To dream or not to scream

February 12, 2006 4:03 AM

Recurring Dreamfilter: I am standing in a tall building - sometimes a hotel with friends or family, sometimes an office building with work colleagues. There is a noise - a shake - and suddenly the building starts to collapse.

Before -that event- my recurring dreams were about flying and nuclear detonation. How many others have gained this new dream to their repertoire?

posted by Neale to religion & philosophy (17 comments total)

Well you know that according to Freud, dreams about flying are really about sex. And so are dreams about tall buildings. Or explosions.
posted by sour cream at 4:08 AM on February 12, 2006

Where were you on 9/11/01?
posted by Xurando at 5:08 AM on February 12, 2006

Dreams have no connection with the future or anything else. Don't attach any meaning to them. End of story.
posted by madman at 5:13 AM on February 12, 2006

I have that dream now. I had it a few times a week for the first year or so after 9/11, now it's tapered off some.
posted by jessamyn at 6:37 AM on February 12, 2006

Dreams about flying are related to not getting enough air when you are sleeping. I had mild asthma when I was in elementary school and had flying, falling and weird long-distance jumping dreams really really often.
posted by vanoakenfold at 7:07 AM on February 12, 2006

Freud is wrong, but so is Madman, I think. Dreams obvioiusly come from somewhere - and that somewhere is YOU. In a dream state your brain creates images and thoughts in a non-random way, so understanding a dream is just a good way to better understand yourself. Madman is correct that they have nothing to do with the future though.

Yours sounds like anxiety related to your job, your friendships, or, as someone else said, terrorism.
posted by crapples at 7:26 AM on February 12, 2006

Sounds to me like you fear you are loosing, or have lost, control over your affairs, possibly both within your family as well as work. Maybe you feel you never had control.

Mind, this probably isn't a surface thought, and it is mostly always the case for everyone in some regards. Maybe just coming up for you more. The world is kinda crazy just now, you know?

At least, this is what I see in that kind of dream.
posted by Goofyy at 7:47 AM on February 12, 2006

According to the book 1001 Dreams, by Jack Altman:

Building: Dream buildings often represent different aspects of the self, perhaps indicating the dreamer's concern about some weakness or failing. However, a building on fire, although an image of destruction, may have a positive meaning. As a symbol of liberation, a building fire could urge dreamers to eliminate dead wood blocking new paths to progress.

Earthquake: An earthquake may symbolzie the eruption of pent-up sexual passions or, for Jungians, dark repressed forces in the unconscious that threaten to engulf and devastate the dreamer's conscious life. However, it may also suggest the liberation of creative energies.

Of course, there are as many interpretations as there are dreams, but these are some things to think about. Only you can correctly interpret your dream as representing aspects of your life.
posted by Roger Dodger at 10:20 AM on February 12, 2006

I also gained this dream after 9/11.
posted by mwhybark at 10:20 AM on February 12, 2006

More from the book:

Flying unaided: Dreams of flying through the air may convey a sensation of ease and elation. Wholly detached from peroccupations of the material world dreamers may feel on an exalted spiritual plane, at one with the universe. Some people reporting such dreams claim to have felt a sense of being in touch with their own immortality. Flying may also point to a need to get your emotional bearing by taking an overview of the many aspects of your life.

Mushroom cloud: The baleful, doom-laden nuclear bomb cloud is a terrifying image of utter destruction. However, its mushroom form may also represent regeneration: mushrooms thrive in an environment of decomposed matter, life growing from death.
posted by Roger Dodger at 10:25 AM on February 12, 2006

vanoakenfold, that is really interesting! Where did you hear that? I am asthmatic as well, though only mild now, but as a kid (elementary through at least middle school) it was worse, and I had long-distance-jumping dreams too.
posted by librarina at 10:31 AM on February 12, 2006

the best dream analysis i've encountered is Jungian based, and in essence it holds that dreams can only be interpreted by the dreamer, sometimes they may need assistance through the process. Dreams are unique enough, in detail, and in response to external stimuli that trying to ascribe 1 meaning to all dreams about X is useless.
posted by edgeways at 11:29 AM on February 12, 2006

It could be that That Event touched (or became?) one of your deep-seated fears, and your brain is expressing this through dreams.

I had a few nightmares after that, too, but they all involved being a passenger in an out-of-control airplane. Since then, my late-night horror movies have gone back to the usual fare: tornadoes, hurricanes, and massively powerful bombs being set off in crowded places.
posted by cmyk at 1:22 PM on February 12, 2006

I still have that dream sometimes as part of my lovely post-9/11 trauma.
posted by Uccellina at 2:08 PM on February 12, 2006

Following up on edgeways, how do you feel during these dreams? Are you terrified, strangely calm, worried about others? Does the building feel like home, or someplace you'd rather escape from?

I often find my dreams are useful in telling me how I really feel, but only if I pay attention to them as soon as I wake up. I've had all the same dreams you have, but they don't always feel the same way. Sometimes flying is incredibly liberating, and sometimes I have to concentrate on it to keep going and it gets exhausting. Sometimes I have to fly away in order to escape danger, and sometimes people are trying to pull me back down to earth.

I've never had a 9/11-type dream, but I've had plenty of different sudden catastrophe dreams. The image could be riding in a bus going over a cliff, or the flash of light and the mushroom cloud that they scared us about in school. What matters is that I always have the same reaction: "well, that's it, I knew the good times couldn't last, now life is going to be hell and I'm not prepared and I'd better get serious again."

You don't need to get into some speculative theory of sexual symbolism in order to figure out those kinds of dreams. They're just your mind working through how you feel about what happened to you the day before. The specific images aren't really very important.
posted by fuzz at 3:00 PM on February 12, 2006

I never had that kind of dream (that I can recall) until after 9/11. Now I have a recurring one very similar to yours maybe once every couple of months, down from nightly right after that day.

Something I've never understood - if dreams are so personal that only the dreamer can interpret them, why do so many people report similar dreams?
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:02 AM on February 13, 2006

Dreams don't have to be meaningful, although they sometimes are. If I have a bad dream that I remember I may say, "Wow, that was an awful dream!" and let it go. Most of the time I find dreams are seemingly no more than a device to entertain your brain while you are sleeping, granted you and your brain are one and the same. In any case, I don't think dreams are anything to worry about. Enjoy them or dismiss them, but I wouldn't look to dreams for any startling revelation.
posted by phewbertie at 7:09 AM on February 14, 2006