"Dreams are often compensatory. If you are looking at things in a one sided way, the dreams will push you a little bit in the other direction. If you over do it in terms of making achievement and success the centerpiece of your entire life, the dream might mention that you're climbing too high and you're missing out on the things in the valley below."
"The psyche is playful. It uses the language of images, much more than words. And that's another reason it has so little status, because it's hard to quantify images. They are also individual. It's hard to do surveys about people's dreams. You can't look at them statistically.
"The dream has enormous value for the individual because, first of all, it occurred from inside them. And, it tends to come with a strong group of feelings or even awe, like a miniature religious conversion, not into any religion but into a religious attitude of respect and interest for something that is beyond understanding. So, even though you can't understand it fully or analyze it all the way, you can apprehend it and your life can have a meaningful quality because you are carrying around this image that guides you.
"At some point, particularly when people get stuck and have gone as far as they can consciously, then dreams can appear that break the deadlock and give a little helping hand. Either a gentle touch, if the person isn't too far off, or something more like a nightmare, if a person has an attitude toward their life that is dangerously one sided." — Dr. R.F. Slattery, MD
Discussion continues in the video below.