Perchance to Dream

To sleep -- perchance to dream:ay, there's the rub... Hamlet

Have you ever had a dream you just couldn't shake off? Who hasn't at one time or another. If the dream is pleasant, the memory of it poses no problem, but such dreams seldom are pleasant. What if it is strange and filled with disturbing images? Our first inclination may be to try to dismiss the dream, forget about it. After all it is just a dream. That, however, may be the opposite of what we need to do.

Early in the play Hamlet Shakespeare has his title character meet his father's ghost. Not knowing the meaning of the supernatural appearance, Prince Hamlet confronts the ghost with a question. As an immediate result, he discovers more questions than answers. He faces a dilemma. In a practical sense, it would have been easier for Hamlet to turn away from all the questions and live the life of a prince in relative ease. But Hamlet is confronted by something beyond the mundane and challenged to deal with it. He accepts the challenge.

Our dreams may not be our parents' ghosts. (Then again, in a sense maybe they are!) Whatever they are, just as in Hamlet's experience with the ghost, they call our attention to something that needs to be recognized or addressed. Perhaps it is some bit of repressed or dissociated unresolved conflict. On a better note, it could be a message that one is on the right track in his or her psychological process. Of course, dreams convey messages in a round-about-way, through symbolic language. Sometimes even disturbing images are positive. We may have to spend time with a dream in order to unravel its meaning for us, though.

Psychologist C.G. Jung would have us engage our dreams, much as Hamlet engaged his father's ghost, asking what the dream images mean for us. Throughout his life's work studying the human psyche, he not only gave much attention to his own dreams, but he also wrote a great deal on the significance, nature, and analysis of dreams, Jungian analysts today use dreamwork and have written even more on how to approach one's dreams.

There are various ways of deciphering a dream's meaning. For me, journaling has always been helpful -- writing first the dream itself, then any thoughts, images, or ideas which come to mind from any part of the dream or from the whole of it. Sometimes I start a dialogue with a character or characters from the dream or with some part of myself I feel is like a character in the dream. Of course, there are other ways of getting at dreams. The point is, don't ignore your dreams or try to make them go away. Whatever they are trying to tell you still lurks in the unconscious.

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