Dreams

By Reuven Kotleras on July 10, 2023

Guest blogger Reuven Kotleras is a profoundly gifted ex-child and polymath. He has published professionally on European political history, Eurasian economic development, epistemology of science, and mathematical logic, among other topics. His skills include decision analysis, organizational design, and strategic foresight. He also is a poet, pianist, runner, and dog-lover.

Dreams

I have had vivid dreams all my life. I write them down when I can. I used to be compelled to write them down, but my psychomotor overexcitability (OE) has diminished over time. Still, my dreams tell me what I'm thinking, that I don't know that I'm thinking, and they are a motor to drive me.

I used to use principally Freudian symbolic interpretation, which worked for me at the time, in the sense of helping me to make sense of the dreams that made sense to me, since only the dreamer can tell if an interpretation is correct. Ever since certain issues got more or less resolved, I find Jungian interpretation also to be useful, not in any systematic way dealing with archetypes or collective unconscious, but in the sense that according to Jung, the most important part of understanding dreams is the feelings that animate them and that they leave you with.

Sometimes I wake up and just think about that, instead of writing them down, but I need to write them down more, if only not to forget what emerges from them. Also as Freud pointed out, the most significant parts of dreams are the parts you don't remember, and when I write them down (or maybe type them up), I just end up "remembering" more of the dream, and it doesn't matter whether they are artefacted free-associations or not, because what is important is that they have come to consciousness.

If people are interested, I can post some examples. But I've been promising Patty a blog post on something for a couple of weeks, and I see lots of blog posts are pretty short, so I'm going to end this one here and send it before I think of an excuse why I have to continue it later; because the first blog post is the hardest.