Indeed, they do. The insights from the unconscious mind which are conveyed in dreams fulfill all the hope and wonder that people have had about their dreams down through the ages.  

What follows is an original method of analyzing dreams which makes it possible to understand their messages. It may help you see the messages in even your most complex dreams.  

THE EMOTIONAL PATTERN IN DREAMS  

A new theory about dreams is that they are consecutive depictions of what the inner self loves, desires, finds undesirable, and hates. In other words, the beginning of every dream of yours shows what you inwardly love, the early-middle plot reveals what is desired by your inner self, and so on.  

So the location of particular dream content is a key part of its meaning.

A man dreamed this: "I went horseback riding. The horse took me through beautiful countryside. When it was time to go back I chose a different way, became lost, and came to some barbed wire which blocked the path. The horse became restless and tried to throw me."  

Following is an analysis of that dream in relation to the love-desire-nondesire-hatred pattern:  

The man goes horseback riding at the beginning of his dream, and therefore he loves doing that. Riding through beautiful countryside appears in the early-middle part of his dream, so he desires that scenery. The late-middle plot shows him becoming lost and then finding the way blocked by barbed wire. Those situations are defined by their late-middle location as being undesirable to him. In the ending the horse tries to throw him, and since that is the hatred section he would hate that scenario.  

Those are normal, unsurprising emotions and might seem disappointing for that reason. Shouldn't all dreams reflect the soul's mysteries? An answer is that the dreamer said he hadn't gone horseback riding for too long, and dreaming about it was enjoyable.

A woman dreamed this: "I am buying jewels in a jewelry store. I choose a big pendant necklace with emeralds, flashing and beautiful. When I try it on, it hangs down too far. So I give it to my sister. She gives it back. She has nothing green to wear with it. She wants blue."  

The emotional pattern messages are as follows. The woman loves buying jewelry. She desires buying an emerald necklace. It would be undesirable if the necklace didn't fit her and she ended up giving it to her sister. She would hate it if her sister rejected her gift because of a petulant demand about the necklace's color.  

There's more to the dream interpretation process than just dividing the dream content into the four sections, of course. One also has to draw the correct conclusions, as we see in this next example. A woman reported that as a child she had dreamed this in the last half of a dream: "I was falling and falling. I was terrified. And I wanted to scream but was unable to do so."  

It might appear the urge to scream was related to falling. The dreamer had a different explanation, though. "As a child," she said, "I was not permitted to express my feelings. It wasn't until I was 16 that I began speaking out." The assumption is that the wish to scream was a consequence of being forced to suppress her emotions, and that inability to express her true feelings was what the hatred message truly was about.  

But do all dreams follow the same love-desire-nondesire-hatred pattern? The answer, initially hard to believe, is yes. Noises can make their way into the dream plot and interfere with its normal progression, and so can other external influences, but in the absence of those distractions dream plots always will contain those four separate parts in that specific sequence.  

Some complications which occur in dreams can make the presence of that emotional pattern harder to spot, though.  

SENTIMENTS IN THE DREAM PLOT  

One of those complications is that a display of sentiment within the dream such as a dream figure laughing or crying can be opposite to emotional reality. For instance, the dreamer might laugh at the end of a dream about something which in real life is painful, and the dream pattern message is that the dreamer's inner self would hate that inappropriate merriment. But on a superficial level the dream seems to end happily.  

Here is an example of laughter in a dream ending. A woman who was significantly overweight dreamed this in the last half of a dream:

"I recited

'I like peanut butter and jelly.

I like peanut butter and jam.

I like peanut butter and mustard.

But I like myself just as I am.'

And then I laughed heartily." 

Since that dream content appeared in the last half of her dream, nondesire and hatred messages were being conveyed. We shall examine each in turn.  

Her words in the nondesire section were a reflection of her conscious self rather than of inner values. Those words depicted her conscious complacency about her incorrect eating habits, and the location of that dream content in her nondesire section shows that such complacency was undesirable to her inner self.  

