Has anyone ever analysed their dreams?

faustus

Well-known member
I have the car one but it's always about driving in another country on the wrong side of the road, traffic keeps coming towards me because I'm on the left.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
had similar experiences - can't remember the medical term for it though, annoyingly enough. terrifying indeed....

Edit: will come back to this thread, but pushed for time now. Anyone had insights into subconscious from their dreams that they've successfully brought into their conscious (thru remmebring/thining about dreams) and made their life better as a result? It's what I'm trying to do at present - many of my dreams centre around betrayal.... :)

Yeah, quite a lot. Reacting to stress dreams -often train journeys that never end - taking note of them, and destressing as a result. A series of dreams made me aware of feelings about my parents that shaped attitudes to authority, and again just being conscious of that helped. I've also the odd sensation of been told stuff quite explicitly in dreams - by which I mean a clear spoken sentence from a dream character - and being flung awake immediately, with the message ringing in my head.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I should imagine the "can't control the car" dream is a variant on the "haven't prepped for the exam"/"haven't learnt my lines"-type dream. I'm sure you all know what I mean.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yeah, quite a lot. Reacting to stress dreams -often train journeys that never end - taking note of them, and destressing as a result. A series of dreams made me aware of feelings about my parents that shaped attitudes to authority, and again just being conscious of that helped. I've also the odd sensation of been told stuff quite explicitly in dreams - by which I mean a clear spoken sentence from a dream character - and being flung awake immediately, with the message ringing in my head.

Seems like your subconscious is doing a lot of good work - I'd say that's really healthy, as you say yourself
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
It's funny this thread just got resurrected because last night I had one of the most horrifying dreams I've ever had. I was dreaming about lucid dreaming. So in my dream, I'd fall asleep and start lucid dreaming but I'd be unable to wake myself up (into the first dream), and then when I finally was able to "wake up" I'd find out I had committed horrible atrocities sleep-walking. Then I'd fall asleep in the dream again, and my lucid dream-in-a-dream would be all the more horrible because I'd be certain I was walking around doing terrible things while desperately trying to wake up.

I had one last night, was nowhere near as complex as yours but I remember distinctly at one point, this character had done an artwork that was really successful and I remember thinking about the best way in which I (he in my dream?) would describe it (i.e, did it sell quick or was it a 'big thing'..) in the dream - as if I was dreaming about me creating something literally. (Not explicitly dreaming about dreaming, but the next closest thing I suppose.)

Hopefully it means I'm on the right track towards lucid dreaming.

P.S, wonderful thread.
 

BareBones

wheezy
I only ever remember horrible dreams or nightmares. I'm sure I must've had these impossibly cool or sexy dreams where i'm saving the world and sleeping with beyonce, but I never remember anything like that - only the scary or disturbing ones. Even the most banal situations take on an element of horror in my dreams. I once had one where I was taking off a jumper, but got it stuck over my head with my arms trapped half-in the sleeves. At first it was just this casual annoyance, but the more I tried to get out of it the more firmly I was stuck in there, to the point where i was in this frenzied panic, twisting and fighting to get it off my head, for what seemed to go on for days. I can't remember how it ended. A totally stupid dream, but it felt genuinely terrifying. I've also had a nightmare about being chased through hyde park by a giant soul-eating statue that only i could see.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Seems like your subconscious is doing a lot of good work - I'd say that's really healthy, as you say yourself

Thanks. I'm seeing a therapist at the moment (not 'cos I'm especially mad/depressed/ill, but because I'm interested in the process) and the dreams really seem to lead the process sometimes. Very interesting. I think they are so "responsive" in part 'cos I've paid attention to them for some long, kept a dream diary for ages etc.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Thanks. I'm seeing a therapist at the moment (not 'cos I'm especially mad/depressed/ill, but because I'm interested in the process) and the dreams really seem to lead the process sometimes. Very interesting. I think they are so "responsive" in part 'cos I've paid attention to them for some long, kept a dream diary for ages etc.

ah, thought you might be, reading between the lines. me too, really good init? :cool:

