WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE DREAMS
I want to start my presentation with a question: Why
do we search for meaning in our dreams? The answer
seems obvious to me. Let's think about an existence
where you are not prisoners of the present. What I
mean by that is you can be in the past, you can be in
the future, you can be in any place you want to be. In
this existence, you can see objects as detailed as you
see in this world, you can hear voices as clearly as you
hear them in this world, and you can feel things you
touch just as you do in this world. There is an existence
just like that, and it is called a dream.
Of course, such an existence makes us question the
reality we are living in. There is a quote by Chuang-Tzu
on this subject that I want to mention. One day, after
he woke up from a dream in which he saw himself as a
butterfly, he said, "I do not know whether I was then a
man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a
butterfly, dreaming I am a man."
If we look at the question I asked at the beginning of
my presentation—why do we search for meaning in our
dreams?—we are searching for meaning behind our
dreams because, as I mentioned, dreams are gates that
open to new worlds. It is like experiencing a different
existence from the one we experience when we are
awake.
Today, I am going to talk about perhaps the most
interesting subject that we experience every day in our
sleep. Although scientists can't completely explain
dreams, they can still explain a lot about them. But
before mentioning those explanations and how dreams
are created, let's look at the history of dreams. The
history of dreams goes back to around 3100 BC. We see
the first trace of dreams with the Sumerians, and the
second trace goes back to around 2000 BC in ancient
Egypt.
The thing that is common about the traces we found in
both Sumerian and ancient Egyptian civilizations is that,
as expected, they did not approach dreams in a
scientific way; instead, they approached dreams in a
spiritual way. Let me give an example of how scientists
interpret the traces they found in these civilizations.
They estimate that someone who saw a family member
who had passed away in his dream related his dream as
a gift from their god. This kind of belief was common
until Sigmund Freud.
Sigmund Freud is the first person who analyzed dreams
in a scientific way. Although some scientists emphasize
that Freud did not analyze dreams scientifically, the
majority of scientists disagree with this idea. Freud's
analysis is evaluated as scientific because, before him,
people thought dreams were related to spiritual things
but Freud said that dreams are related to our brain and
reveal our suppressed desires and wishes. And mjorty
of the scientists agree with Freud. And I want to give
some examples of common dreams that people see.
The first dream is seeing somebody or something
chasing you. Scientists interpret this dream in different
ways, but I want to share the three most important
ones.
The first way they interpret the chasing dream is that if
the thing chasing the owner of the dream is an animal
or a monster, it means that the person who sees that
dream is trying to suppress their anger or wishes.
The second way they interpret the chasing dream is
that if the owner of the dream is chased by someone
mysterious, it might be a recurring traumatic incident
again in the patient's dream.
The third way they interpret the chasing dream is that
if the owner of the dream is chased by someone of the
opposite gender, it may mean that the person who
sees that dream is trying to suppress their feelings for
someone of the opposite gender.
The second dream is about losing a tooth. Scientists
interpret this dream in different ways, but I want to
share the three most important ones.
The first way they interpret losing a tooth in a dream is
that the dreamer may be worried about his or her
appearance.
The second way they interpret the losing a tooth dream
is that the owner of the dream may regret something
that he or she said.
The third way they interpret losing a tooth in a dream is
that teeth are related to power in people's
subconscious minds, and losing them may mean that
the owner of the dream feels that he is becoming
weak.The third dream is flying in your dream.This may
mean that
