Blog Review: Dream Journal

Featured here is not a review of a single blog but rather a collection of blogs, dream blogs (also known as dream logs) at a site named Dream Journal. I thought it would be interesting to cover this as dreams figure in the works of Freud and Jung where interpretation of the dreams play an important role. Firstly what is interesting here and must surely be a little anxiety provoking is that the person’s dreams are displayed online, for others to see. However people willingly put their dreams on the site. Once this is done however, things start to get interesting. The dreams are stored in a database and are categorised in a number of ways such that the visitor to the site may access the dreams according to a number of themes. Indeed I was somewhat bemused by the sheer breadth of themes that were available – music, fun, science fiction, tooth loss (mentioned by Freud in the Interpretation of Dreams on several occasions), location, emotions, the elements (including categories for rainbows, tornadoes and earthquakes!), problem solving, flying and so on. The dreams are even rated according to lucidity (for instance ‘no clue they were dreaming’) and cohesiveness. I was particularly interested in tooth loss as it featured prominently in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’. This search term retrieved 628 results! I looked at one of the dreams that was described. The number of times that the dream had been seen by visitors was indicated immediately above the title of the dream as were a number of other measures mentioned above including lucidity and cohesiveness. There was even an overall rating for the dream! This particular dream was interesting to read, with gaps missing in the narrative representing the difficulty that a person might have in remembering the entire dream on waking. Navigation through the site to other types of dream was simple enough.

Readers are able to leave either comments or interpretations about the person’s dream. Here one obvious problem is that the interpretations may impact on the individual and those interpreting may not have the training nor any knowledge of the person who is dreaming. Indeed Jung maintained that it was the person themselves who was best able to interpret the meaning of their dream symbols! There are also dreams in which the dreamer themselves has provided a tentative interpretation.

There is another section on dream symbols which seems to be an extension of the themes above. What is interesting here is that a quantitative breakdown of the frequency of different themes in the dreams is provided. Indeed as of 6.2.9 ‘friends’ was the most frequent theme in the activity of the day, week, month and year.

This is a novel site which effectively contains an aggregate of dream blogs and a ‘dream community’ for those with an interest in this area.

Responses

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Disclaimer

The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.