Dreams are a deception, says popular wisdom, and yet we now know that they relate to our personality. In this way, anxiety dreams tell something about our character. The exam dream is one of the most common anxiety dreams. Why do we dream that and what is behind it?
The dream interpreters
Dreaming has always been an activity that people wanted to know the ins and outs of. The search for the why has occupied many people and some bright minds found recurring elements that pushed them in the direction of an explanation. The Greek soothsayer and writer Artemidoros van Daldis (2nd century BC) was the first to report it in writing. In his Oneirocritico (Interpretation of Dreams) he wrote down his ideas on the subject. Sigmund Freud (photo) made a modern version of it at the end of the 19th century ( Die Traumdeutung , 1899). The link he made with the human subconscious has now become commonplace.
The anxiety dream
Among all types of dreams, the anxiety dream is the most common. Being chased and barely making any progress, having lost his passport in a strange and unknown country, getting lost in a large forest and continuing to wander around in despair, being late for his own wedding party, not being able to find his car in the city. Everyone will feel recognize this or that dream and have an unpleasant memory of it.
One of the most widespread is the exam dream: having to take an exam in which one is afraid of not passing because one has not prepared or because one has simply forgotten or the circumstances are not favorable. It corresponds to the dream of the actor who has just wants to go through his text before the performance of the play he is playing in because he is no longer sure and can no longer find the manuscript and is panicking about having to leave now.
Why?
Artemidoros talked about this type of dream: Whoever dreams that he is back at school and cannot recite his lesson properly, is about to undertake something that he does not know much about.
Freud interpreted this type of dream as the fear of not being able to perform a certain task or carry out a certain assignment in life.
People who often experience such dreams have a personality problem . The fear and excitement that has seized them in response to something they will have to realize indicates shaky self-confidence. They are afraid of disappointing people and not being able to meet certain expectations and not completing something successfully. The fear of rejection makes them insecure and irritable.
Typical of these types of dreams is that they are never about the content of an exam, but only about what precedes it or what problems arise while taking the exam, which may indicate a fear of not having prepared something sufficiently.
Freud did point out that people with exam dreams usually have no problem achieving their set goal in reality. An exam dream, he said, has a reassuring effect for the dreamer: it lets him know that he does not have to worry and that everything will be fine.
