We all dream perhaps fi ve or six times each night, yet we rarely remember all of these dreams. you may have had the experience of waking up after a dream and thinking ‘Wow! i’ll never forget that...

We all dream perhaps fi ve or six times each night, yet we rarely remember all of these dreams. you may have had the experience of waking up after a dream and thinking ‘Wow! i’ll never forget that dream!’ only to fi nd, in the morning, that your memory of the contents of the dream is gone. By keeping a pad of paper and a pencil by your bed for a week, and trying to write down dream images as soon as you awaken, you will probably increase your memory of your dreams. after a week of doing this, look at what sorts of dreams you have had. do any common themes emerge? can you relate these themes to something that is happening in your life? For example, one of Mh’s students reported a series of dreams in which she was searching for something: for her hotel room in an unknown city, for her handbag at home, for someone to give her directions to a concert hall, etc. she immediately related this to her difficulty in choosing a programme of study at university, and was a little surprised. ‘i didn’t realize it was bothering me so much,’ she said. ‘But if i keep dreaming about this, maybe it is and i should make a choice.’ in exploring your dreams,

It’s useful to keep in mind two points: first, most dreams mean nothing (the ‘daily residue’, as Freud called them), and one isolated dream probably has little meaning. second, even if dreams have deeper meanings, Freud (and most therapists) would say that self-analysis is generally neither productive nor advisable.