Interpreting the dreams of anyone but yourself is difficult because dreams are based on extremely personal symbolism. If you ask ten people to picture of a bat in their mind you will get ten different interpretations based on the person's different views. Try it yourself. Picture a bat in your mind. Now is it a baseball bat? Wooden or metal? An animal? Which type, fruit, insect or blood eating? Is it a simple line drawing like child would make? Are you afraid of bats or do you like them? As you can see this makes interpreting someone else's dream difficult at best. If my concept of a bat is is different from yours is my interpretation of your dream about a bat could be totally wrong.
So if dream interpretation is based off of personal symbolism how do you go about interpreting your dreams? One method is to find the Title, Theme, Affect and Question of the dream. By giving your dream a simple title you start narrowing down the meaning of the dream. The theme is a short phrase or phrases that describe the main idea of the dream. The emotional tone or impact of the dream is the Affect, as in how the dream affects you. Finally you condense your dream down into one Question. Almost every dream asks a question. The act of formulating that question will help you solidify your interpretation of the dream. Dream interpretation is based off the feeling your get from the dream.
If you want to work with your dreams one of the easiest and most effective ways to get started is to repeat to yourself as you are falling asleep that you will remember you dreams. Then, literally as soon as you wake up, write down your dreams the next morning. Keep a notebook and pencil by your bed specifically for this purpose. Write down the Title, Theme, Affect and Question as well, either immediately or later in the day if you have to think about them. Generally your first gut response will be the correct one.
You will notice over time that certain themes might be repeating frequently in your dreams. This will give you an idea of issues you might need to address in your life. Reading back over you past dreams will often give you insight into yourself that you might not find anywhere else.
Local places to find books on dream work and interpretation:
