Sunday, June 10, 2001		Dream theme

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.

— Victor Hugo

LOVE being the greatest need of man, to dream of it in different manners and situations is not uncommon. As love has its different forms it is also personified through different people.

For instance, the love for parents, for peers, friends, lover, etc. Basically, dreams of loving people or objects denote satisfaction with the present environment and prevailing relationships. One the other hand, it also reflects a lack of it, thus portraying a desire and wish fulfillment tendency.

Most theologies lay more stress on sex in dreams. So is it with Hindu theology. That is a field we shall discuss another time. But certain examples of love in dreams are inferred through the resulting feelings of happiness. Such as on dreaming of sitting in your mother’s lap, or playing happily with your brothers and sisters. Such love dreams which result in a feeling of happiness and fulfilment are interpreted as being very favourable for the dreamer. To dream of being happy in your house is again a dream of love wherein it reflects your satisfaction with your relationships within the family environment. To dream of loving your husband or wife as per the Swapna Pradeep shall bring forth lots of luck and gain for the dreamer. Should the dreamer, on the other hand, dream that his love is not reciprocated it predicts conflicting situations in the near future for the dreamer where the decision-making is going to be very difficult.

As per Western theology, to dream of being filled with a sense of fulfillment with the love of others shall get you success in personal affairs and give you contentment and freedom from anxieties of life. Fortune could smile on you for a while.

Psychoanalytically, representation of love as an emotion in our dreams can be represented in a more extreme manner than in our everyday life. In dreams our barriers are lowered as the defense system is not active, thus giving freedom to our expression of love.

Thus in dreams we give more importance to the emotion expressed rather than the symbol. For instance, take the case of a young boy who in his dreams always used to end up as a hero in his mother’s eyes, while his father used to come out as a weak person. This used to disturb him as in real life his father was his idol whom he would try and imitate in every mannerism. This dream in truth did not reflect his lack of love for his father, but rather an oedipus complex within the child for his mother. The reason why he tried to imitate his father in real life was to win the love his mother showed for his father. This was also the reason for his dream in which he ended being a hero figure for the mother and the father a weakling.

Then there is another very common variety of dream wherein the dreamer dreams of being loved by a person who does not actually love him, such as a classmate or a hero/heroine. These are simply wish-fulfilment dreams.

On the other hand, dreams of self- satisfaction are reflected in dreams of being surrounded by the love of your own people.