Interpreting & Understanding Dreams
Strephon Kaplan-Williams says in his book Dream Working (1991), “The interpretation…does not start after the dream report, but before it.” He believes that we know what our dreams mean long before we have them. After all, the dream is made up of your own personal symbols and personal language of your innermost unconscious self.
The first and foremost necessity for interpreting and understanding your dreams is to learn your personal language of inner symbols, concepts and ideas. This means making a dictionary for yourself so that when the object again appears in a new dream, you might know its meaning. This is done by observing the same item in many dreams and observing what the object means in the dream situation and in daily life. Creating this dictionary for yourself will make understanding your dreams easier. It is helpful to look up definitions in a published dream dictionary, but realize that your own personal symbols override those in any published volume. The dream dictionaries may actually be the personal symbols for someone else's inner landscape, namely the author of the book. You must write your own dream dictionary book if you are to become a serious oneironaut.