Hi there,
Great topic. Dreams are a large part of my therapy. Dreams are very tricky, and it takes a really experienced and insightful person to help you make sense of them. There are no meaningless dreams, and they are a creation all of your own. It has taken me a long time to understand this; that when something happens in my dreams, it's ME that's making that happen.
Dreams are a way for our minds to filter the messages from our unconscious; they are a kind of communication from yourself to yourself, and they are totally and completely unique to you.
Sure, people have common dreams of flying or being back in high school (a.k.a. a nightmare), being chased, etc, but they have meaning only in relation to you. There are no common meanings to dreams, only common scenes.
My dreams are pretty wild, and often so strange that I can't actually describe them. Sometimes they are so complex that I can only *feel* them. Still, I try to write them down and think about what I am trying to tell myself, or what I'm trying to make myself feel.
My dreams are rarely literal. The whole latent vs. manifest content thing totally applies in my case. If I have a dream about a hostile, aggressive cop yelling at me and/or threatening me, it's not about some jerky cop, it's more likely to be about a version of myself attacking/punishing me for something I'm doing in the dream, or something I intend to do or feel.
Who better to punish me than a hostile, male authority figure who is, after all, a very real part of myself formed when it split off at a young age in order to identify with my father as a way to feel close to him? The part of me that knows this is trying like hell to show the conscious me, but of course, the ego is thick as a brick and needs to be shown over and over and over and over again.
Something else I've learned about dreams is that it's rarely an either/or meaning. They can mean more than one thing, and it's never black and white. More often than not, the theme involves - among other things - mixed feelings about something or someone, and how I feel about those mixed feelings. Often, I didn't even realize I had - or had not allowed myself to feel - those mixed feelings. That is, until I show myself that that's exactly how I feel.
Despite how baffling, difficult and disturbing your dream life can be, I think it's so critical to pay attention to it. It's your soul and your inner life talking to you, albeit in a filtered way. I'm slowly discovering that ignoring this part of you is supremely unwise.
Sweet dreams!
Russ