Introduction:

In my experience with dream analysis, I have realized that the longer one intends to interpret one’s dreams, the harder and more complicated it becomes. This is to be expected because the psyche will create dreams that compliment the contents of waking-life consciousness. For example, if I do any one action in real life, but I’m unaware of my inner valuation, that is, my morality, in respect of such action, it could very well happen that I have a dream that will communicate an unconscious feeling of guilt or inadequacy. In real life, however, I’m unconscious of such feelings, and being conscious implies a moral effort, which the ego does not want to acknowledge nor submit to. At least not that easily; hence the difficulty of dream analysis by oneself.

This difficulty can be removed when one has a dedicated dream analyst, a third person who will bring two things to analysis: 1) an unbiased and more neutral assessment of dream material, and 2) the possibility for transference, that is, the human relationship between the analyst and analysand. Within this relationship, the possibility for emotional containment and conflict resolution exists, and this is the basis of genuine healing that is capable of integrating the individual into society (because a mentally ill person is somewhat socially handicapped).

If you’d like to have your dreams interpreted by me, contact me via Instagram or email me at dreamanalytics@hotmail.com

If one is intent in doing one’s dream analysis, for the sake of Individuation, which implies, first, the integration of split-offs personalities, I recommend to take a 10-20 dream samples in order to understand the major theme or themes that recur, the characters that recur, which oftentimes clarifies the meaning of earlier dreams once seen in context. Also, not very rarely, one will encounter a single dream that contains it all, that either explains all other dreams at once or holds in itself the main psychic complex to be treated. Therefore, in the same way that one does not take a urine exam every day once an infection has been identified, it is quite useless to continue analyzing dreams ad-infinitum before treating the current neurosis. What is the treatment, someone may ask? Well, that is something to be dealt with in meditation, in the relationship analyst-analysand, in shadow work experiments, etc.

The following dream-series has been re-interpreted in the hopes that I will have a more unbiased perspective of my conscious and unconscious attitudes from 4 years ago. Let us see:

A series of 3 dreams:

I haven’t had dreams that I can remember for the last 2 days (just like the dream about the theater predicted?). Today, however, I had various dreams, of which I just remember certain details. I’ve lost most of the dreams content.

Dream image 1: there are four, or five crabs balancing out on a big leaf outside from a big window on a very windy day. I’m laying on a bed, after waking up, and I witness what’s happening. I wish them to fall, and the wind outside blows strong enough to shake them off.

Dream image 2: I see my girlfriend’s mom during a photo session in a pond. She wears a yellow long dress, and some flowers on her head (the Empress tarot card comes to mind). Her feet, and the lower part of the dress get wet in the pond. Next image, I see my girlfriend doing the same, flowers on head, and a white shorter dress. Her mom is in the background, outside of the pond.

Dream image 3: I’m in a room (my grandma’s room?) sleeping with two, or three other girls, separately. The dream has a very sexual tone, since we are all naked. My girlfriend, that also is mi ex-wife in the dream, wakes up, and she is looking for something. I thought about sex, but she suddenly was very concerned about something she had lost or forgot. She opens a wardrobe, that is also a door, and finds an exit towards a secret contiguous room, that leads her to a bathroom. She searches for clothes, perhaps, and tells me she doesn’t find something she must have had in there. She’s wearing a bath robe.

Interpretation of dream 1:

I do not have any memory or emotional associations to crabs. They are, to my view, a more universal symbol. As such, they represent vulnerable emotions protected by an outer shell, like in the zodiac sign of Cancer. In other dreams before, I have dreamt of crabs, but also of lobsters and giant shrimps, always appearing in or near shallow water. I seems like my unconscious (the waters) likes to represent these surface level complexes as crustaceans of some sort, which I believe is appropriate. In other dreams, I’m always afraid of them. But, in this dream, for the first time, they appear outside of water, and though I’m not afraid of them, I’m clearly irritated by their presence, for they seem to be observing me and intruding me in my room.

So, my room, and I, in the dream is none other than my ego. I see myself as outside, as foreign to my unconscious. I’m separated from it. After all, my attitude to this whole dream analysis is as a scientist doing an experiment. I’m not participating, except by the use of my intellect. I believe this is what my dream is trying to tell me, that my intellect, aka., the wind in the dream, is stirring up the garden/jungle of the unconscious, and activating the whole psychic apparatus. This psychic apparatus is also represented, of course, by the big leafy plant outside my window. This activation is also feeling as if I’m the one being observed or intruded, by the crabs, my complexes. Because of that, I’m also waking up to the movements in my unconscious.

What happens next is that I wish the crabs to go away, and, as if wished by me, a strong wind knocks them all down (or most of them). This part of the dream I still don’t understand. Perhaps it means that, as long as I’m uncomfortable with my vulnerable emotions, I will always blow them down into repression. This, my intellect does easily. In retrospect, I do not think this sign as positive or negative, but as a representation of what I always do: activate the unconscious until the crabs come to the surface, after some difficulty (as when crabs travel long distance out of the ocean to lay eggs), only to be blown by my intellect. I remain in my room, separated from myself.

