Like the title says, do believers ever dream about Jesus? If so, what's he doing or saying?

I've dreamt about him a couple of times. Once was when I was reading the bible, and he embraced me and said everything was fine.

Then recently, there was this long involved dream where a group of people I was in was being chased by vampires. I was more or less the leader. Jesus was also in the group and he asked us to sacrifice him so we could get away. This involved jamming a stake through his heart, a la Buffy. The idea was that the vampires would feast on his blood and give the rest of us a chance to run. Nobody could quite bring themselves to kill Jesus, though, so I wound up going over to the lead vampire and offering my own neck instead.

The whole theory of dreaming says that if you think about something frequently during the day, you'll dream about it at night. If Christians think about Jesus much at all, it would only stand to reason that they would dream about him pretty often. Yet I've never heard any Christians talk about Jesus popping up in their dreams. Why not? No dreams about Jesus, ever, or not willing to talk about the Lord of Hosts and Prince of Peace and all that hanging around doing wacky dream things?

Sometimes. He likes Heads up Limit Hold Em. He also thinks Daniel is a fish in the big game.

Hey, don't look at me. I never said a word, he brought it up.

Good answer. I see the glimmerings of potential for this thread.

Recurrent dreams sometimes represent the subconscious trying to resolve fragmentation of the personality. So someone who kept dreaming about Jesus would probably be stuggling with some sort of god complex.

No, instead they dream of homosexual sex.




(sorry... I could not resist.)

I hate Freud

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar -- or so he claimed.

There is no reason the two are mutally exclusive.

so do most psychologists... it's funny how pop psychology got stuck on freud when the actual field moved past him ages ago.

(sorry for the tangent, just a pet peeve of mine)

It is a tangent, but this thread kind of goes to show that there is a strange silence from Christians on this subject.

I was just reading a book written by a Freudian recently. It's striking how totally wrong Freud is, and yet how totally right. Sometimes simultaneously on the same issue.

This is very insightful.

I think my main view of him is that he did have some really interesting insights into the way the mind works, but that none of it is really particularly useful for effective psychotherapy.

They know a trap when they see one.

Hey...wait a minutes.





I have never dreamed of Jesus, BUT the Bible clearly says that the young men will see visions, and the old men will dream dreams. So I guess I got a few years before I catch up to you SB.

And Frued was a quack lying pedophile. Or it might have been a metaphore for his desire of young boys who loved their mother's plans to rule their husband through denial of childish fears.

I agree, for the most part. But classes on Rorshach tests (interpretation of ink blot tests) are still a requirement of the APA (American Psychology Association) for any doctorate program to become accredited. Their justification for the requirement is that all the good psychology schools have the classes, which is blatantly circular logic, but go figure.

I received an undergraduate degree in Psychology (which I never used, except as a stepping stone to a different masters degree) and the major was filled with Freudians. A lot of psychologists and psychiatrists out there still buy into the bs. Including the crap about Oedipal complexes (everyone wants to have sex with their mother and fear violence from their father as a result).

Freud was a cocaine and opium addict and based his theories on 4 case studies. The only thing he deserves credit for is spurring on the field of psychology as a whole, even though his contribution to it was nothing but mistakes.

So what's the difference between a Christian and a Catholic?

Been there. I think you guys are going to be surprised when I unveil in the near future what I have been working on recently. It's fairly gay.

Somebody said that this thread could be a potential trap- I can see how some could see it as that, being that most christians think they are supposed to play some type of role, and thus cannot have dreams that consist of certain things, but dreams are just a conglomeration of everything and anything. Some could have meaning and some make no sense and are just gibberish. I happen to have vivid dreams about lots of things, sinful and not, and enjoy the idea that it's probably because, unlike the angry conservative role I play on this site I am actually rather vibrant, made up of all kinds of sides, desires, etc. We are all sinners at the core.

