Angry exam dream continues to haunt many graduates
It's exam time again, but dreaming about exams happens all year long - even for those who already have their diplomas. The Education magazine is looking for explanations for this common dream.
Hope and expectations enough when it comes to dream interpretation. Predictive, processing, instructive, or frightening, deceptive and nonsensical. Dreams tell many stories, but no one can fathom their meaning. Publicist Douwe Draaisma closes his book 'The Dream Weaver' (2013) concludes with the observation that every explanation raises new riddles.
Obstacles
The exam dream is no exception. Again you have to take the exam, but now with obstacles. Such a dream sometimes happens to 40 to 60 percent of adults. “Anxiety and discomfort are specific,” says Marc Hebbrecht, chairman of the Belgian Association for Psychoanalysis. "You are unprepared or you can't remember anything, you are in the wrong place, the examiner is an authoritarian critical figure who shows his disappointment."
Again you have to take the exam, but now with obstacles
What does that say about the dreamer, who in almost every case passed the same exam in the past? Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, first saw the exam dream as a typical dream that everyone has before a decision, choice or difficult assignment. Later he switched to a comforting message: you are unsure about something, but you can do it, because you have already passed this earlier exam. The exam dream also came into the picture as confirmation of sexual maturity.
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Carl Gustav Jung argued that every message from the unconscious carries some form of ambiguity. In Jung's world view, culturally shared concepts such as the hero, the mother and the impostor play important roles. We know them during the day from mythology, fairy tales and novels, in the night hours they appear in dreams. As a hero we fight our way to a diploma, as a swindler we realize that we are cheating and the mother can offer comfort.
Psychiatrist Hebbrecht: “Exam dreams can provide insight into the structure of your personality, for example about your relationship with an authority. Contrary to what Freud thought, there are several variants. In clinical practice, it is important that the patient tells in detail and that the practitioner listens carefully to all elements, based on the context and personality of the dreamer. There is no fixed meaning of a dream, you reveal it in the conversation.”
Hebbrecht rarely receives applications in his practice because of exam dreams. “Only if one suffers seriously from it can dreams be a reason for treatment. Think of sleeping difficulties due to nightmares.” Not every frightening dream is a nightmare, he explains. In a nightmare, the dreamer awakens in the middle of a threatening situation, with the dream ending abruptly. A frightening dream comes to a calmer end, after which the dreamer may even feel relieved because it was 'only' a dream.
balance
Searching for meaning in our nocturnal experiences can be a hobby, study material or work, all welcome at the Dutch Association for the Study of Dreams. For dream trainer and coach Natalie Fillet, dreams are the answer to questions that people push aside during the day with their rational and analytical brain. “Everything we are presented with during the night is important to find the balance in your personality.” Even if you have already received your driver's license, something is going on with a dream about a messed up drive. Fillet: “Never say 'it was just a dream', especially if that dream repeats itself. Turn back, see what happens, watch closely. The exam dream wants to show you something.”
Never say 'it was just a dream', especially if that dream is repeated. Turn back, see what happens, watch closely. The exam dream wants to show you something
But what then? Psychologist Marja Moors, therapist and coach at Dreaming Together: “A dream tells you something you don't know yet, but dreams can rarely be interpreted unequivocally. Everything revolves around the combination of the subject and your feeling about it.” In the XNUMXs, Moors graduated from Leiden University with research into the usefulness of dreams in everyday life: “I switched from the University of Amsterdam to Leiden specifically for this purpose. Scientific research in the Netherlands has now been modeled on exactly provable data for some thirty years. In dream research you depend on the stories the dreamer tells. That is difficult to study with today's standards.”
Difficult, but not impossible according to the Netherlands Brain Institute, where neurologist and dream researcher Francesca Siclari and her team stay awake during the wee hours in the sleep lab. Test subjects sign for a disturbed night's sleep. They wear a kind of hair net with 256 sensors, says Siclari in the podcast Master the Mind. Furthermore, their job is simply to fall asleep while the research team watches via video. With dream signals or according to a timetable, the alarm goes off and an interrogation immediately follows: what was the last thing you experienced? The research compares these dream stories with the measured brain activity, which should ultimately result in a publication. Dream for the future of this type of research: measurements at the test subjects' homes, because sleeping well in a lab is difficult for everyone and laboratory dreams also turn out to be more boring than what happens in their own bed.
Surrealism
Hard science has the say, is also the experience of psychiatrist Hebbrecht, affiliated with university psychotherapy courses in Leuven and Antwerp and author of various scientific publications about dreams. “In dream research with questionnaires you can quantify all sorts of things. Black and white or color, themes, number of characters. For example, we know that the dreams of depressed people are on average poorer in content. It is a fascinating sign of our time that everything in psychotherapy revolves around proven efficiency and effectiveness. The holistic approach with a broad perspective is less popular now, but I'm not pessimistic about it. A pendulum always swings in both directions.”
After all, apart from science, there is also cultural and social interest in dreams. Hebbrecht points to the surrealism that is experiencing a revival time and time again, and to Ingmar Bergman's feature film Wild strawberries in which the exam dream plays an important role. “The main character is successful as a professor, but his dreams indicate that he failed the exam of life. The film shows how insight into dreams can lead to personality change, which we also experience in therapy.”
Medicine
Never had an exam dream? You may be less susceptible to pressure to perform. In Nigeria, exam dreams have been studied in three population groups during the XNUMXs. Students from a traditional environment where diplomas had little weight experienced the fewest exam dreams. The group that had failed was also no longer haunted by the exam at night. Most of the exam dreams in this study occurred among the candidates who had only just obtained a passing grade.
Dream trainer Natalie Fillet has advice for teachers: “Support children by looking for what their dreams have to say in order to restore balance. If you have studied well and you dream that things go wrong, see that as preparation in case you have a blackout during the exam. You can say that to yourself: I've already dreamed this. You are already in HAVO-5, you have come this far for a reason, so you can do this.”
Or the other way around: if you are insecure and you dream that things are going great, hold on to that dream. “Feel free to expose yourself as a teacher, you have those dreams too. And if you are skeptical about the importance of dreams, realize that they have traditionally played a role in healing. That is not a floaty thing.”
Feel free to expose yourself as a teacher, you have those dreams too
Marja Moors: “We are tested and assessed from an early age, no wonder that the exam dream is so common. That dream is aimed at helping you, just like a body repairs a wound. The unconscious tries to make something whole at night so that you can move forward better. Write them down in a dream journal, look at them curiously, ask yourself questions. Share it with someone who knows you well, that can help a lot. A partner or friend can often see more easily what the message is in your dream.”
