Compensatory wish-fulfillment dreams Dream Interpretation
If your life is particularly difficult, you may have a dream in which you feel blissfully carefree and happy.
If you are feeling lonely and unloved, you may have a dream in which you are making love. Many dream analysts describe these night-time idylls as wish-fulfillment compensatory dreams. In classic Freudian theory, dreams are thought to be vehicles for wish-fulfillment. In dreams, the dreamer can develop and satisfy complex wishes and desires that would not be allowed to seep through to consciousness in waking life. Although this theory can be quite complicated, put simply it suggests that dreams reflect your unconscious desires. For example, if you are having financial problems, you may dream of winning the lottery.
If you are worn out after weeks of hard work, you may dream of sunning yourself on a beach without a care in the world.
If you are worried about the way you look, you may dream of being a supermodel.
Bear in mind, though, that compensatory wish-fulfillment is just one explanation for uplifting dreams; the meaning of your dream will always remain personal to you. However much a dream may appear to be wish-fulfillment, it is still important to consider its many layers of meaning. Jung’s theories about alchemy may also help you understand feelings of both intense joy and of sadness in your dreams.
In his classic 1944 text Psychology and Alchemy, Jung concluded that the ancient tradition of alchemy could help us make sense of a universally valid truth—that one becomes aware of new meanings within the unconscious by seeing them mirrored in the world around us. This is the psychological phenomenon of projection—the placing of unknown and unfulfilled desires onto other people and things—a process Jung believed was often at work in dreams.
[1]