The unconscious speaks in a language older than language. It speaks through dreams, and if dreams are ignored it will conspire with our body to use our emotions to get us to act out its messages. You'll become obsessed with an idea which, if examined allegorically, will reveal the true need beneath the desire.
Why does this happen?
It appears to be a consequence of the timescales involved in our evolution. Multicellular life has been on earth for roughly a billion years. Language, on the other hand, has only been around for 200,000 years. This is a 5000:1 ratio. Humans have adapted to think in language in this short period. The unconscious has had to adapt and find ways to communicate to the conscious mind with its newfangled technology. Language has allowed for incredible detail in thought transmission between members of our species. This is another thing with which the mind has had to cope. All this new information - the giant library of language and the innermost thoughts of the species has led to adaptations for mass storage. The most significant and pleasurable of these is the construction of metaphor.
How could metaphor save space?
By seeing the similarities between objects, one can consolidate storage. For example, imagine that you had one file for horse, and one file for zebra. Each takes up the same amount of space. But once you realize that a zebra is a lot like a horse, just with black and white stripes, then you can combine the files into one called 'horse-shaped animals', with an if-then clause attached (If horse shaped animal has black and white stripes, then it is a zebra). This takes up much less space than two separate files. Add to this files for donkeys, ponies, mules, even giraffes (if horse-shaped animal has long neck and stubby horns...) and suddenly you are taking up the space of one file, but allowing yourself to identify dozens of animals. This seems much more efficient. This can chunk up and down conceptually, leading to super efficient storage with maximized identification. The 'horse-shaped animal' file itself could be an addendum to the 'mammal' file, which could be an addendum to the 'animal' file. The more consolidation, the more efficiency and speed in navigating. It is browsing an analog library versus browsing Google. Metaphor allows us to wire our brains to work like Google.
This is why our dreams use fluid images. It appears that dreaming is an effort to take new experiences, information, people, and places and find similar things in our past. It then tacks addenda to existing files to allow us to navigate our fresh experiences. We can't say what a new thing is, but we can say what it is like. That is why sometimes, in dreams, we are in a place that is both our elementary school and family church building. Both are in the 'childhood buildings' file, so the visual representation confirms the potential reality of this storage mechanism.
Is there any way to help our dreams do their job in a better way?
I think so. By studying the meaning of proper names, called onomastics, we can give our unconscious a leg up in communication with our conscious mind. For example, the name Andrew means 'manly', and the name Clement means 'gentle'. Knowing this, these are now associations the unconscious can use to send you instruction in dreams. If a man has a dream that his buddy Andy starts singing "Oh my darling Clementine", and he knows the meaning of these names, the unconscious may have picked them as anthropomorphized principles for the conscious mind to follow. The manly attributes of the dreamer need to give voice to the more gentle and merciful parts.
You begin to see that storytellers around the world choose names which have meanings relevant to their role in the story. I am currently excavating what appears to be a reliably predictable pattern in character names.
Movies from Finding Nemo to Fifty Shades of Grey have revealed some deeper meanings through onomastic examination.
I find my writing style insufferable. I will work to refine it and make it less cumbersome and arrogant. Here's a shorter version:
If you study the meanings of names, your dreams will be easier to examine allegorically using the names of the characters. Dreams are the garden from which the fruit of myth grows. What you learn about dream interpretation can be applied to all human storytelling.
Boom. I am not a scholar. I should stop trying to write like one.