Her laughter at the end of the dream was opposite to her emotional reality. At an inner level she felt much pain about being overweight and therefore would hate consciously feeling merry about that aspect of her life.  

Some displays of sentiment in dreams are genuine. Fortunately, it's not hard to distinguish between those which are genuine and those which are opposite to emotional reality. A dream sentiment is genuine if the figure who is displaying it simultaneously uses words which help to express that sentiment. Any sentiment displayed by a dream figure who doesn't simultaneously speak is opposite to reality. If words are involved but precede or follow a sentiment, that sentiment is opposite to reality.  

A woman was invited to a party and that night dreamed at the end of her dream that she was crying. Her dream image didn't speak while crying, so this is an example of an opposite-to- reality dream sentiment. She was in a good mood because of the party invitation and for that reason would hate to experience the sadness depicted in her dream.  

Here is an example of a genuine sentiment in a dream. A grown woman dreamed about a boy she'd known in grade school and in the dream ending her dream image began crying and said, "They told me to be afraid of you and I believed them." The sadness was genuine and her words in the dream explained why: she'd had unnecessary barriers against that person who could have become a friend.  

Opposite-to-reality dream sentiments can be hard for the inexperienced dream interpreter to understand. We shall look at additional examples of it later.  

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE USAGE IN DREAMS  

Speech in the dream plot often helps to identify the conscious self's boundaries. Anything spoken by the dreamer's image reflects an aspect of the conscious self, and words spoken by anyone else might instead present a view which the conscious self opposes (although speech by other dream figures than the dreamer can have a number of separate purposes and won't always represent a suppressed perspective).  

The following example helps illustrate this rule. A pregnant woman dreamed in the desire section of her dream:  

"I was back home from the hospital holding my new baby boy. An unidentified man was looking at my baby. I said something about newborn babies being ugly. The man replied, 'I don't think he's ugly.' I looked down at my infant son and saw that he had a perfectly shaped head, blue or green eyes, and was extremely beautiful."  

Her dream image's words indicate that consciously she tended to think of newborn babies as ugly. Her inner self didn't want her to think that way and therefore created another person to express a differing view. The plot after that conversation shows that she wanted a beautiful baby, so her conscious attitude didn't eliminate that inner desire.  

Dream pattern analysis can help clarify any abstractness involving the use of speech or language, as can be seen in this next example. This was the first half of a woman's dream (so it shows love and desire scenarios):  

"Grandmother and I were walking down a street that turned out to be a dead end. Just as we got to the end we discovered it. A nice man was there and we asked permission to cross by the little pond in his yard and go through to the next street. He said we could and then helped us across. I commented on how clear and clean the pond was. He was pleased. Then he showed us his baby seal. I asked if I could pet it. 'Of course,' he said, and I began petting it and playing with it. Then his wife began talking with me. It wasn't clear what she was saying, but she continued to talk with me. The seal became a baby."  

The man's words and accompanying behavior show the dreamer's wish that a property owner would be permissive and kindly while she was going for a walk in a residential area.  

That's simple enough, but the wife's verbal behavior might seem confusing. What is the purpose of dream speech which doesn't include specific words? A moment's reflection clears up this puzzle. That social behavior occurs in the desire section and so the conclusion is that in a friendly environment such as the one shown in the dream the dreamer desires being spoken to, and it wouldn't necessarily matter what the conversation is about. Instead, the other person's sociability would be the desired aspect.  

The desire section in that dream also shows the dreamer has a wish to play with a cute, cuddly animal such as a seal. But then that seal is transformed into a human baby. The dreamer's wish to interact with a pet animal evidently is a sublimation of a stronger desire to respond maternally to a child. Her inner self saw that maternal desire and constructed the dream partly to help her get in touch with it.  

Sometimes unspoken words appear in dreams.  

