If you are interested in working with your dreams, you have probably looked up the meaning of a dream symbol online or in a dream dictionary at some point.
This is obviously a starting point for many of us.
But although some dream symbols, especially archetypal ones, can mean one thing (for example: water in our dream world often does stand in for emotions), not all symbols have the same one meaning for each and every person.
Believing that there is “one” meaning for symbols is very misleading and can be even harmful if you do feel attracted to the inner world and pay attention to it. This week, I want to talk a little more in detail about this and share something that might help you understand the language of your own dreams better.
What Erich Fromm, the great psychoanalyst, has to say about dreams and dream symbols.
Many years ago, when I first started learning about dream work and began paying attention to my dreams, one of the first books I read was Erich Fromm’s The Forgotten Language. In the book, Fromm tells us that “symbolic language is a language in which inner experiences, feelings and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world.” This is a simple way to think about dreams. Our emotions, our struggles and hopes, are converted into a picture or an event. Our innermost feelings and complexes are reflected in the people that populate our dreamworld.
In the book, Fromm talks about different kinds of symbols. An important one in terms of understanding dreams is what he calls the accidental symbol. He explains it like this:
“Let us assume that someone has had a saddening experience in a certain city; when he hears the name of that city, he will easily connect the name with a mood of sadness, just as he would connect it with a mood of joy had his experience been a happy one.” Obviously, in this case, there is nothing inherently in the nature of the city that is joyful or sad. It’s our own association that is important.
In dreams, accidental symbols are common.
Dreams of a city, for example, might mean different things depending on your association with that city.
We might find that we are dreaming of being in a particular city or maybe just see the name of the city in our dreams. If we ask ourselves why this place appeared in our dreams that specific night, we might find, as Fromm says, that “we had fallen asleep in a mood similar to the one symbolized by the city.”
So, this means that Eiffel Tower and Paris in one person’s dream might convey the conventional “romantic” and “in-love” meaning. But for another person, who has had their luggage stolen in Paris, it would convey an entirely different meaning.
Understanding that a lot of the symbols that appear in our dreams are personal to us helps us listen to them more intimately. They underline the fact that dream workers tell us that the only way to verify whether something in a dream’s interpretation is true for us is through our own feeling of aha.
No outside dictionary can accurately tell you the meaning of the symbols in your dream. While you can look at their suggestions and some might ring true, there will be times when your own meaning is completely different.
In a different but related way, different people in my life often stand in for different aspects of my own self in the dream. You might find that too. A specific friend might represent the task-focused, hard-nailed part of yourself. Your thoughtful brother might in your dream might symbolize your own positive inner masculine.
These are personal pictures, personal players on the stage of your dreamworld.
So, what are the accidental symbols showing up in your dreams? Remember, you are the final judge for your own inner world.
Leave a Reply