Almost every dream has a theme, which may be common or uncommon. Without understanding the theme, you will usually be at a loss to make sense of the individual images—the people and things you dream up. This first entry is dedicated to helping you figure out any theme you conjure up. The rest of the entries will deal with the most common dream themes and will serve as models you can use to modify your interview for any theme.

Try using the interview questions listed below to explore the meaning of any theme not listed in this book. They will help you follow the basic interview steps of:

1. Getting a good description,

2. Recapping that description, and

3. Bridging or connecting the image described to something in your life.

Remember, pretending that the interviewer comes from a different planet will help you give concise answers that get to the point about what you really feel and think about the images in your dream. This will work whether you give the role of interviewer to a partner or play it yourself. These questions should provide you with the material to connect your dream experience to your waking experience and thus to interpret your dream according to your own meaning system. This, after all, is the one you went to sleep with before you created the dream. Good luck!

1. Describe the main theme in your dream. Are you being suffocated? Are you being chased by someone? Have you lost your purse? Do you find yourself naked in public? How do you feel in the dream? Describe feelings and attitudes very specifically. Remember, your interviewer comes from another planet and doesn’t know how a human like you would feel in such a situation. Can you find three adjectives to describe your experience? So in your dream (restate briefly the description and see if the dreamer concurs with your recapitulation).

2. Is there any situation in your life in which you have the same feelings you just described? (Bridge) How so? Can you tell me more specifically how they match? (Testing the bridge.)

3. How might this dream theme shed light on your deepest and most honest feelings, your hopes, your fears, your concerns in your waking life? (This question will help the dreamer to summarize and reflect upon her dream.)