I'm gonna start a dream diary this week. Was talking to a woman yesterday who's a screenwriter (and ghostwriter - though she couldn't tell me straight up, from what she said she def ghostwrote either Jodie Marsh's or Jordan's biography, or one of them at least!), and she kept a dictaphone beside her bed in order to write a novel from her dreams/half-dreams. Apparently she got some crazy shit from it, and couldn't afterwards remember a lot of the times she'd been talking into the dictaphone.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah, it is :)

...though with me and dreams, it's a pr-therapy thing. I've played with lots of magic(k)al stuff, like sigils (writing your dream intention out, turning it into a nonsene word/mantra and chanting it as you go to sleep) since I was a teenager so that kinda primed me. I've also had sleep paralysis on and off since then as well which piqued me interest in altered states and so on. Used to bug the shit out of me but it happened so much that I began to use it to explore dreaming and lucid states. Fun stuff.

The idea that Jodie Marsh's biography might be half-channeled from the oneiric realms pleases me immensely.

Burroughs talks somewhere about getting at least half of his writing and plots from his dreams. Can anyone remember where he says this? It's really interesting.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
Burroughs talks somewhere about getting at least half of his writing and plots from his dreams. Can anyone remember where he says this? It's really interesting.

Not sure exactly but I know Burroughs published his dream diary. Think it's called "My Education" or something like that. (I've not read it)

I keep one, and I've definitely gotta admit it is brilliant for narratives, and details and that sort of thing. I think it also helps a huge amount that writing obscure things in it at two a.m. means when you go back to read through, you are having to 'struggle' through two layers - the memory of the dream and what you actually wrote (both of which almost never make sense or seem to fit together a few days later.)

As an aside, I'd love to get into ghostwriting.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Thanks man. I found the essay I was looking for - it's called "Freud and the Unconscious" and it's in The Adding Machine (which is a tremedous book), just a paragraph:
:
For me, dreams are extremely useful professionally. I get perhaps half my sets and characters from dreams. Occasionally, I find a book or paper in dreams and read a whole chapter or short story... Wake up, make a few notes, sit down at the typewriter the next day and copy from a dream book.
I think you're right about the resonances in dream diaries and transcripts.I don't tend to read mine back but maybe I should get into the habit.

Was flicking through this Burroughs book last night and he shows a clear fascination with material from "beyond the Wall of Sleep" - Raudive tapes, trance transcripts, "The Last Words of Dutch Schultz" etc. I guess cut-ups etc. fall into this for him, being non-linear texts which "reveal".
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I remember liking AJJJ Ratcliffe's book on dreaming :


when I was more into remembering dreams.

Good tip for lucid dreaming is to take a lick of salt before you go to bed, you will invariably dream about being thirsty, and at that point you can take the lick of salt as having been a mnenomic for waking yourself inside your dream; you'll realise that you're dreaming at that point.

It worked for me but then I kinda realised after having done the fun stuff - flying, being invisible, being naughty - that I didn't really want to control my dreams. I like them being out of my control.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
Thanks man. I found the essay I was looking for - it's called "Freud and the Unconscious" and it's in The Adding Machine (which is a tremedous book), just a paragraph:
:
For me, dreams are extremely useful professionally. I get perhaps half my sets and characters from dreams. Occasionally, I find a book or paper in dreams and read a whole chapter or short story... Wake up, make a few notes, sit down at the typewriter the next day and copy from a dream book.
I think you're right about the resonances in dream diaries and transcripts.I don't tend to read mine back but maybe I should get into the habit.

Was flicking through this Burroughs book last night and he shows a clear fascination with material from "beyond the Wall of Sleep" - Raudive tapes, trance transcripts, "The Last Words of Dutch Schultz" etc. I guess cut-ups etc. fall into this for him, being non-linear texts which "reveal".

Yeah, I don't read mine regularly - but it's fun to flick through when you're at a blank.

Slightly OT, but on that Burroughs note - I always really enjoyed that bit in Cities of the Red Night where the detective makes recordings of all the sounds the victims would have heard in the lead up to his death, just recording toilet flushing, waves on the beach, restaraunt noise; then mixing it up with anything else he found interesting - none of it in any particular order. The idea of sort of recording a potential dreamscape. I've used this technique with audiobooks for essays a few times....


mistersloane - that salt tip sounds great, will try remember test it out tonight.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Dream last night that Rodigan emailed saying he was coming to Galway to clash me after I took the piss out of him online.

I was in a fucking panic lol
 
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