so the dream symbols differ more in
   their meaning from person to person. 

An interesting idea, and to a degree I agree. I'd add here that people
might have been more similar in the past (_might_ have) but mainly
inside their culture and/or their social group.  It's quite possible
that the dream symbols of the community of russian landslaves meant
quite different things from the symbols of british bourgeoisie, for
example.

   Where psychoanalyst earlier
   could reasonably say 'This means so-and-so', now it is more like
   'What does this mean for you?' 

Well probably, since the psychoanalyst may not know any more the
context of the client, although there still may be a clearly defined
context, and you might find many people with the same meanings of
symbols.

I think that culture is still a strong determining factor with the
symbols. It's like language, you can't avoid its influence. As you
learn the language, you also learn the meanings of symbols and their
connections to "things", the way of thinking. 
	A common language also means a chance of reading the same
tales as a child - a chance that gets the stronger the smaller
language group you have.

However, nowadays many people learn other languages, books are
translated into most languages etc. I think that the western world
for example, is quite cculturally united and thus may have quite
similar meanings for many dream symbols.

I have a dream symbol catalogue and it has helped me to see the rather
blurry and many-sided symbolism of dreams. Sometimes the explanations
of the book are helpful to give ideas of what the dream might have
meant. But I wouldn't use it as a dictionary.

Krista Lagus
Xref: sparky alt.dreams:3014 alt.consciousness:431