Why we dream and what we dream of is not fully understood, but research has been conducted to better understand the images that flicker through our minds while we sleep.
Western University Professor, Dr. Sharon Silwinski has tried to uncover dream-life and have a better understanding of dreams by viewing them as a different form of thinking. In her book, “Dreaming in Dark Times” she looks at dreams through Sigmund Freud’s idea of the unconscious mind.
“We think we know what thinking is in our day to day thoughts, but dreaming is a version of that that happens in the form of the unconscious — at least according to Freud. What that means is that it does not follow the logic of consciousness. For example, you can have a dream about a dog that looks a little bit like your friends dog, but also has the same colour of the dog you had from childhood. So you have this way that you can have a composite image. You can be thinking about both dogs at the same time and it can be in one image. There are ways then that dreams can condense time and space, make things symbolic and nonsensical – like flying,” commented Dr. Silwinski.
Dr. Silwinski’s desire to dive into the unconscious world of dream-life came after reading a book that showed her how dreams can aid us in reality and help us through dark times.
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“It was actually Nelson Mandela’s book that started this whole process. I read his autobiography and found that he had this recurring dream while he was imprisoned in South Africa. I realized that the dream was helping him. It was helping him become the man that he was and the man that he went on to be. I think the fact that he paid attention to his dreams was important and would have allowed him a kind of freedom of thought…a capacity to think about his condition – so that he survived those 27 years in prison and came out is no small part, because he was able to be in dialogue with what was happening in his mind,” said Dr. Silwinski.
Ursula Carsen —a Dream Therapist from Toronto— says that there are dreams that everyone may have and are consider common, like dreaming of your teeth falling out.
“Most of us have teeth and need them to chew to make food digestible. The first part of the whole digestive process is taking a bite and chewing. So teeth falling out can mean a person may have bitten off more than they can deal with and may need time to strengthen themselves,” said Carsen.
Though the understanding of dreams is not fully understood, through research we can slowly grasp the meaning of dreams and what they have to offer. Wether it may be dreaming about falling, failing a test, or wearing no underpants, paying attention to your dreams might just reveal part of the unconscious mind and a second form of thinking — at least according to Freud.
WATCH: Dr. Silwinski on Dreaming and The Unconscious Mind
https://youtu.be/4xbbv8EN-oI
