The Rarity of True Symbols in Dreams

Abstract

This paper is a response to articles in the literature regarding symbols in dreams. While some neurology-based dream studies reject dream symbols altogether, the preponderance of material available for review accepts that dreams are frequently populated by symbols that require interpretation to be understood. In this study of my own extensive dream journals, the presence of veridical psi dreams makes it possible to rule out symbolic content in some cases.

The results of this study show that—at least from the 3,920 records reviewed here—genuine symbolic content is extremely rare. In addition, the character of symbols in the dreams reviewed is more easily understood than non-symbolic content and is not difficult to identify. This is in contrast to research that assumes all or most dreams contain some amount of symbolic content, or have no reliable means of differentiating symbolic from non-symbolic content. For this paper, it was assumed that no dreams contained any symbolically presented information unless the dreams contained clear indications that symbols were present. By doing this a distinction may be made between dream content that clearly contain symbols and those that are assumed to be symbolic by default.  Symbols that met the criteria used here can be shown to be different from traditionally accepted symbols in that they clarify—rather than obfuscate—the communication of complex ideas.