A woman with a seizure disorder had begun experiencing an increase in seizures. Also, she learned from her dentist that her gums were in bad shape and she needed to have several of her teeth pulled. She began feeling emotionally vulnerable to life's misfortunes. Then her boyfriend told her he wanted to start dating other women. One night, after feeling especially sad, she dreamed this in a dream's nondesire section: "A knight (from a chess set) had lost its bottom half, and its head toppled onto the floor. Someone said to it, 'You have violated the fire god.' Suddenly, I saw a page from a bible, and on it were the words, 'Christ comforts.'"  

The knight evidently symbolized both her loss of a romantic/sexual relationship and her dental problems, since it was missing its bottom half and its head was shown as being in harmful contact with the floor. The words spoken to that symbol attributed her problems to religious wrath against her. Yet that undesirable message was only a prelude to the dream's constructive solution, expressed by the unspoken words. The implication of those unspoken words in her nondesire section was that it would be undesirable for her not to seek religious solace.  

Unspoken words which appear in dreams can be deliberately misspelled, though, and there's a special message involved. The misspelling is, in effect, a warning that the dreamer either should avoid the related situation or at least be cautious about it.  

For instance, a man who had spent an evening in a smoke-filled room saw that night in a dream's nondesire section the unspoken word "aer." The meaning was that his inner self wanted him to avoid such polluted air if possible.  

Here is an example of a similar message. I had been planning to take my old car on a long mountain journey. Then I dreamed in a dream's nondesire section of a license plate which was similar to the license plate of my car but not identical to it. After awakening, I realized the purpose of that "misspelled" license plate was to inform me I probably shouldn't use my car for that trip.  

A difference between dream speech and dream thoughts is important to understand. Dream speech which occurs in a nondesire or hatred section can convey a correct or normal view about a negative situation, but any dream thought in a nondesire or hatred section will not be correct or normal in relation to the dreamer's true reality.  

That guideline helps us understand this next example. A woman dreamed in the nondesire section of her dream that some dinner guests failed to compliment her about the food she'd prepared. She then dreamed in that dream's hatred section: "I seemed to say, 'I can't stand it.' But it was unclear if I had said those words or instead had thought them."  

What was the reason for that mixture of speech and thought in her dream? It occurred because the woman's inner self had ambivalent feelings about the sentiment her dream image expressed. If being upset because the guests didn't praise her cooking had been fully acceptable to her the dream would have shown her speaking those words but not thinking them; if being upset in that situation had been totally unacceptable her dream self would have thought those words but wouldn't have spoken them. Since she was shown as half-speaking and half-thinking them the implication is that the temperamental nature they depicted was acceptable to her, but only marginally so.  

From such examples, we see how the use of speech and language in dreams is consistent enough to be understandable to the interpreter and also is sufficiently flexible for the inner self's varied purposes.  

THE USE OF SYMBOLS IN DREAMS  

Dreams use symbolism for a variety of reasons, a principal one being to convey an abstract message in the dream's visual medium. Dream pattern analysis reveals the emotional significance of that symbolism, and the recognition of that underlying emotion assists in understanding the symbolism's purpose.  

A man reported this about the beginning of a dream of his: "Robert (a talented guitarist) was using my guitar. He was playing in the key of F, which I usually avoid because of its difficulty."  

A love message was being conveyed, and with that in mind it becomes clear that Robert was a symbol of the dreamer as he would love to become. The dreamer's inner self would love it if he could play the guitar well, including in the key of F.  

Following is an example of an abstract dream message conveyed via a visual symbol. A girl who felt unhappy but wasn't sure why dreamed in the late-middle section that her stepmother said, "Here's your toast," and handed her a plate with a few bread crumbs on it. Dreams typically use images of food or money (which are easy to depict visually) to present messages about amount and/or quality of love, and in this dream the inadequate food in the nondesire location symbolized the insufficient amount of love the dreamer was receiving.  

