Chapter 2
I’ll see you in my dreams
The people method
Have you ever wondered how often you appear in other people’s dreams and what
roles you play in them?!! Quite a worrying thought, perhaps, but you can be
certain that you - or at least a dream character that looks and sounds like you
- stars, co-stars and appears in cameo parts in many
other dreamers’ night movies.
If you think you’re not important enough to be the stuff of other people’s
dreams, think again. How many people have you dreamed about who have been only
fleetingly a part of your life? A student from your schooldays that you hardly
knew at the time, the old lady who lived on the corner of your childhood street
(the one you never spoke to), the homeless man who sleeps at the bus stop ... frequently
the people we hardly notice with our eyes open make sure they’re seen and heard
in our dreams alongside those who annoy or inspire us and those we share our
lives with. So, now do you realise how many times you have probably appeared in
other people’s dreams?
Just as you are not responsible for anything you say or do in their dreams,
people featuring in yours are not responsible for their words or actions
either. They are there because your dreaming mind has put them there to help
you to understand more about yourself and your world.
This chapter will help you to understand your dreams more clearly by looking
at your various dream characters and the roles they play.
As always, you will get maximum benefit from these exercises if you choose
recurring dreams to work with. If people don’t make appearances in your
recurring dreams, or if you are not experiencing recurrence at the moment, the
next best category to work with is the most recent, most vivid peopled dream
you can recall. But don’t despair! Even if you have no recurring dreams and you
seem to be in a dream drought right now, just think back to ANY past dream
where other people have played a part and then follow the steps in this chapter.
STEP 1
Write a list of up to ten people who have made appearances in your
dreams. These need to be ‘real’ people or characters you recognise from life or
movies - not ‘dream characters’ such as ‘the hooded man’. Your list can include
people from a range of dreams.
Sam’s Step 1 example
Joe Gardener
Waiter at cafe down the road
Aunt Sarah
Granny
Grade 8 teacher at school
Queen Elizabeth II
Homer Simpson
Wife
STEP 2
Write a list of up to ten ‘dream characters’ that have made appearances
in your dreams. (One appearance in one dream is enough to qualify for the list.)
Sam’s Step 2 example
The hooded man in the ‘Red Stairs’ dream
The angel in my recurring dreams
Baby boy who always needs his nappy changed in my dreams
The French man who smokes a pipe in my dreams
The doctor’s receptionist in Saturday’s ‘X-Ray’ dream
STEP 3
Look again at your list of ‘real people’ (Step 1 list). Underline the
people who are NOT related to you.
Sam’s
Step 3 example
Joe Gardener
Waiter at cafe down the road
Aunt Sarah
Granny
Grade 8 teacher at school
Queen Elizabeth II
Homer Simpson
Wife
This chapter is highly practical to begin with and all is revealed towards
the end. You will learn the practicalities of how to interpret people in your
dreams and you will gain maximum insight into what your dreams reveal about you
if you carry out the practical steps in the order they are presented. So please
stick with it! Sam’s example will lead you through. All will become clear!
STEP 4
Choose a dream featuring at least one of the underlined people
from your ‘real people’ list. Write it down and give it a title.
STEP 5
Choose a dream featuring at least one of the NON-underlined people from
the ‘real people’ list. Write it down and give it a title.
STEP 6
Choose a dream featuring at least one person from your ‘dream characters’
(Step 2) list. Write it down and give it a title.
Okay, that’s most of the writing out done: now it’s time to move on to the
detective work. You might find it helpful to invest in a little address book,
one with the A-Z tags on the sides of the pages. This becomes your ‘Dream
People Dictionary’. Whenever someone appears in a dream, simply write them into
your Dream People Dictionary filed for easy reference under the first letter of
their name. This will build up into a handy reference over the years as people
pop back into your dreams from time to time. If you can work out what they mean
the first time you dream of them, you can easily use your ‘Dream People
Dictionary’ to refer to their meaning next time they appear in a dream.
STEP 7
Take all the underlined people from your Step 3 list and, without
thinking too long or hard, write down very brief answers to as many of these
questions as you can. (They will not always all be answerable and that’s okay!)
1. What
is the personality of this person (three words)?
2. How
does this person approach life (three words)?
3. When
was the last time I saw, heard of, or interacted with, this person?
4. What
were the circumstances of answer 3?
5. How
do I/ would I feel if I met this person?
6. Who
else does this person remind me of?
7. Is
there a pun or different meaning in this person’s name?
8. What
role does this person play in the world?
