Understand your dreams

Even when you don’t understand the symbols in your dream, you can still learn something by analyzing your dream patterns. I recently read a very interesting dream study that analyzed more than 200 dreams and identified 5 dream types that almost all dreams fall into. Even more interesting, the study explained how as dreamers make psychological progress, their dreams move through these 5 dream types.

I’m excited to tell you what I learned from this very interesting piece of research (“Dream Content Corresponds With Dreamer’s Psychological Problems and Personality Structure and With Improvement in Psychotherapy: A Typology of Dream Patterns in Dream Series of Patients in Analytical Psychotherapy” by Christian Roesler), because to me it really drove home the importance of dream journaling to help track dreams over time. Full disclosure, I’m not a psychologist or therapist, but I do love dream journaling and reading about what psychologists have to say about dreams! What I read in this dream study absolutely rang true for what I’ve noticed in my own dreams, and I think it can help all of us better understand our dreams.

Jungian psychology of dreams

Before I get to the 5 types of dreams the study identified, a little background information is needed. This study talks about a Jungian approach to dreams. (If you’re not familiar with the term, Jungian just means that it’s based on the work of psychologist Carl Jung). In Jungian psychology, the goal is to help people become their whole true self (a process Jung calls individuation). Part of the process of individuation is accepting the entirety of who you are instead of pushing aspects of yourself that you consider undesirable out of the conscious mind (things you know about) and into the unconscious mind (things you don’t know about or don’t remember). When you’re working on becoming whole, you’re working on bringing your conscious and unconscious together (Jung calls this integration). If you’ve heard of the term shadow work some of this probably sounds familiar, because the concept of shadow work comes from Jungian psychology. This background is important, because when I use the word “progress” in this article, what I mean is progress towards becoming your whole true self. This can include progress with mental health symptoms if that’s something you’re struggling with (it was for the therapy patients whose dreams were used in this study).

It may also be helpful to know two additional things about a Jungian approach to dreams. First, the purpose of dreams is to help bring what was unconscious into the conscious in order to strike a balance between them. Second, there are multiple “levels” to dreams; on one level, a dream can be about the real-life people and things that appear in the dream, and on another level, everyone and everything in the dream can represent different aspects of the dreamer.

The 5 types of dreams

Okay, with that background in mind, let’s talk about the five dream patterns identified in the dream study. (FYI, for the remainder of this article I’ve simplified information from the dream study and adapted it with a focus on dream journaling while trying to stay true to the underlying ideas.)

Dream Type 1 – Outside Observer. In the dream there isn’t really a “you”; you’re just watching as an outside observer like it’s a story about someone else.
Dream Type 2 – You’re Threatened. In the dream you feel powerless in the face of a threat.
Dream Type 3 – You Receive a Task. You’re given a task to do, and you might not feel up to it. Note that the task comes from a source outside of you in this dream type.
Dream Type 4 – You’re Going Somewhere. You’re going somewhere, or you’re trying to go somewhere, even if you don’t know where you’re going or you’re struggling to get there.
Dream Type 5 – Connecting With Others. You’re connecting or communicating with other people in the dream, or you’re trying to. (Note that the “connection” could also be sexual or hostile, so a dream that you’re trying to punch someone else would also fall in this category.)

These dream types probably sound pretty familiar, but let’s work through a few examples.

Example Dream Type 1 – Outside Observer. A woman sits in the living room reading a book. You’re not in the dream.
Example Dream Type 2 – You’re Threatened. You’re sitting in the living room reading a book when suddenly an earthquake shakes the room.
Dream Type 3 – You Receive a Task. You’re sitting in the living room reading a book because you need to find a particular passage in the book. (The classic dream of having to take a test that you haven’t studied for falls into this dream type, too; the task you’ve been given is taking the test.)
Dream Type 4 – You’re Going Somewhere. You are sitting in the living room reading a book and then decide that you need to go to the library, so you walk outside towards the bus stop.
Dream Type 5 – Connecting With Others. You arrive at the library and attempt to get the librarian’s attention so you can ask her a question.

Most dreams fall into at least one of these dream types, and plenty of dreams fall into more than one dream type. For example, if you dream that you need to find a passage in a book, so you drive to the library and attempt to ask the librarian a question that is a type 3, 4, and 5 dream.

