What Your Dreams Mean

Feb. 3, 2007 — -- They can be startlingly vivid and real, or fragmented and bizarre.

Whatever form they take, dreams can reveal a lot about what a person really thinks.

"Dreams give us an X-ray of our unconscious. They show us, particularly when we're at life's passages or turning points, what's going on inside, what we're having trouble coping with," said Alan Siegel, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied dreams for nearly 30 years.

Lisa Oppenheim has had the same dream all her life. She recently embarked on a quest to find out what it means.

"I am on these jugs, these clay pots that are suspended in space and darkness," she said. "Beneath me there's a sea … there are killer whales in the sea. And I need to jump from jug to jug [to] avoid falling in the water."

Oppenheim has had the dream whenever she was about to move to a new home or a new city. While she doesn't know exactly what causes the dream, she has a theory about why it occurs when she's going to relocate.

"It's my subconscious preparing itself for transition," she said. "And to me, at this point in my life, it's more comforting than scary."

Experts say Oppenheim's situation is common. Disturbing dreams often occur around major life events: moves, marriage, divorce, the death of a loved one or pressure at work.

Siegel believes stressful or upsetting dreams can be a sign of what's buried deep inside the mind.

"Dreams are important to survival. They are crucial to the balance of our psyche. … They help us work out conflicts that we're having every single day," he said. "They go to the cutting edge of what's stressful, what's bothering us and what we're working out in our lives."

Siegel said that dreams can provide guidance if people understand them. Psychologists recommend recording dreams in a journal so that they can be examined for clues later.

"The two best techniques are to focus on the emotion in the dream, and that's often the most important part, and just ask yourself what in my waking life feels like this," said Deirdre Barrett, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.