The fire engine dream
I was PJ Coogan’s guest on The Opinion Line on Cork’s 96FM (Ireland) last week, talking about dreams. PJ’s dream about his mother, who is in her nineties, driving a fire engine at top speed was one of many highlights. I explain a key dream interpretation tip that throws light on the meaning of this dream. Other highlights include (in order they appear): What is a dream? What does a dream of getting on
Can AI interpret dreams accurately
Can AI Really Interpret Your Dreams? I Put Claude to the Test. As a professional dream analyst, I’m frequently asked whether AI can replace human expertise in dream interpretation. Rather than speculate, I decided to conduct a direct experiment: I gave Claude.ai one of my own dreams and compared its interpretation to mine. Here’s the dream I shared with Claude: I saw a family on a peaceful beach, enjoying the sand and sea. My granddaughter
People in your dreams
“You say that everything and everyone in a dream represents a part of the dreamer. I can see how the unicorn in my dream represents my magical thinking, and how the dark, brooding thundercloud portrays my pent-up anger. But I’m having difficulty seeing my partner, Neil, who is also in this dream, as a part of myself. I didn’t realise how angry I was with Neil until I had this dream. I’m thundercloud-angry with him,
AI and dream therapy
I heard someone recently talking about their clever phone. I wasn’t sure if they meant to say smart phone and got the word wrong, or whether they were joking. Smart, clever, what’s the difference? A quick Google gives one definition of smart as “Having or showing a quick-witted intelligence”, whereas clever is defined as “Quick to understand, learn, and devise or apply ideas”. I can’t think of a single example of my phone demonstrating quick-witted
The break-in
I was terrified, heart pounding, bones frozen, as my front door creaked open, and the intruder’s face came into view. “You can’t come in! Go away! Help!” I shouted, each word so hard to squeeze through my tight throat that it came out as a slow ghostly drawl: “Go-awaaaay! Heeeelp!” I may have been shouting in my dream, but it was a woeful, high-pitched, strangled wail that woke me up. I lay quite still. Partly
Dreams on The Today Show
The Today Show (Channel Nine), 25 September It was a pleasure to catch up with The Today Show (Channel Nine, Australia) this week to talk about dreams, and how parents can help their children when they have nightmares. We also chat about Karl and Sarah’s dreams, and always have a bit of fun along with the serious stuff:
How long is a piece of string?
How long is a roll of toilet paper in a dream? And why couldn’t I break off a single sheet? I used to have a recurring dream where I tried to detach a single piece of TP from a roll. It held fast. I’d roll out a few more sheets, try to gently tear along a different perforation line. No give. I’d pull harder. The soft paper tissue became soft plastic, then it would morph
The cat
I finally let the muse into my heart. Or did I let the cat out of the bag? I had noticed my non-fiction writing growing more lyrical with each passing year until eventually, in early 2023, I acknowledged the call. After writing seven non-fiction books on dreams, it was time to write a novel. The urge was there, in my nightly dreams, and many a media interview concluded with the question, ‘If you weren’t a
Perspective
In a long-ago dream, I was a passenger in an open carriage train, sunshiny blue skies lightly kissing my skin as we journeyed peacefully alongside an ocean. The sense of the journey was liberation, an unblocking, a throughway to the future. As I watched the ocean, I noticed churning dark waves, tsunamis that rose quite majestically before subsiding into silvery sparkles and luminescent pearls. How would you interpret such a dream? You might wonder if
Dream declutter
What began as a wardrobe declutter on a quiet Saturday afternoon continued in a dream in the early hours of Sunday morning. I love a good declutter: the opportunity to let go of clothes that no longer serve me, whether it’s because they’re old and worn and need to be replaced by fresher pieces with more life to offer, or because they no longer fit me or my lifestyle, or they’re items I’ve held onto