9. What
role does this person play in my life?
10. What
three things do I admire about this person?
11. What
three things do I dislike about this person? (You must be honest with yourself!)
12. Do I
have any unresolved feelings or business with this person? If so, what?
13. Do I
need to make peace with this person?
14. If I
were to meet this person today, what message would I like to deliver?
Sam’s Step 7 example
Joe Gardener
Q1. What is the personality of this person (three words)?
A: teasing, funny, outspoken.
Q2. How does this person approach life (three words)?
A: light-heartedly, day-by-day, takes risks.
Q3. When was the last time I saw, heard of or interacted with this person?
A: 1992.
Q4. What were the circumstances of answer 3?
A: A farewell party: he was leaving for an adventure.
Q5. How do I/ would I feel if I met this person?
A: As if I’ve changed a lot since those days.
Q6. Who else does this person remind me of?
A: Sports teacher at school.
Q7. Is there a pun or different meaning in this person’s name?
A: Gardener meaning a gardener - someone who grows plants?
Q8. What role does this person play in the world?
A: I don’t know.
Q9. What role does this person play in my life?
A: He doesn’t play a role now, but he used to make me question issues of
risk and safety.
Q10. What three things do I admire about this person?
A: Risk taking, sense of adventure, sense of fun.
Q11. What three things do I dislike about this person?
A: Makes people feel uncomfortable sometimes, superficial, challenging.
Q12. Do I have any unresolved feelings or business with this person? If so, what?
A: No. Just would like to know what happened to him.
Q13. Do I need to make peace with this person?
A: No.
Q14. If I were to meet this person today, what message would I like to
deliver?
A: "You have annoyed me many times by challenging me and not taking me
seriously, but although I’ve felt uncomfortable with you in the past, knowing
you has made me push myself out into the world more and grow in ways which have
pleased me."
It is not always possible to answer all the questions, and not all your
answers will be obviously relevant to the dream interpretation. Although Sam’s
example has been created as an illustration, you will be surprised to discover
linked themes running through your answers too. Often, when you have gone
through the process of answering all the questions, your final answer to
Question 14 will sum it all up for you quite clearly and, often, quite
surprisingly.
Sometimes your dreams will conjure up a composite person, for example:
"He seemed like my old Sunday school teacher and yet he also reminded me
of Michael from college”. If you get a composite character, apply the Step 7
questions for both people and then look for overlaps and links. You’ll probably
find most overlap in comparing your answers to question 14.
Whoever it is, the person is in your dream to persuade YOU to get the
message contained in Answer 14. This may sound strange until you understand
that:
All the people in your dreams
symbolise something about you
You dreamed them up: your dreaming mind unconsciously put them in your dream
because YOUR unconscious mind closely identifies with them or with what they
represent.
You see, who you think you are consciously, is not necessarily who you
really are unconsciously. Unconsciously there are many aspects of your self,
some blending harmoniously, some in conflict with each other deep down inside.
Your personality and approach to life is shaped by people you meet
throughout your life. Some people may inspire you,
some people may irritate you, or stir up inner conflict. Your dreams often
reflect issues, beliefs and feelings you have developed in response to these
other people in your life.
So it’s not about what another person actually is, says or does in reality,
it’s about how YOU respond to that person and how your response shapes who YOU
are, both consciously and unconsciously.
When these people appear in your dreams, they symbolise your own issues,
beliefs and feelings, the ones that ‘come up’ for you whenever you think about
these people.
STEP 8
What does your dream person symbolise to you? Use Sam’s summary as a
guide to writing out your own summary:
Sam’s summary
What Joe Gardener symbolises for
me
Joe’s personality was quite the opposite of mine when we first met. His
light-heartedness was uplifting but at the same time I felt boring in my
seriousness. His risk taking was adventurous and entertaining. I liked hearing
his stories but at the same time I felt awkward about my need for safety. I
wanted to be more like Joe but I was frightened of losing my security. Also I
didn’t want to become superficial like Joe. How could I be lighter without
losing depth? How could I experience more adventure without risking my
security?
Although I haven’t seen Joe for years, my dream shows me that I want to know
how his adventure worked out for him, so I must be interested in the outcome of
risk. Joe could be annoyingly challenging, making people feel uncomfortable for
opting for safety and the familiar world.
Yet I’ve seen people do some amazing things because they’ve been spurred on
by Joe. People rise to Joe’s challenge and surprise themselves.