My first answer was of course a joke, my dreams when I do dream of God are usually not good, because I dream of what I fear, like the end times and not being prepared. I can't tell you how many times I have dreamt that the sky opened, a trumpet sounded, the moon turned to blood, and all I can think about it "Shit, I should not be seeing this" and then I wake up. My dreams often involve people from church, when I was a 13 my mom was sent from Oregon to Arizona to help a Church of Christ that was in trouble spiritually and so we moved, and I hated it, as much as any kid could. I loved my friends, especially one, and I would have dreams where I was flying above her while she was at a playground and I would call to her and try to land so I could play with her, she would not look up, those were the worst dreaming years of my life. I was a fairly depressed 13 to 15 year old.

To this day I harbor the feeling that life took a wrong turn at 13. I love where I am at now but that was pivotal, everything changed.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

That test is not Freudian though.



It's becoming increasingly rare... most Ph.D. programs in psychology teach empirically supported methods. I think we have about 50 faculty in my department and I don't think one of them is a psychoanalyst.

Could also be that you heathens have chased most of them off. Ever think about that, hot shot?

I think you in particular will enjoy the gayness of the project I have been working on.

The Oedipal complex is one of the places where he's exactly wrong. However, his contribution was more than just mistakes. He, more than anyone, gave us the idea of the subconscious, and the id/ego/superego, whether "correct" in any sense or not, is still a useful construct.

Consider Stephen Spielberg's Animaniacs from that standpoint: Yakko = superego; Wakko = id; Dot = ego. You can even throw in Hello Nurse and Dr. Scratchensniff as parental figures (Hello Nurse even as an Oedipal mother figure), and Katie Kaboom as a hysterical virgin. It works -- not that underpinning a cartoon universe was what Freud had in mind.

But, as VB said, not actually any good for therapy.

I've dreamt about the end of the world too, but it was meteor strikes coming west to east across the US, getting closer and closer to my house until the one that finally hit and turned our house into a white flash of light. I had my back toward the approaching strikes, hugging my husband, and the last thing I remember in the dream was the feeling of the skin on my back burning and crackling and curling, then I woke up. I think it's pretty rare to dream up to and including one's own death. Maybe I just needed the A/C on.

Do robots dream of electric sheep?

The psychotherapy legacy is the one part of freud's work that I have the most issue with. His stuff about dreams and the id and shit like that is recognized as non-scientific these days, and while may have cultural impact, particularly in arts and literature but little other impact beyond that. However, it's fruedian style psycho therapy ( IE meeting with a psychologist 3 times a week, every week, for years, to gain some sort of child hood insight and become healthy) is one of the most ineffective ( and expensive) forms of therapy there is. And it has all the scientific validity of religion. Hey, if it makes people feel better and trick themselves into being happy, fine, but I have the same issues with many forms of psychological therapy that I do with religion, only religion doesn't drape itself in a veneer of pseudo science.

Isn't it androids?

I agree, but the fact is that we now have very effective methods of pychotherapy for many of the common things people experience. For example, my wife does cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders, and its very very effective. People actually get better in a reasonable amount of time. The problem is that the public is not educated about this; they still think therapy means sitting on a couch talking about your mother for the rest of your life, and they often seek out therapists who do this rather than going to people who practice empirically supported treatments.

Okay, well, I was of course talking about was Freudian style psycho-analysis, which still exists and is pretty much how the public expects. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most useful form of psychological therapy, and has the highest success rates, particularly with some specific issues, like anxiety and phobias. The most severe the mental illness, the less effective any form of therapy is, of course.

True, I often wonder how much influence Freud had on L. Ron Hubbard.

I think Titanic Thompson was more of an influence on Hubbard

I like it when you call me hot shot.



Go on...

http://www.scientology.org/interview/lronhubbard.html



Yet what most distinguished the young L. Ron Hubbard was an insatiable curiosity coupled with an innate desire to better the human condition. Recognizing exactly those qualities, no less than a student of Sigmund Freud's and the only American naval officer to study psychoanalysis in Vienna, Commander Joseph C. Thompson, introduced the young L. Ron Hubbard to Freudian theory.

All in good time- we meet Friday for Promo shots and a cast party.

Yes, Loismustdie has finally started acting. And it's totally GAY. Raise your hand if you saw that coming. Not I.

