Dream interpretation works very well. But very few people in the world are really qualified to do it, and you need and an above average intelligent person with high introspection to understand the interpretations. I can explain the basis of dream interpretation if you wanna.
Dream interpretation is utter bullshit unless you conduct it on yourself.
There are no universal meanings for dream imagery. What something represents to you might represent something entirely different to the next person.
Images in our dreams are based on real things in our lives, but we have to be the person living the life to understand what the dream represents. Someone who remembers their dreams and has a pretty good understanding of their life can do this, at least to some degree.
However, even if you are able to decode the dream's imagery, it doesn't usually mean much. Many dreams are rooted in very insignificant things. I once dreamt that the landlord was yelling at me and pointing to a parade of worms and centipedes that were crawling out of my sneakers. It was a pretty disturbing dream until I awoke and noticed I had left my stinking, mildewy sneakers near my bed where I could actually smell them while I slept. The dream was useful insofar as I finally threw out the awful sneakers. In my psyche, worms and centipedes are particularly vile creatures, and the dream was telling me that those sneakers were just fucking gross.
At least that dream had a real-world application. Other dreams are based on other, equally mundane aspects of life that are more abstract and less relevant to real world consciousness. Dense, epic dreams that you can recall and that have psychological significance are fairly rare. And even when you remember one and analyze it well, it seldom tells you anything more than simply how you feel about an issue. It doesn't really present solutions, or offer up a key to psychological well-being.
When someone else does the interpreting for you, there is far too much contamination from his or her own psyche; instead of your gaining insight into your inner self, you get some glimpses of the interpretor's inner self. Which can be entertaining, but it is ultimately useless.
TL;DR: Dream analysis only works when you do it on yourself, and there isn't much point to it if you do.
In 2006 I inscribed a rune into the eastern face of an oak tree and vowed anathema to the machine elves and I haven't had a dream ever since.
Do not trust the astral voices, they lie as often as they tell the truth.
Most dreams are garbage. Most interpretation is garbage. However some times, just a rare, rare, raaare sometimes does something come through, but you need someone with wisdom to pull this off. And again with most dreams being garbage your brain comes up with, who has the experience to pull this off? This would be something spiritual in nature with wisdom. And I only know one person that pulled that off successfully and IDK what happened to that special guy, hehe.
yeah I can certainly understand using them as a jumping off point for introspection, but googling up "what does a wall of butts mean" or whatever is pretty dumb
what you dream is your own bullshit, there's no ISO guidelines for dream meanings
Remember that in medicine, biology, etc we pretty much understand the functions of all of the human body's organs. To the point now where we can replace parts/entirety with synthetic parts of many types. Listen to a real Doctor talk about how little even modern medicine understands the human brain. An honest psychiatrist will tell you that medication treatment for major brain disorders goes something like this... Try to make a list of symptoms. Throw a dart at a bunch of meds that are known to deal with the effects of those symptoms. Adjust. Repeat.
I see lots of misconceptions about dream interpretations. First of all, dream interpretation is a psychoanalytic technique. Psychology used in the USA or Europe does not use dream interpretation and very few psychoanalytic guidelines. Dream interpretation SHOULD be made in the context of a psychoanalytic session with an analyst who you have a relationship with. If you are in the US forget about finding good psychoanalysts.
Then, there's not general imagery interpretation. Your own imagery will matter to you. Let me explain the basis. The dream is thought to be a deformation. When you are awake, your mind uses repression to hide the unconscious from the conscious, but as you go to sleep that repression weakens. It's the total relaxation that does it, in a very similar fashion in hypnosis. But the problem is that if the unconscious is exposed then you will wake up from your sleep. So Freud theorized that dreams is an evolutionary mechanism to prevent you from waking up.
The dream deforms YOUR own unconscious.
Here's the key-- The words that you cannot bring yourself will become deformed images. You must reverse backtrack, and see what saying the images say and relate it to your life-- One may be able to interpret one's dreams but it's easier to do it with an analyst who hears you, and can connect the dots of your dream vs you regular discourse to get to the bottom of your unconscious and perhaps aliviate symptoms.
The thing is in a time there was usually very similar deformations of dream with very similar meanings, but the interpretation is really always personal.
One example. Water or spiders are always being said to represent the mother. But why? Usually because the words that one feels around a mother is the feeling of being "trapped" "drowned" "asphyxiated" "surrounded by water unable to float on my own" "Trapped in a spider web without a way to get out". Usually meaning a phobia of an incomplete separation with the mother and a feeling that your mom is overbearing. The words transformed itself into similar imagery.
AGAIN. The imagery is secondary, the important part is the words that you use as to how YOU feel about your imagery and how you can associate it with your life.