Over the last years I’ve pushed myself out more and I’ve grown because of
the experience. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s like Joe now: Joe’s voice,
deep down inside, urging me to break out from the familiar, expand and grow. He
suits his name: Joe the gardener, the man who helps life to grow.
STEP 9
Create just one sentence to express what your dream person symbolises.
Express the symbolism as an aspect of yourself. For guidance, here’s Sam’s
sentence:
Sam: The Joe
Gardener aspect of myself
Joe symbolises an aspect of myself that wants to push beyond the familiar,
safe and serious so that I can expand and grow.
STEP 10
Have a look at the dream you recorded for Step 4, featuring this dream
person. Does the symbolism help you to understand your dream now?
For extra insight, apply the Storyline Method of dream interpretation you
learned from Chapter 1. What is the life theme your dream is reflecting? Does
it help to understand the aspect of yourself
symbolised by your dream person?
STEP 11
You can repeat these exercises for as many of your underlined dream
people in Step 3 as you wish. If you have decided to keep a ‘Dream People
Dictionary’, enter your final sentence only alongside the name of each dream
person you record. Whenever this person appears in your future dreams, simply
look in your dictionary to check which aspect of yourself the dream is bringing
up.
STEP 12
"Okay," you might be thinking, "I can follow these steps to
work out the symbolism of dream people I know from life, but what about those
dream strangers? How do I work out what they mean in my dreams?" As a
reminder, here’s Sam’s Step 2 list of dream characters unknown to him in his
waking life:
The hooded man in the ‘Red Stairs’ dream
The angel in my recurring dreams
Baby boy who always needs his nappy changed in my dreams
The French man who smokes a pipe in my dreams
The doctor’s receptionist in Saturday’s ‘X-Ray’ dream
Sam’s ‘doctor’s receptionist’ is the example to help you through your next
steps.
Although Sam never met the ‘doctor’s receptionist’ in his waking life, he
did interact with her in his dream. Usually, in dreams, you have no idea that
you have another life (a waking life reality), do you? The dream is IT: the
real thing. Just as you get a ‘feel’ for people’s personalities in waking life,
so you get a ‘feel’ for them in dreams. Although you can’t ask as many
questions as you can for those dream people known to you, you can ask enough to
uncover what you need to know.
Choose a dream character from your Step 2 list. Bring back the memory of
the person as if they were real. Then, without thinking too much (gut reactions
are more accurate when dealing with the symbolism of your dreams), write down
the answers to these questions:
1. What
is the personality of this person (three words)?
2. How
does this person approach life (three words)?
3. How
do I/ would I feel if I met this person?
4. Who
else does this person remind me of?
5. Is
there a pun or different meaning in this person’s name?
6. What
role does this person play in the dream?
7. What
three things do I admire in this person?
8. What
three things do I dislike about this person?
9. Is
there anything unresolved with this person in the dream? If so, what?
10. Do I
need to make peace with this person?
11. If I
were to meet this person today, what message would I like to deliver?
Sam’s Step 12 example
The doctor’s receptionist
Q1. What is the personality of this person (three words)?
A: authoritative, protective, defensive.
Q2. How does this person approach life (three words)?
A: keeps a tight rein, methodical, likes routine.
Q3. How do I/ would I feel if I met this person?
A: untidy, awkward, insignificant.
Q4. Who else does this person remind me of?
A: ?
Q5. Is there a pun or different meaning in this person’s name?
A: No, unless it’s simply ‘reception’ - as in ‘what kind of reception did
you get?’
Q6. What role does this person play in the dream?
A: Protects doctor from the public and decides who the doctor will see and
when.
Q7. What three things do I admire in this person?
A: efficiency, ability to stick to the job - nothing else.
Q8. What three things do I dislike about this person?
A: cold hearted, not interested in helping people, not understanding people
were sick.
Q9. Is there anything unresolved with this person in the dream? If so, what?
A: I didn’t get to see the doctor and I didn’t get to see my X-rays.
Q10. Do I need to make peace with this person?
A: I don’t think she would let me, even if I wanted to. It would have been
nice if she had let me see the doctor and see my X-rays to find out what was
wrong with me.
Q11. If I were to meet this person today, what message would I like to
deliver?
A: "They’re my X-rays of my body and I’ve got a right to see them and a
right to know what’s wrong with me. How can I get better if I don’t have a
diagnosis? You have no right to stand between me and my chance for
healing!"
