What Our Dreams Mean (Part I)

Dream interpretation sounds a bit new-agey and a little old-agey in a biblical sense too. In reality it’s perfectly relevant to the here and now.

I think any of us who have taken an introductory Psychology class are familiar with Freud, the “Father of Psychology.” He gets a bad wrap these days for the way he gave everything a sexual tone, and he probably did over sexualize in some aspects, but if we are honest here the man was a genius. Briefly, his most popular theory involved the personality being broken into the Id, the Ego, and the Superego.

Basically, the Id wants what it wants and it wants it now. The Id is the spoiled, tantrum-throwing five year old inside of all of us. The Ego has the job of meeting the needs of the Id but also balancing out what is acceptable in society. If the Id wants to run around naked, the Ego says, “now listen Id, we may get arrested for this. Let’s put on some underwear at least.” The Superego is our moral center. The superego says, “hey guys, let’s just keep all of our clothes on. There is no need to expose our body.”

So back to dreams. According to Freud, when we sleep our Superego and our Ego are also sleeping. Instead of suppressing the thoughts of our Id, the two Egos are snoring away. Because our guard is down, our subconscious thoughts, wants, desires, and fears are allowed to surface and present in the way of dreams. I believe we can learn a lot about who we are and what we want through our dreams. I don’t necessarily follow the interpretation school that says “a baby represents the future”, etc. but I do believe if we analyze our dreams we can find deeper and relevant meaning.