Mr A came for therapy following the death of his mother from cancer. She was his main source of support, especially since his father died when he was a child and his mother brought him up on her own.
She refused to remarry and had to work to support the family. Recently, he told me that he often sees her in his dreams, and she appears happy and much healthier looking.
Most dreams are about a happy memory they shared, while sometimes the mother appears to be saying something. While he does not always remember the details of such dreams, he says they bring him comfort as he gets to “see mum again.”
For many people, dreaming of the dead provides comfort, meaning and acceptance, while various myths about the meaning of such dreams exist. Psychologists interpret such dreams as a subconscious processing of grief, while members of the public may see it as their deceased loved one communicating a message.
In many cultures, ancestors appear in dreams to share wisdom or remind you of family heritage and traditions, while others see dreams as a way of “offering guidance, reassurance, or a final farewell.”
My curiosity led me to a study published in 2013 in 'The American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine' that showed common themes reported by people who dream of the dead, which included pleasant memories or experiences with the deceased being free of illness; some reported the deceased in the afterlife appearing comfortable and at peace, and the deceased communicating a message.
Some participants in the study believed that such dreams allow them to continue to cope with their complicated feelings about the death of their loved ones.
The famous psychotherapists Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud had different interpretations of dreams.
Jung believed that dreams formed a direct line to the unconscious and provided insight into our psyche. So, dreaming of a loved one who died might signify that you miss them and that you are still trying to fully make sense of their being gone. Sigmund Freud, on the other hand, considered dreams as “concealed realisations of repressed desires.” This means the future that the dream shows us is not a prediction, but that which we would like to occur. So, the recurring dream my client had about his dead mother does not predict that she is somehow alive, but rather, that he wishes her to be.
Psychologists conclude that dreams have a significant impact on the bereavement processes.
They increase our acceptance of the fact that our loved one is dead, provide us with comfort and reflect our spiritual beliefs. What we gain from our dreams of the deceased is comfort, acceptance and meaning; therefore, we cannot argue with the idea that these types of dreams serve an important purpose.
In my opinion, we may never be fully able to scientifically understand dreams, but we can take comfort in knowing that just as our bodies can recover from physical injury, so too can our subconscious recover from psychological injury, and dreams may be an important tool in that recovery process and in healing from loss.
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