Recently a client who is an avid collector of stuffed animals shared a recurring dream that was unsettling him. In the dream, he was relaxing in his sumptuous home when a noticed that a prized stuffed otter seemed to be breathing. He tried to ignore it, but the more he ignored it, the more alive it seemed to become, until it was arching its back and stretching like a cat.

When we dream of animals we are reflecting on aspects of ourselves that are unconscious and instinctual, and that we perhaps try to keep hidden as we feel that they may be difficult to control. When we dream of a stuffed animal we are considering a part of our unconscious self that we think we have controlled and neutralised so that it no longer poses a threat to us.

However, when we dream of a stuffed animal coming to life, we feel that some instinctive behaviour that we thought we had under control is beginning to take on a life of its own again. In this case of an otter in a case, it suggests a need to be more playful and altruistic when exploring the flowing waters of feelings and emotions.

This dream of taxidermic trauma is similar to the dreams about bombs, where potential energy is available for the dreamer to positively change some aspect of their life that they are repressing, or have been forced to repress. By welcoming this instinctual energy and using it to go with the flow, my client brought a valuable aspect of himself back to life.

This week I have been working with Big Brother and  analysing the dream diaries of the BB9 Housemates. Exploring the housemate’s dreams has been absolutely fascinating and has illuminated a lot about their unconscious behaviour.

The Housemates kept dream diaries for a couple of weeks before entering the house and many of the events that have taken place during BB9 were anticipated by their dreams.

You can read some of the Dream Diary analysis at Dream On 1 and Dream On 2.

A symbol is a thing or an image that is a definite representation of an indefinable meaning that cannot be expressed by our conscious awareness. But a symbol is only a symbol. It doesn’t contain any meaning or deeper truth, it only reflects it. Like how a mirror represents our face but cannot smile or cry on its own. Symbols acquire their symbolic value through the awareness of meaning that they evoke in us. Illuminated by our dreams, they tangibly reflect back our search for meaning.

Symbols may seem like an abstract concept but we are constantly surrounded by them, from swooshes to golden arches, from partially eaten fruit to black mouse ears, from crescents to crosses. We become immersed in symbolic shorthand and frequently begin to value the symbols more than the meaning that they originally represented. Our once meaningful and evocative symbols often become meaningless and empty signs, hollow designer label shells of the significance that they once reflected.

Many academics and marketeers study semiotics, the science of signs and symbols, in an attempt to understand our behavioural patterns and deeper motivations. But as our semioticians rationalise our symbols, they quickly become reduced to deconstructed definitions that simply state ‘this means that’, and so lose their richer meaning. A bull in a wide green pasture probably means something different to us than a bull in a china shop, but is usually semiotically reduced to just some bull.

But semiotics only gets half the picture; it only analyses the symbol and not the space around the symbol. The space around it is what gives the true context and meaning to the symbol. A symbol without a space is an empty ritual and as a reflection of meaning, a symbol is only half the story. It has no significance. It is in the space around those symbols where we find meaning. Our unconscious awareness goes beyond the half truths of semiotics and works in the holotic space where the symbol and the meaningful space around it remain connected.

In our dreams, the spaces are as important as the symbols, because without the spaces, symbols cannot attract and reflect meaning. It’s like when we know we are really beginning to learn or understand a foreign language because we can hear the gaps between the words rather than the individual words themselves. In the same way, the space between two people is never empty. It is filled with meaning in their gestures, their vocal tone, their body shapes. It cannot be isolated to either one. It is their connection, their relationship.

And even more amazing than the epic unconscious dreamscapes that we create so easily is the fact that we all dream. Each one of us. Every night. It’s a natural process that requires no entrance fee, no monthly subscription, no expensive stimulants, no easy payment starter interest rates. All we need is a quiet space and the opportunity to close our eyes for a while.

But, many of us are utterly convinced that we don’t dream. People often proudly proclaim ‘I just don’t dream’. Or ‘I don’t have any time for dreams, I’m too busy’. Usually too busy chasing a dream in waking life that somehow is never fulfilled. However, we all dream. We have to. It is fundamental to our psychological health and physiological well being. When deprived of dream rich R.E.M. sleep we rapidly become confused and unable to cope with the simplest tasks in our waking reality.

When people say ‘I just don’t dream’, what they are really saying is that ‘I just don’t remember my dreams’. They just don’t remember the amazing experiences that they create for themselves every night. Although not remembering our sleeping dreams may seem to be of little or no consequence, the same thing often happens in waking life. We forget our dreams. We start off with great dreams of who we want to be, the wonderful people who will become our companions in this great adventure, the wealth that we will acquire and the stories that we will tell of who we became and the great deeds that we accomplished.

Then a few years later we are asking ourselves questions such as ‘Why am I doing this job?’ ‘Where is the meaning in what I do every day?’ ‘Why am I doing something that seems to have no real purpose?’ When that starts to happen, it is a sign that we are forgetting our dreams and as we do, we begin to become confused about our identity, our meaning and our purpose. Our dreams and our reality have diverged so much that there seems to be no way forward.

Pablo Picasso remarked that ‘All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up’. In the same way, we are all born as dreamers. Our challenge is to keep dreaming as we grow and to bring our dreams to life in our waking realities. But because of the pressures and the routines of waking life, we routinely ignore the messages of our dreams and leave them unexplored and forgotten.