DREAMING'S INVOLUNTARY EFFECT UPON THE DREAMER  

What you dream about won't necessarily happen, but if it does you'll involuntarily feel the accompanying emotion of love, desire, nondesire, or hatred, depending on where in the dream that situation had appeared. In that way your dreams will be attempting to guide your conscious adaptation.  

Let's look at examples of that adaptive guidance in dreams.  

A woman dreamed this at the beginning of a dream: "There are some refugee children in a run-down, dirty house. I befriend seven or eight of them and take them to my big house. I return to the other house and there are some more children there. They want to sneak into my group."  

Even though this dream segment is a fantasy it is influencing the dreamer to love acting motherly toward children who need her help.  

A man dreamed at the beginning of a dream of being at a swimming pool with his wife and another couple, and then dreamed this in the early-middle plot: "The other three were sunbathing and I was clowning around while jumping off the high-dive diving board. I was doing can openers and cannonballs, trying to soak them. Finally a guard told me to knock it off, so on my next dive I did a perfect swan dive."  

The desire plot displayed the man's playful urge to soak his wife and friends. That playfulness could become excessive, however, so the plot added a desire to be responsive to authority when told to stop those antics. Also, the dreamer's inner self may have seen that if he only performed the graceless dives his self image would suffer; perhaps for that reason the desire section included the wish to dive gracefully after finishing the bellyfloppers.  

A man who was a beginning fencing student dreamed in the nondesire section of making love with an attractive female fencer he knew. But why did this appear in his nondesire section? The answer is that the woman had declined to fence with him because he was a beginner and therefore wouldn't be a challenging opponent, and in response his dream was indicating that at an inner level he wasn't impressed with her beauty or her fencing skills and valued more highly the willingness to help a beginner, and found her undesirable for lacking that trait.  

If the dreamer had attempted to make love with the woman after having that dream he likely would have been impotent. The involuntary nondesire he felt would have interfered with his sexual arousal.  

Three more examples follow of how nondesire sections of dreams define scenarios which could result in psychologically-caused impotence or frigidity.  

A woman dreamed this in her desire and nondesire sections: "My children and I were in a barn that was warm and smelled of hay. We went toward the front entrance and found a room off of it where a man was living. He told us we couldn't go out that way and threatened us."  

It is unlikely the woman could become sexually aroused if there were some threat either to her children or to her. That threat would be undesirable to her and consequently could prevent her from feeling any sexual desire until she thought her children and she were safe.  

A man dreamed in the nondesire section of threatening to hit a smaller, weaker man who was a rival for a woman. In contrast to the previous example there might not be any physical danger involved for the dreamer in that situation, but nevertheless it would be undesirable to his inner self if he were to act in that bullying manner. While feeling that inner nondesire he predictably would be impotent in a lovemaking situation.  

A woman dreamed this in a nondesire section: "I saw a snake and at first was afraid that it would bite me, but then I thought, 'Oh, well, if it did bite me and I died then all of my problems would be over.'"  

That attitude is undesirable to her inner self, and if she consciously chose to devalue life in that way involuntary frigidity could be a result.  

As noted, dreams end with the depiction of what is hated. But inner hatred certainly can be constructive, as the next few examples show.  

A gifted teenager dreamed at the end of a dream that he was living in a dull, ordinary environment. By causing him to hate that outcome the dream was motivating him to find gifted companions and stimulating interests.  

After dreaming about being on a boat cruise with her family, a woman dreamed this in her hatred section: "I seem to remember Larry (my son) on a deck somewhere, standing and looking at us but unable to get to where we were, even though he wanted to."  

The dreamer reported that her son had been emotionally distant from the rest of the family and also had displayed behavioral problems. So his physical separation in the dream was a symbol of his emotional and behavioral separation from the family, and the woman's hatred of those problems would motivate her to help her son overcome them.  

