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Dreams are the subconscious mind’s way of sending messages to one’s conscious mind, played out in a universal language that may or may not be interpretable. The night visions and filmstrips that play out in our sleep have been mused over since the beginning of human civilization. In the process of looking at the roots of your dreams, many elements can be discovered about yourself that have been restrained or simply unknown. In this way, dream psychoanalysis can help one come to terms with and recognize thoughts that can often lead to creative ideas and self-improvement.

In 1900 the idea of dream psychoanalysis was unleashed with Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Dream psychoanalysis is the analytical study of the thoughts and emotions of a person through the interpretation of his or her dreams. Freud, who described dreams as the “royal road to the subconscious,” argued that dreams are an expression of repressed desires and our hidden inner selves. He believed they are surfacing ideas and desires that might as well be conscious thoughts, but have been suppressed and unnoticed. Usually the dreams dealt with concealed sexuality, often the result from something that might have happened to the patient as a young child. In Freud’s interpretations, nothing is ever what it seems to be and symbolism is everything.

Not long after, psychologist Carl Jung followed up with his theory on the “collective unconscious”, the part of the psyche that holds traces of the primitive mind, saying that dreams have the potential to help us become psychologically balanced. Unlike Freud who believed dreams were expressions of something that the mind was aware of but unwilling to realize, Jung saw dreams as partially containing entirely new contents that were previously unknown to the subconscious. He analyzed dreams as having two main roots: “conscious contents,” reflections from the previous day, etc., and “constellated contents of the unconscious,” many thoughts from the unconscious as opposed to the conscious mind, which have their source in both conscious contents and arise from a creative process. He recognized many of the same symbols and subjects, which he called “archetypes”, which have arisen repeatedly in the dreams of different cultures throughout time. He viewed dreams as the reflection of the dreamer’s personality, an interaction between one’s conscious and subconscious mind.

Dreams clearly hold a significant part of both our mental and physical health. The works of Freud, Jung and many others show that those who listen to their dreams are more in-tune with themselves. There might not be a simple answer to what dreams really are, but whatever the form of dream analysis, a great deal can be learned about oneself in dreams, and they hold a strong significance for our subconscious selves. A good way to start is to keep a dream journal by your bed along with the motivation to write in it when you first wake up. You just might find that just thinking of the subject can make you more aware of your dreams, and you can start sorting out you problems tonight.