As you can see from Sam’s exercise, dream characters unknown to you in your
waking life also represent aspects of yourself because they draw strong
responses from you. They represent feelings, beliefs and attitudes you have experienced
that have shaped your life and who you are. Sometimes these are good attitudes,
sometimes not so good. Isn’t it wonderful that you can discover these attitudes
through your dreams and then decide whether to keep them, amplify them or
change them?
Why does your dreaming mind choose strangers sometimes? Perhaps your
dreaming mind can’t picture anyone you know that fits the bill precisely so you
make up a character instead. Sometimes the role the dream stranger plays is the
clue, as in Sam’s ‘receptionist’ which reveals an aspect of Sam that does not
welcome new and challenging information, as you can see from his next step.
STEP 13
What does your dream stranger character symbolise to you? Using Sam’s
summary below as a guide, write down your own.
Sam’s summary
What the doctor’s receptionist
symbolises for me
She prevented me from finding out what was wrong with me and what could make
me better. She did this by being cold hearted and disinterested in me as a
person. She made me feel untidy and insignificant, even though I usually feel
neat and in control. It was her ultra neatness and ultra control that made me feel so untidy in comparison. I usually see routine and a
methodical approach to life as part of my formula for success (efficiency and
ability to see things through to the end of the job), but she showed me an
extreme and now I’m not so sure.
If ‘receptionist’ is a dream pun on ‘reception’, is there an aspect of
myself that gives a cold and too-methodical, controlling reception to other
people? Or am I giving the cold heart to myself? Am I standing in the way of my
own healing? Am I too defensive, controlling my life so tightly that I’m not
allowing myself to receive the news I need to know: to find out what’s wrong
with my life at the moment?
Is she an aspect of myself that’s stopping me from being healed? Should I be
more understanding towards myself and my needs and let go of trying to control
my life to keep everything just ‘so’ and tidy? Maybe the only way to make
myself better, to heal my life, is to let go, to drop my defenses
and to open up.
STEP 14
Create just one sentence to express what your dream character symbolises.
Express the symbolism as an aspect of
yourself. For guidance, here’s Sam’s sentence:
Sam: The doctor’s receptionist aspect
of myself
The Doctor’s Receptionist symbolises an aspect of myself
that prevents me from being healed by controlling everything defensively.
STEP 15
Have a look at the dream you recorded for Step 6, featuring this dream
character. Does the symbolism help you to understand your dream now? For extra
insight apply the Storyline Method of dream interpretation you learned from Chapter
1. What is the life theme your dream is reflecting? Does it help to understand
the aspect of yourself symbolised by your dream
person?
STEP 16
You can repeat these exercises for as many of the characters in Step 2 as
you wish. If you have decided to keep a ‘Dream People Dictionary’, enter your
final sentence only alongside the name of each dream person you record.
Whenever this person appears in your future dreams, simply look in your
dictionary to check which aspect of yourself the dream is bringing up.
STEP 17
"So," you might ask now, "what was so special about the
people in Step 3 whose names were not underlined; those people who are related
to me? Can’t I apply the same exercises to discover what they symbolise to me?
Aren’t they in my dreams to symbolise aspects of myself just like all the other
dream people?"
Well, yes, often they are. Often you can apply the same exercises and work
through to reach enlightening insights about yourself in this way.
There is only one problem, and that is that we often use our nearest and
dearest in dreams to symbolise what Jung called the archetypes. The archetypes
include the inner male, inner female, inner child, inner wise person and so on.
Very simply, this is how it works:
For a variety of reasons (some of which you will discover later in this
book) each of us, regardless of our sex, symbolises our ‘inner world’ as a
female person in dreams, and our ‘outer world’ as a male. It sounds very
sexist, but no matter how pc we might prefer to be, that’s the way our dreams
handle it and we’re stuck with that symbolism!
So what are these ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds?
The inner world
Symbolised by the inner female in
dreams
Your inner world is your spiritual, mystical, emotional, intuitive,
creative, nurturing world ‘within’. The inner world is often symbolised in
dreams by a female - frequently a female partner, close female friend, sister,
daughter or niece. Generally your dreams will pick two of these people (one
adult, one child) and stick to these as your personal inner world symbols.
Sometimes the inner female is symbolised simply by an unknown female dream
character.
The outer world
Symbolised by the inner male in
dreams
Your outer world is your rational, thinking, intellectual, assertive,
working world ‘out there’. The outer world is often symbolised in dreams by a
male - frequently a male partner, close male friend, brother, son or nephew.
Generally your dreams will pick two of these people (one adult, one child) and
stick to these as your personal outer world symbols. Sometimes the inner male
is symbolised simply by an unknown male dream character.
