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Sexual Dreams - Is it a fantasy or a terror?

A famous quotes says, "Follow your dreams, for as you dream you shall become." Well! Most of us hate our dreams or rather wish a reality to be a nightmare. Dream has been a fantasy to many. A fairy tale that keeps jumping from one scene to another and finally landing up nowhere. A wonderland, where one tries to figure its meaning every dawn to find a mere wrong destiny.



I remember one of my friend reciting her every dream (if she remembers) to her mom until her teenage when her dreams became a place of brothel. She termed them as haunted sexual dreams. Even in this era where the word sex is not a taboo any more, people are often worried because they've had dreams with a sexual content. However, sexual dreams are not abnormal, they are just another phase of life. Read to know all about it.

Sexual dreams can be very disturbing if, an individual does something that would be totally shocking in real life. For instance, a woman who leads an extremely holy life with family and children may be troubled by dreams in which she has sex with not one but many handsome males (mostly Hollywood or Bollywood actors). In the same way a man who preaches to be straight and finds homosexuality a dismal to the society may be shattered to find that he has dreams in which he is engaging in sexual intercourse with some handsome man. While some may be found troubled with these dreams there are many who simply enjoy them for what they are. To the contrary the psychiatrists claim this attitude to be the best one to tackle such dreams.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] Causes for sexual dreams
Psychiatrist claim that since sex is one of the most powerful of all human drives, it's not surprising that so many dreams have a strong sexual content. An individual dreams about sex because of the intense activity that is constantly going on in his/ her subconscious minds. It is also said that the deep urges to do certain things, are highly likely to come out in dreams where the consciences cannot prevent them happening.

Sex dreams in culture
Certain culture value sex dreams. For instance a tribe called Senoi in the mountainous jungles in Malaysia valued dreams and enjoyed it to the brim. They embraced love and sex in their dreams. In one of the writings of Jill Morris he states that, " When the Senoi had pleasurable, sexual dreams, they were taught to move toward the loving objects and then enjoy them to the fullest. They were also encouraged to have orgasms in their dreams. It didn't matter who or what the loving object was, it could be a relative, a friend's spouse, an animal or an inanimate object. After reaching orgasm, the dreamer would ask the dream lover for a gift."

Censored sexual dreams
People with strong strict puritanical outlook can censor or clean up dreams not wholly but partially. In the sense censor may alter sexual dreams in to symbols for instance a follower of strict sexual moral code may have a deep, unconscious desire to have sex with beautiful women. therefore. Instead of dreaming about breasts he will dream about pleasant hillocks and mountains and vagina's will be replaced with tunnels and subways. In the same way, woman instead of penis may dream about cigars, tall chimneys...etc. However such symbolic sex dreams have not been recorded these days as people are less 'hung up' than they were few years ago.



Treatment



There is no specific treatment for such dreams. Most sex dreams are fun, so just enjoy the stuff that you cant do it in reality. However if your hate the whole idea like homosexuality, then just ignore such dreams that has no meaning for you. It doesn't matter.

Repeated distressing sex dreams like incest, violence or rape can have some psychological reason behind it. If its too traumatic please consult your psychologist or a therapist who have an analytical background with peoples dream worlds. Hypnotherapist have been useful in some cases as they re-design the dream during hypnosis so that they end with less disturbing note.

To end with, according to Sigmund Freud, all dream activity relates in some way to sex. Most people would consider this an extreme point of view, but it is true that sexual imagery is a vital part of dream content. In particular they can bring to light many repressed sexual desires, our guilty feelings or our unexpressed fears about sex.

Story first published: Friday, June 1, 2007, 17:18 [IST]

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