DREAMS - DELVING INTO THE ABYSS OF MEMORY RATI OBEROI Centre for Professional Communication, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India ABSTRACT Interpretation of dreams is psychological technique, every dream is a psychical structure which has a meaning. By the nature of psychical forces and their concurrent and mutually opposing action dreams are generated. Being an attribute of memory dreams interpretation is therapeutic and can lead to holistic self and community development. Dreams of warning powers draw to conscious attention moral infirmities and physical illness. In ancient societies, dreaming was considered a supernatural communication, divine intervention, or omens of particular significance. Dream interpretation was taken up as part of psychoanalysis at the end of the 19th century. In Namita Gokhale’s novels each dream with a latent meaning is a unique personal experience. Dreams are subjected to distortion, as the meaning manifest in the unconscious is not derived completely. Dreams are compromises which ensure that sleep is not interrupted. Sex dreams being part of self, do not involve incest or promiscuity but depict that cultural sexual repression necessitated reenactment to alleviate physical and psychic distress. Dream sequences point to inability, unresolved conflict, some urgent message in the unconscious demanding to be understood, or forgotten traumatic memories resurfacing. Daydream is a visionary fantasy experienced while awake, can be constructive and connected with some emotion. (No. of Words: 201) KEYWORDS: Dream Interpretation, Psychological Technique, Psychical Structure, Therapeutic INTRODUCTION One of the superior faculties to which dream – life, is attributed is that of memory. Dreams are defined as mental activity of the dreamer in so far as he is asleep. Every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which has a meaning. The endeavour is to elucidate the process to which the strangeness and obscurity of dreams are due and to deduce from those processes the nature of the psychical forces by whose concurrent or mutually opposing action dreams are generated. . Thus Havelock Ellis, without dwelling on the apparent absurdity of dreams, s peaks of them as “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” [Trans. & Ed. James Strachey, Interpretation of Dreams, 1998, 92] that study of which might reveal the primitive stages in evolution of mental life. James Sully, [Trans. & Ed. James Strachey, Interpretation of Dreams, 1998, 93]was more firmly convinced that dreams have a disguised meaning, more sweeping and penetrating; and that dreams are a means of conserving successive earlier personalities. Death is not a terminal event and does not exist in any real sense, the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. All possible universes exist simultaneously, perhaps this energy transcends from one world to the other. Like ancient Eastern and Western philosophical schools, Robert Lanza insist that the mind creates all reality. In the modern context, idealism has been supplemented with a brand of quantum mysticism and relabeled as biocentrism. Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. In many ancient societies dreaming was considered a supernatural communication or a means of divine intervention, whose message could be unraveled by those with certain powers. In modern times, various schools of psychology have offered theories about the meaning of dreams. The ancient Greeks believed that cures would be affected through divine grace by incubating dreams within the confines of International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct 2013, 77-86 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.