At a time when I'd been lazy about working on a manuscript on dream interpretation I dreamed the following alarming conversation within a dream ending: A man said to me, "Do you want arthritis?" "No," I answered. "Then start writing," the man said.  

Dreams have that sort of power but they don't misuse it. There were periods after that dream when what I wrote was of such poor quality that it seemed I hadn't made any progress at all. But I had tried to write well, and I haven't gotten arthritis.  

MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES OF DREAM INTERPRETATION  

A woman reported that as a child she had dreamed at the end of a dream that clowns were crying at a grave. Questioning brought forth the information that during that childhood period her older sister frequently acted like a clown and as a consequence received a lot of attention from others.  

This example contains challenging intricacies. How would you interpret it using dream pattern analysis and the knowledge that the crying by the clowns was a sentiment opposite to the dreamer's inner emotional reality?  

The clowns at the grave were crying about the death of the "clown" who was the dreamer's sister. The fact that the dreamer dreamed about her sister's death in the dream's hatred section reveals she would have hated for her sister to die. But why did the dream include that potential mourning about her sister's death? Presumably, the dreamer had felt jealous of her sister when that sister received attention from others for her clowning and the dreamer may even have wished at a conscious level that her sister were dead. Her inner self didn't want her to feel that way, of course, and therefore caused her to hate the emotional consequences to others of her sister's death. That crying additionally was opposite to what the dreamer inwardly felt about her sister's playful, extroverted behavior. It was hard for the dreamer to enjoy that behavior consciously, though. That was why clowns cried in the dream rather than her own image.  

Most examples of an opposite-to-reality dream sentiment are much easier to interpret than that one.  

A woman who was a writer and the mother of a 14 year-old girl reported this: "I dreamed at the beginning of a dream that my cousin Jack came to live with us. He was 14 years old and I was the same age I am now. He was wearing a cap like my daughter's."  

She didn't remember any more of that dream but later that night dreamed this:

"I plan to announce that I have won the lottery. Everyone then will assume that what I have won is money. I will not tell them otherwise and will say that I want to share my good fortune. What I have won is Jack. I will give him away. Then I think this is a marvelous idea for a very funny story. I think it is hysterical. I laugh and laugh. I'm not sure which came first: the intention to write the story or the plan to rid myself of Jack. Either way I am pleased with myself. Then I caution myself to make sure I am not plagiarizing this story from anyone. I say to myself, 'Did I read this somewhere?'"  

The woman's opposite-to-reality laughter in the second dream indicates that something was bothering her in real life. What might this be? In the dream she laughed about a "marvelously funny story plot," and this implies that as a writer she had been having problems devising humorous plots. But the dream laughter was more specific than that. It was about the "story" of giving away Jack. Why did that theme result in her dream image expressing so much amusement?

Her first dream showed Jack the same age as the dreamer's daughter and wearing a cap like the daughter's. She would love for that child to come live with her (since she dreamed about him doing so in her dream's beginning), and with that information it becomes apparent that Jack in the second dream was a symbol for her daughter. Her intention in that dream to give away Jack was really a disguised wish to give away her daughter. She didn't want to be a mother any longer, and that wish was exceptionally painful to her. That is why she laughed so heartily in the dream.  

Here is a dream a woman had during a period of depression in which she occasionally thought about taking a lethal overdose of sleeping pills: "I was riding on top of a stagecoach, and men on horses were chasing it. Were they good guys or robbers? This wasn't clear to me. They drew closer and one of them shot me. Everything went black and I knew I would die."  

Her dream revealed disturbances, which may have been major contributors to her depression. It was desirable to her to be uncertain about men's roles and she felt anxiety that a man would hurt her.  

We also see that the dream was doing its best to keep her from attempting suicide: the ending was causing her to hate the harm that could come from an overdose of pills. That constructive nature is utterly typical of dreams.  

A man dreamed at the beginning of a dream that he was driving along an unfamiliar road to go to a party where he wouldn't know anyone. On the previous evening he had driven on familiar roads to attend a party where only people whom he knew well would be present. That love plot was implying he would love having new places to go to and new people to meet.  

A man reported he had dreamed as a child:  

"Elves and fairies lived in the cellar of my house, and my brothers and I climbed down the ladder to play with them. Then my brothers went back upstairs and pulled up the ladder with them, and I was there alone. There was a gingerbread man stirring a big pot, and he was going to throw me in it."  

I tried to explain the dream to him. "You loved imagining there were actual elves and fairies. You liked playing in the cellar with your brothers, and it would have been nice to play with those imaginary beings as well. You wouldn't have liked being abandoned in the cellar. As for the scary dream ending--  

"Was there a man you were afraid of when you were a child?" I asked him. "The gingerbread man may have been a symbol for an actual person, and if so the dream was reflecting a fear involving him."  

"My father and I never got along," the dreamer said. "He used to beat me."  

A woman dreamed:  

"I am in an empty old hotel. I have inherited it from someone famous--maybe Buffalo Bill. I'm standing in the bare room, oak floors, large windows, sunshine, warm breezes. I am in a beautiful, white, floor-length summer gown. I am in the body of an old school friend whom I thought was attractive. Enter a man named Henry--another school chum, but someone I was less fond of, except in the dream he's tall, sensual, appealing. He takes me in his arms and tells me Black Bart has discovered he can lay claim to the hotel if I am not married. I am upset at the idea of losing the hotel. So Henry asks me to marry him, and we go to the justice of the peace and all ends well."  

The first half of the dream contains imaginative, pleasant fantasies. It would be undesirable to the dreamer to be upset about the potential loss of something she values dearly. The dream ending has a significant message in relation to what might be a future choice the dreamer can make. That ending shows her marrying, for financial reasons, a man she hasn't liked in the past, and it seems to predict they would live happily ever after. The true message, though, is that she would hate such a forced marriage. The indirect guidance is that she should marry for love rather than money.  

Note that the dream presents the character of Henry in the nondesire and hated sections yet also must include him in the desire section for the sake of the plot's continuity. In order for Henry to appear in her desire section, however, he has to change, and so he becomes physically desirable. As this illustrates, any transformations which people undergo in dreams are not random or whimsical but instead occur for essential reasons.  

A man lived in a city and had been forced to take his dog to the pound because neighbors complained about its barking. Subsequently he dreamed in the early-middle part of a dream that a dog talked about a house outside of town. What were the implications of that dream content in the desire section?  

He desired both having a dog and living in the countryside because the dog wouldn't upset neighbors there. But the fact that the dog rather than his own image spoke about the country house suggests he consciously had repressed that wish. "Unrepressing" that lifestyle change seemed in order.  

After her mother had died a woman dreamed this at the beginning of a dream: "My father had died and my mother was still alive. I was with her in the kitchen at the farm. I was attempting to console her. Somehow I was at peace with her."  

I offered the following interpretation to the dreamer. "The dream was indicating you'd love the situation in which your father had died instead of your mother and you could console her about his death. You probably have positive memories about being with her in the kitchen at the farm. Overall, though, your relationship with your mother was not serene, although you would have loved for it to be so. The feeling of being at peace with her in the dream is opposite to what you typically felt while she was alive."  

It seemed as if a feeling of relief crossed over the woman's face. "Dreams are curious things," she said. "You can't keep any secrets from them."  

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT DREAM INTERPRETATION  

Q. Is there any way to prove that dreams follow the love- desire-nondesire-hatred pattern?  

A. Not by using statistics. But you can try the following test. Make some effort which seems on the right tracks for your future. That could involve exercising, studying, rehearsing a job skill, being friendly, or engaging in some other similarly constructive activity. Involve yourself sufficiently in that endeavor to try to ensure that your efforts will pay off in the long run. Then see if you dream about that constructive life involvement. If it's something your inner self loves, you'll likely find yourself dreaming about it at the beginning of one or more dreams of yours.  

