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Is it true that dreams can be a release for subconsious desires? Or is it some Freudian stuff... Mostly because I have had some very strange things that correlate with a lot of things with my life. Certain symbols or themes keeps popping up in my dreams and I have had some pretty trippy stuff go on in my dreams but I have no idea if its a coincidence or a pattern

Freud's main point in The Interpretation of Dreams was not so much that dreams exist for the purpose of releasing desires, or other emotions, per se. Rather that they are a process during which the internal resolution of psychic conflicts (or, as we would say today, processing of new and contradictory information) which occurs constantly in our subconscious, may manifest itself in obscured form to our self. His practices were very much outside the scientific method, and his faith in literal symbolism is frankly embarrassing. But who would dispute that dreaming is a process by which our mind devotes itself entirely to its subconscious work? Freud just (and he wasn't the first of course) took the next step, claiming that not only do dreams have purpose (and therefore meaning), but that we can pursue that meaning, to enrich our understanding of ourselves. So yeah, nothing wrong with thinking deeply about what's going on behind your eyes when you're asleep, especially when it calls for your attention. You're the one living in your mind, you'll know best what you felt and what subtleties might lie behind gross symbolism. But also, don't get too caught up in it (: that soykaf's a jungle and there's no such thing as "the answer" or even "an answer" ... it's the act of thinking about dreams that enriches you, not any outcome of that thinking.

>>459 >or is it some freudian stuff just because it might be connected to freud, it doesn't mean it's invalid. In layman's terms, dreams are a encrypted version of things your direct consciousness(or even unconsciousness) struggles with. There are many patterns in psychoanalysis that depict which dreams mean which, but since I'm a glitterboy, I haven't gotten around to directly read into them. There's a well known example, forgot who made it, with a guy dreaming about breaking into his friend's fridge and eating her food(=wanting to have sex with her). Essentially, dreams are just a way of your brain dealing with unpleasant/unwanted/restrained thoughts that you can't deal with upfront, so they get scrambled into pictures that you can think about without feeling endangered. Of course, you have to take the images you dream with a grain of salt, and also the explanations

The contemporary scientific view don't credit the ideas of Jungian psychoanalysis but, if you want to believe in it, it will be true for you (see "self-fulfilling prophecy"). The idea o unconscious mind, and the Freud separation of Ego/SuperEgo/Id is also not used anymore by scientific circles. Instead, they (cognitive science) talk about heuristic mechanisms, default-mode networks, neurotransmitters (choline, serotonin), neuroreceptors (Nicotinic, AMPA, NMDA) and, specifically in dreams, about brainwaves (theta waves). Jungian psychoanalysis is much based on what he calls archetypes, that's based on many of ancient symbolism (Jung like alchemy symbolism because of that). He also talks about collective unconsciousness and panpsychism. You might have a look on those terms on wikipedia, you may like it. Just to finish: I'm not saying that everything that's no scientific is wrong and I'm ignoring spirituality here (although I perceive it as mimetic behaviorism). The point is that these things are not falsifiable, so they fall into the realm of belief and philosophy.

I think if dreams recur something about it is important to the dreamer.