Well said. Psychotherapy has repeatedly been shown to actually do damage to an individual's psyche.

http://huffduffer.com/norelpref/2372

This is one of my favorite podcasts, and this is one of my favorite stories from it, and it is relevant to this discussion, although you have to listen to the end to see the relevance. (Don't worry, it's a fun story on the way, less than 15 minutes).

What's with the notion of sacrifice? After the vampires feast on ________'s blood, they'll eventually just get hungry again and come after you again. No one thought of fighting them?



One of mankind's greatest quotes. And I'm serious.



Freud will still be discussed in 1,000 years.

Over under on how long it takes them to send us a cease and desist e-mail about using an image from their site ?

They contacted us about the hubbard joke account a few years ago.

There was some idea in the dream that his blood, being sacred and all, was like the ultimate blood for them. Not only would it sate them for extra-long, but they'd stay there to get every drop, which would give the rest of us plenty of time to get away. [Sure they'd eventually want to eat again, but I'm not sure it wasn't just a one-shot encounter, i.e., if we escaped this time we wouldn't be hanging around that area waiting for them to be hungry later.] Plus it might even make them really messed up or high to drink it and might even kill them, being too holy for them to drink. I'm not Christian, but the whole sacred heart thing always struck me as very coolly medieval.

I don't know why there wasn't a pitched battle. My group and the vampires were just kind of standing around in two groups in a big bunker-like room. The groups were about the same size, and for some vague dream reason there wasn't going to be a fight, but I don't know or don't remember why that was.

Wow. That is just amazing.

But not surprising...

^^^^^

But really what could they say about a joke account? Cease and desist impersonating L.Ron?

Bob do you still have that communication from them? I'd love to see that.

Hoping that there was not compliance with their request vis a vis this issue.

It was back when the online cardroom was still running and I no longer have the e-mail from their lawyers.

Their main point was that the images in the avatar since it was taken from them was their property and we had to take it down. We looked into it a bit and they have a history of keeping lawyers busy on seemingly petty matters so we took the easy way out and removed the images taken from their site.

I get the impression that they have some sort of process set up to get pretty much any mention of them on the internet looked at.

Edit: Now that I recall the request didn't come directly from them but came from our ISP at the time and they made it clear that they took it seriously. I guess that they served papers on our ISP about it.

I'm a bit familiar with the acting circles in AZ. Who are you working with?

World Famous stunt man Scott Roland, for one.

I chuckled.

Oh that's funny because I was just wondering how he felt about the new iPhone.

http://twitter.com/scottroland

They are known for this. They threaten legal action to have information removed. If not removed, they go into "Dead Agent" tactics which is to attack everything about you publicly to discredit your reputation. It is a crazy and powerful cult.

LOL no wonder he hasn't been posting, is need to make nonsensical 1 sentence posts is being sated by twitter.

Absolutely no one on any type of radar whatsoever. Well, 2 of them have done some film school/student type stuff but if you have seen it I would be surprised. They have talent, but I see myself as the jam in there jelly roll.

Hopefully everyone else finds what we are doing as funny as I do. That's alot to hope for but the ones that do not find it funny wont be able to say it will be for lack of effort, the things we have come up with let it all hang out. I love what we have so far.

Where are they based out of, where did they go to school?

Christians believe that Jesus saves you, and Catholics believe Mary does... and that you should have sex with small children. Or something like that.




That was a really good joke account.



this.



...and now Theresa is being watched.

Brvheart, I love your new sig file!

The only answer I've gotten to my question, though, is another instance of the strange silence around the subject. Recent psych experiments show that glossolalia (a/k/a speaking in tongues) in evangelicals actually leaves their language center dark, while lighting up other parts of their brain on fMRI. If I were ever to go back to grad school for psych (instead of the more likely history or Shakespeare), this question would totally be one I'd want to study. If the answer is that Christians do not dream about Jesus, then it's a complete violation of the entire theory of dreaming (namely, frequency or same-day influences). It might also mean that something is blocking that particular region of thought from appearing in dream worlds. That is so interesting to me.