How to correctly interpret dreams to be more confident that the interpretation is accurate enough? Psychoanalysis will answer this question. Sigmund Freud, the founder of this scientific direction, developed his own system of interpreting dreams, which are part of a person’s unconscious life. It is on his theory that we will base our interpretation of dreams. You ask: “Why is it not enough to use a dream book? After all, by opening it on the desired page, you can find a clear answer, for example: “If in a dream you saw a large amount of onions, then in the future, having achieved success, you will encounter anger and envy.” A dream is the individual unconscious life of a person, hiding within itself his problems, significant moments of life, complexes, motives - his and only his. Certain elements of dreams relate to very specific events in our life, how can a dream book know about this? Can he have information about our problems with a loved one, about the peculiarities of our relationship with our parents, about what actions in our life cause us an acute feeling of guilt? Naturally not. The interpretation of dream books is limited, if not “wrong.” What steps are necessary in order to unravel the hidden meaning of your own or someone else’s dream and not make the mistake of labeling? Step 1. We break the dream into elements. It is advisable to begin the analysis of the dream by dividing the general plot into elements. Ask the person about specific details of the dream and their connections to events that have recently occurred in his life. This way you can discard less significant details about the events of the recent past, involved in the dream by the impressionability of the psyche. It is necessary to write down all the details of the dream being interpreted, since what may seem insignificant at first glance may turn out to be the most important for interpretation. This is the structure of our unconscious life. Step 2. Dreaming as the fulfillment of a wish. Freud believed that one of the functions of a dream is the fulfillment of a wish. The child’s psyche is not yet burdened with countless defenses, so the fulfillment of desires in children occurs in an obvious way: in a dream, a child defeats an enemy or eats a product forbidden by his parents. The unconscious adult does a tremendous amount of work to encrypt the meaning of dreams. Fears, problems, unfinished business, and conflicts are repressed into this part of the psyche. This repression performs a protective function, preventing the psyche from “overheating”, protecting it from unbearable anxiety about our problems, countless of which each of us has. Can you imagine what would happen if suddenly all the problems that we had accumulated throughout our lives suddenly fell upon our consciousness? This can kill even the most resilient. For one thing, it is useful to extract such problems, because to resolve them, at least you need to know about them. So, the fulfillment of desires in adults occurs in dreams in an implicit way. For example, a young man, in love with a girl and jealous of her, in a dream imagines her boyfriend as just a friend, thus indirectly embodying his own desire to be with her. What does the situation that arose in your dream give you? Even if this is the death of a person, what opportunities can it open up for you (what exactly is this person “preventing” you from realizing in life)? The main thing here is to forget about morality and open your eyes to the truth. Don't be afraid to see your aggressive, base or dangerous unconscious desires. You need to accept it as part of yourself. Not everyone will dare to admit something like this to themselves, but such recognition is the first step towards productive changes that you can implement in yourself. Step 3. Free associations. For each selected fragment of a dream, we ask the person to give the associations that this fragment evokes in him. Emphasize the following: you must say absolutely everything that comes to mind, without leaving out anything that may seem indecent, ugly, or immoral. This is where the root is most often found..