demagogue on 10/4/2011 at 14:17
We don't have any context to work with.
As I understand it, dreams don't work on the level of directly telling you something, but your natural compulsions and anxieties find images and stock them. It's a very emotional kind of vocabulary. But we have to have context about what kind of emotional resonance this stuff has, and what stuff your emotional about. (If you don't want it to get personal, then you don't really want to do dream interpretation.)
If you're moving around a lot, or living in a temporary situation (school, transition job), then dreams of a big house is like a longing for security and stability, or being part of a big family with the need for lots of rooms. A fireplace usually has the emotional resonance of being the center of the house or its security. It's the hearth. It has the symbolic center of the house. So if you're seeing a lot of them, again it's like you're longing for that centerpiece of stability, like an anchor. I mean, you think about what the fireplace meant to you as a kid... (That is, it's not just what some psychologist says it means; it's what emotions it generates in your own emotions.) But for most people, it's the centerpiece of "home", where you run to when shit goes down; screw this I'm taking my ball and going back home; and in winter it's very much where you want to run to when the cold and weather are assaulting you. Or more common, it's what "invites" you into a room (when it's your room). The casualness of it is also very home-like. It's not just security in terms of a fortress that can protect you, but something you take for granted, that's really yours. You can walk through these rooms at will and nobody is stopping you. It's even inviting you in. They'll stop and casually chat maybe, and the fireplace is inviting you in. (Something I know myself having lived in so many temporary apartments. This is how I'd understand a dream like this in my own experience anyway.)
But it depends some on your background too, of course. What's your situation and what's bubbling under the surface emotionally?
mxleader on 11/4/2011 at 05:12
There are some interesting observations here. I'm pretty sure it's not aids, Thief withdrawal (well, not entirely sure about this one), or want of motherly sex. I am pretty sure that I am going to Hell or am already there. That being said, a blood orgy does sound appealing to some degree ... perhaps when I go to Hell.
I do hate my job very much, which isn't so different than a lot of people so I'm not sure if that has any affect on the dream outcome, and I've hated the job for many years.
Also, I do have an odd obsession with fireplaces and cooking apparatuses. I do have two homes with two types of wood/pellet stoves and an outdoor woodstove. I do love a good raging inferno when I go camping.
My old house, which I still own, has a basement that I spent many hours in and one side was set up for beer brewing and the other was the darkroom; however, there was only one way to get downstairs and that was a set of stairs, and the two sides were connected.
At any rate the dreams are ones that I have been able to drag the details easily back to the waking world, which is strange to me.
Vasquez on 11/4/2011 at 05:18
One of the general interpretations of a building in a dream is your own body. Do you have a fever?
demagogue on 11/4/2011 at 06:42
Feeling at "home" in your childhood home isn't just a place, but a state of mind I think. Maybe it's a desire to go back to simpler times where you could just hang out around things that are familiar to you, or be a child again?
BTW, I read an article that said the main function of dreams isn't really particularly psychological at all, but it's more physiological. Memories and concepts are stored as weights in synapses (so the theory goes), and the weighting naturally diminishes over time, so they need periodic refreshing to last or be primed for future use. (Same reason you need to keep practicing a piano piece to play it well). Then dreams are the manifestation of that refreshing / priming; it's like a kind of natural imaginary practice. That's the theory anyway.
If that's right, then when you do dream of something, it might not be your mind trying to release psychological anxiety like some old theories go (Freud), but maybe the system just tags certain memories and concepts as worth long-term saving or in need of current priming, and they get put into a queue for re-triggering. That might still tell you something, why these images were worth refreshing or priming and not others -- maybe it's betting on you needing them in the near future -- but possibly tangential psych. significance.
PeeperStorm on 11/4/2011 at 07:49
mxleader has a fever, and the only prescription is more fireplace!