Q. Sometimes I'm aware in my dreams that I'm dreaming. Do those plots follow the same emotional sequence as other dreams?  

A. Yes, so those lucid dreams (as they are called) are analyzed in the usual way. Two examples follow.  

A woman dreamed this in the last half of a dream: "Suddenly I realized I was dreaming. Since it was a dream I could do whatever I wanted. So I began doing a strip-tease dance until I was naked from the waist up. Then I said to the men present, 'Now which of you sorry sons of bitches wants to marry this lovely creature?'"  

The strip-tease dance in the nondesire section was not undesirable to the dreamer. What was undesirable was the awareness that she was dreaming and therefore her strip-tease wasn't happening outside of the dream. In other words, she wanted to act in that uninhibited way in real life but felt she couldn't.

Her words in the hatred section reveal a resentment she felt toward men and also show that she wanted to get married in spite of that resentment. We see that her dream, despite her awareness in it that she was dreaming, was about basic, down-to-earth feelings.  

A man on a business trip dreamed in a love section that he was back at home. In the hatred section he realized he was dreaming and wasn't at home after all. That lucid dreaming was simply a means of revealing how he felt about being away from home.  

Q. I told a psychoanalyst I had dreamed about the death of someone who was alive, and he said I had a death wish toward that person. Is that true?  

A. Not necessarily. In fact, such a statement stands an approximately fifty percent chance of being untrue. If one dreams within the first half of a dream about the death of a living person the chances are high the dreamer feels a genuine death wish toward him or her. But dreaming about that death within the last half of a dream instead suggests one doesn't want that outcome to occur.  

A woman dreamed this:  

"My married cousin living in South Africa was killed along with her husband in some type of bombing. My aunt and uncle were there trying to clean up the mess and arrange to have my cousin's three small children brought back to this country. There was some sort of problem with the government there and they were not able to bring the children home."

The death of the dreamer's cousin and her husband occurred in the love section, so the dreamer evidently wished for their deaths. The remainder of that dream indicates why she had that wish. It would be desirable if her aunt and uncle tried to bring the children back, undesirable if there were government red tape which interfered with that goal, and the dreamer would hate it if the children could not be brought home. It becomes clear the dreamer had hostile feelings toward the children's parents for raising them in a foreign country.  

A woman reported she had dreamed as a girl of 11: "It was night and there was a full moon. I was walking in the woods. I came upon some garbage cans. Then I saw my brother's body lying dismembered in one of those garbage cans."  

The woman said that a month after she had that dream her brother was stabbed to death. Naturally, she wondered if her inner self had known of that in advance. "When I had that dream, did I know deep down inside that my brother would die?" she asked me.  

It was a question I couldn't answer. I could only tell her that her brother's death had occurred in the hatred section and therefore was something she hated.  

Q. Is dream interpretation a difficult procedure?  

A. It shouldn't be. It's certainly not difficult to analyze dream content in relation to the love-desire-nondesire-hatred pattern, and applying the guidelines you've now learned about interpreting dream plot complications similarly is a straightforward process.  

All of the following seems likely to happen. You'll be able to understand the vast majority of your dreams which you analyze. You'll find insights in your dreams which can help you get back on the right tracks if you've consciously been going astray. You'll realize that your dreams reflect qualities such as intelligence, benevolence, and resourcefulness while focusing on personal topics which are important to you.  

But don't merely take my word for it. See what messages your dreams have for you tonight.  

END  

  Dan has a master's degree in psychology and is working in Kansas as a psychologist. He had a science fiction story published in 1994 in Writers Of The Future, Vol. 10. He's briefly been a chess master before sinking back down to lower rating status again. He offers free dream interpretation according to his theories in exchange for the right to use any dream sent him in his future writing. He would use all such dreams anonymously, of course. Contact him at dangollub@aol.com