Ideally your inner and outer worlds are in perfect balance, so that you
approach every situation from both inner and outer world perspectives. Ideally
you spend equal quantities and qualities of time in each world. Of course this
is rarely the case for any of us, and an enormous number of our dreams reveal
just how out of balance we are. These dreams also hold the formula for making
things right.
Here are two examples to illustrate this:
Flying with Dorothy (a man’s
dream)
I have to fly a small plane by myself but I can’t seem to get it right. I
can see maps and plans in front of me and I can see all the switches on the
control panel, but I can’t seem to put it all together. I can’t work out how to
get the plane off the ground, and the maps and plans just don’t seem to make
sense.
Then my wife, Dorothy, walks up to the plane and sits in the co-pilot seat.
She totally ignores the instruction manual, glances at the map and plan, and
off we go! Astounding! She just seems to know how to fly the plane and to work
out how to get us to where we need to be.
Interpretation
There is much to this dream and you will already have a fair idea of what it
means from the Storyline Method. Suffice to say, for now, that the dreamer
needs to let his inner female (symbolised by Dorothy) get his ideas off the
ground. His inner female is able to add the intuition and creative (holistic)
approach that he is lacking at the moment because he is too focussed on a
rational (reductionist) approach (outer world, inner
male).
Losing My Son (a parent’s dream)
My son is only a few months old and I’m bathing him, but he keeps
disappearing under the water. I keep thinking he has died. In other dreams he
gets lost and I keep searching the streets looking for him in absolute panic.
Interpretation
It doesn’t matter whether this is the dream of a mother or father: the
meaning is the same. It is a very common dream theme for parents who have left
the work force to look after their baby at home - usually their first baby. The
son is the inner male symbolising the outer world. Consciously or unconsciously
the parent is panicking that he/she has lost touch with the outer world now
that life has become focussed on the inner world of relating to a new baby
along with the emotional and spiritual implications of becoming a new parent.
If the dreamer is a woman, her male partner may still symbolise her inner
male (outer world) in many dreams, but her dreams choose her baby son to
symbolise her own future in the outer world and her fears of losing touch with
her hopes and dreams just as she may look at her baby in her waking life and
wonder what he’ll do in his future outer world.
Other relatives/ people close to
you
In the same way, other people close to you may symbolise the following in
your dreams:
The wise woman
Usually an older person or grandmother symbolising
knowledge of the inner world.
The wise man
Usually an older person or grandfather symbolising
knowledge of the outer world.
The inner child
A child close to you symbolising either yourself at that
age or an aspect of yourself that is stuck at that age. A male child may
symbolise your approach to the outer world while a female child may symbolise
your approach to the inner world.
List possible candidates for your dream inner male, inner female, inner
wise people, inner child and so on. As you work through this book watch your
dreams and apply some detective work to narrow down your list. Start by
reviewing your Step 5 dream.
The best approach is to consider all the people close to you who come into
your dreams as symbols of your inner male, inner female, inner child and so on,
and then see how the dream interpretation works out. If it’s right you’ll feel goosebumpy: you’ll just know it’s
right. If it doesn’t seem to make much sense then apply the Step 7 questions to
discover which aspects of yourself the people in your dream symbolise.
Congratulations!!!
You have just worked through the hardest method of dream interpretation –
the people method! The rest is much easier as you will see and practise in the
chapters to come.
Perseverance with people symbols pays: I have seen people make the most
spectacular breakthroughs by using these methods and discovering how these
various aspects of their own selves strongly shape their lives. It’s wonderful
to watch people suddenly realise that the people in their dreams are NOT who
they appear to be, and that, instead, they are symbols that help explain so
much about our attitudes, the way we relate to the world, and – as a result –
the way life turns out for us.
It’s also always awesome to witness people’s understanding that they can
CHANGE their life for the better simply by understanding how their past
experiences have shaped their life until now and realising that they can now
choose to see those past experiences in a whole new way, and respond to life in
a whole new way that creates whole new results.
Such is the power of dream interpretation. So stick with it! These
wonderfully positive life-changing choices are all yours too when you come to
know and understand yourself more deeply through your dreams.
In Chapter 3 you will discover how to interpret your dreams by looking at
the landscapes, or maybe I should say ‘dreamscapes’.
STEP 18
To prepare for Chapter 3, make a list of the types of landscapes you
encounter in your dreams. Choose a great ‘landscape dream’ (preferably a
recurring one) in readiness for a new journey of discovery.