How knowing the 5 dream types can help you understand your dreams

So, now that we understand the five types of dreams, why does the dream type matter? Because changes in the type of dreams that you’re having can indicate improved wellbeing and progress towards becoming psychologically whole (your whole true self).

In this dream study of therapy patients, the psychologist found that at first patients tended to have similar types of dreams repeatedly, but then an important “transformative” dream happened and things began to change. Patients who were making progress in therapy also started to have dreams that progressed to higher number dream types. For example, someone who had a lot of dreams about being threatened (type 2), progressed and began to have more dreams about receiving a task (type 3). On a personal note, when my dreams begin to show me new things (or new parts of myself), I sometimes “go back” to a lower number dream type and then progress upwards again. Progress certainly isn’t linear in my experience!

Photo of woman in dress laying in field with sun streaming down.

This particular bit of research really stood out to me because before reading it, dream journaling had helped me notice patterns in my dreams. In particular, I noticed that I would repeatedly have a few dreams with threatening figures in them, and then I would have a series of dreams about travelling. (I guess dreams about receiving a task didn’t stand out to me as much, but I will be on the lookout for them now!) When I began to understand this pattern, it provided me with a sense of hope in progress even when I didn’t understand what the dream symbols meant or what the dream was trying to tell me or I didn’t understand the dream. Understanding even this small part of the pattern of my dream types also helped me to make connections between my dreams which aided my overall ability to understand dreams. Perhaps most importantly, when I began to understand the pattern of my dreams, I knew that when I dreamt of a threatening figure in a dream that the figure was likely to slowly transform over a series of dreams and turn out to be not so scary. In the process, I began to understand that threatening figures were simply aspects of myself that initially felt scary to confront. Once I understood this, dreams of threatening figures began to resolve more and more quickly because I was able to sit with the dream in the morning and recognize that my fear was real and needed to be felt, but that it was also likely misplaced fear. For these reasons, I believe understanding the dream types and patterns of your dreams can be an extremely beneficial addition to a dream journaling practice. Knowing how to identify “transformative” dreams is also helpful, but we’ll talk more about that shortly.

How to use the 5 dream types & your dream journal to understand your dreams

If you want to use what you’ve learned about dream types in your dream journal, I have two suggestions.

First, make a note of the dream type number(s) near the date in your dream journal and circle it. This will help you track your progress and also help you identify dreams that might belong to the same “story arc.” If you dream about a threatening animal and later dream about a threatening man, you may not initially identify these dreams as being potentially connected. However, if you’ve marked them both as type 2 dreams in your dream journal, you can scan your dream journal entries for type 2 dreams and then reflect on potential connections between these dreams to help you understand them better.

Second, watch for potentially transformative dreams and mark them with a letter “T” near the date. Transformative dreams are dreams that indicate a shift within a dream type or a shift to a new dream type. These dreams indicate progress. To help you identify transformative dreams, here are a few tips from the dream study we’ve been talking about:

Symbols that repeatedly appeared in transformative dreams in the study included: babies and children, celebratory dancing, successful movement through narrow places, and the emotion of fear transforming to the emotion of disgust. (I’ve definitely noticed babies and fear turned to disgust in some of my transformative dreams.)
You’ve had a series of dreams where the same thing happens repeatedly, but then the dream is a little different. For example, you’ve had dreams about a man chasing you, but suddenly you have a dream where you realize he isn’t dangerous and you stop running. Or, you’ve had dreams about travelling somewhere and something always prevents you from making it, but then you dream of arriving at your destination.
For dreams where you feel threatened (type 2), if the threat changes from natural disasters and animals to humans, that’s progress within a type 2 dream.

On a personal note, I’ve noticed that animal symbols in my dreams are commonly later replaced by humans as I progress through something my dreams are working on. For example, I dreamt that I needed to take a puppy with a liver-related problem to the vet and then later dreamt that an old woman healed herself by cutting out her own liver and then immediately growing it back. That was a wild dream!

I’m excited to put what I’ve learned about the five dream types into my own dream journaling practice, and I hope that learning about the five dreams types will help you better understand your own dreams, too!

Photos for this article were created with Adobe Firefly.