Interpretation of dream 2:

Let us begin with associations. My now mother-in-law is a person I respect and esteem. I consider her to be high in the “spiritual” hierarchy and who has a graciousness in herself I cannot put into words. My then-girlfriend, and my now-wife, is, of course, my partner whom I love. That is as far as I can go with my associations. The pond and the surroundings do not recall anything in my memory. I believe there’s a big tree too in the background.

Let us explore the symbology now. My mother-in-law, in the dream, reminds me very much of “The Empress” tarot card, though she is wearing a yellow robe-dress. In tarot, this card represents divine feminine energy, abundance, fertility and nurturing. The pond is a clear symbol of my unconscious. So is the tree, the tree of life. So, why are they posing for a camera? I think the cameraman is me who is trying to explore my unconscious. Also, is there a ceremony going on? If anything, it must be a wedding because my girlfriend is wearing a white dress. To me, the dream is telling me the following: “stay in contact with your emotions whom you should marry, and I give you this young woman to help you with that.” (Of course, I’m of the idea that a marriage is the best form of therapy and the best form of relationship in which love and intimacy can grow. A random analyst wouldn’t be able to go much far, neither would it be appropriate).

Interpretation of dream 3:

The third dream is strikingly different from the previous one. It is curious that I always have sexually charged content in my grandma’s room, and I’m always in fear of being discovered. I think the dream screams Oedipus-complex very loud, in this case towards my grandma who played an important role in my childhood. Because we are in my grandma’s room, the girl is not only my now-wife, but also my ex-wife and my grandma, all three at the same time. This process is called condensation. The dream may be telling me that my relationship to women, to my partner, is infantile and inappropriate, that I’m still looking for my grandma in my partners, that is, someone who will nurture and cherish me unconditionally and who will allow me to do whatever I want. This type of relationship to women needs to be transformed so I must be led by my girlfriend into the wardrobe of my unconscious life in order to retrieve something lost, which is my other self.

I do not know what the room or the bathroom in the room mean. At this point, the woman is definitely my girlfriend only, and she is wearing a white robe. This is the only similarity with the previous dream of her wearing a white dress. She’s looking for something, and I also feel the urgency of finding it. But, what is it? Wouldn’t it be the other aspect of myself? Also, why am I so ashamed? Perhaps there’s not so much interpretation to do other than simply acknowledging my shame, my feelings of inadequacy.

Conclusion:

All these 3 dreams seem so different from each other but, when looked closely, I cannot ignore the fact that they are charged with so much feminine energy. I’m just now remembering that the crab, Cancer in astrology, is related to “the mother.” That being said, the first wave of unconscious material has to do with my Oedipus-complex and my regressive tendencies towards immaturity. It may be telling me that the only way to make it right is via my relationship to my now-wife, to exchange the old for the new. Maybe the crabs are also related somehow to the emotion of shame. This shame forces me to retrieve in isolation, to protect the vulnerable core. I may be feeling inadequate, and that’s why I repress my real self to the world. Maybe that is why, in the first dream, I’m in a hotel room, because I have been using traveling as a form of isolation. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling. But there were times I felt lonely in a hotel room just by myself, and I have used traveling as a form of escape, of not having contact with other people.

This shame experienced back in 2022 was also felt when I was considering whether I should write about my dreams and show them to the world. As of today, I still experience some shame. I have a fear I may come off as crazy, a degenerate, a neurotic, a poor fellow who does not know what he’s doing. My argument is that most people experience these kinds of feelings. That society pushes down important aspects of people’s personalities through shame in order to enhance others. Many people are left feeling inadequate. In my case, I have to push through these emotions. Perhaps I’m a sexual degenerate and a neurotic. Perhaps I don’t know what I’m doing, for who explores their dream world as I do? If that is what the world wants to think about me, so be it. I truly enjoy these speculations, as useless as they can be, and I’m a sexual person just like everybody who has ever lived on this planet.

In my last dream, the shame is related to our nakedness, and what do I do? I retrieve into a secret room, the crab-shell, only for my now-wife to urge me to come out and be discovered, though now she’s wearing a robe. This would be a good compromise between full nakedness versus covering the most intimate parts. She’s behaving in an ambivalent fashion, just as complexes do. On the negative aspect, she is the regressive mother-tendencies, the shame that pushes me into isolation. On her positive aspects, when she’s wearing a white robe, she’s my legitimate partner that pushes me on the opposite direction, to reveal myself. She’s not afraid of being discovered. In fact, she wants that.

If you’d like to have your dreams interpreted by me, contact me via Instagram or email me at dreamanalytics@hotmail.com