Dream Theory of Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler was an Austrian doctor who is revered as a great contributor to many nuances of psychology. He is well known also for his philosophical theories on dreams and their meanings.

He is the one who stressed greatly on the necessity to delve deep into the subconscious and analyze it and then relate the inferences to the real world happenings. He carried out a lot of researches and studies from which he proposed new ideas and analyses of various dreams.

He plotted each dream to the person’s individual mindset and also the social environment. The cumulative effect he believed would lead to proper self realization. His dream theories are considered to be of utmost importance even in the modern day and they lead to more customized and accurate analyses of dreams.

• Various approaches that Adler put forward while interpreting dreams:

• Dreams lead you to master your own life – According to Adler dreams bring messages from the subconscious mind to make you aware of the problems that you may be facing in your waking life, whether it is in your mind or around you. Adler firmly believed that if a person can rightly analyze his/ her dreams, then the person would have a better understanding of what is going on within the person’s mind or in the world around him/ her. This nailing down of the issues would lead to finding answers to many problems. Dreams help you to focus your attention to problem areas in your life and help you to solve them thereby becoming tools that help you take control of your life.

• Dreams are an expression of your thoughts and behaviors – According to Adler every action or word that you do or speak can be related to an emotion or motive. These are the two factors which, he believed, are the root causes of all that a human being does, and also guides the way a person thinks. Adler also believed that how a person behaves in the dreams is no different from the person’s behavior in the waking life. In other words, it can also be said that dreams are manifestations of what you think and how you behave. Yes, dreams are symbolic, and therefore often exaggerated. But when analyzed you can find a link to those in your real life. As such dreams often lead you to discover your motivations and goals, and even latent emotions.

• Dreams bring out your emotions by delving into your subconscious – Adler strongly believed that dreams of a person are the manifestations of emotions. There are certain emotions that you try to keep suppressed. These often get disclosed to you via your dreams. Dreams are safe yet expressive ways that allow you to analyze the various realms of emotions that you go through. This does not necessarily mean that a dream is a film like portrait of a person – dreams are more often than not metaphorical. But dreams indicate to some extent feelings that you may have had but simply chose to ignore or did not allow to surface to your conscious mind. Adler also put forward that understanding the various emotions that your dreams are trying to bring forth would help you to experience a superior sense of self contentment and would make you feel in harmony with your subconscious. This naturally is a very healing feel and leads to better self awareness.

• Dreams can often be related to the various insecurities and anxieties that you may have – Alder put a lot of emphasis on the fact that dreams depend widely on the spectrum of life that you are experiencing at the moment – whether you are on an uphill or downhill journey in life would greatly define your dreams and interpretations thereof. If you are feeling insecure it would largely affect your self esteem and would also alter your defense mechanisms. When you feel insecure you feel that you cannot succeed in anything that you do in your waking life. At times such feelings lead to dreams that are like wish fulfillments and fantasies. At other times it could seem prophetic or uncomfortable making you feel helpless or incapable or even lead to the point of feeling hopeless. But you should also remember that dreams are metaphoric, very rarely these bring messages to you in literal form. These could also be messages that indicate your inability to complete a task or to accomplish a goal or target. In a nutshell, it can be suggested that dreams provide a glimpse to the various insecurities and anxieties that you face in your waking life; and the way you react to these in your dreams are also often indicative of how you are dealing with these in your real life.

• Alder’s approach to betterment of self by interpreting messages that your subconscious mind sends via dreams:

The greatest achievement that can be awarded to Alfred Adler about his research on dreams is the fact that he was the one to establish that a person can actually feel a sense of self completion if the person can properly analyze what a dream is trying to tell, and act towards self betterment accordingly. A person can feel complete in a number of ways – it could be by gaining knowledge, or by setting up and achieving reasonable goals, by being who you are, by boosting your self esteem. All these processes are aided by the method in which a person analyses the dreams. Your dreams bring you the message suggesting the area of your life or emotion that requires working on, and when you pay heed to the messages that the dreams bring to you, and work towards self betterment, you emerge as a person who feels happy, satisfied and complete. Feeling a sense of completeness is a universal desire by all and sundry. Adler’s theories on dreams help you to take a path of deeper self realization consequently leading to self satisfaction.