1.   Why don't we always remember our dreams? 2.   Do emotions experienced during the day always affect our dreams? 3.   If I watch a movie before going to bed, will I dream about it? 4.   If I don't realize that I have an emotional connection to the movie I that watch before going to sleep, will it still affect my dreams? 5.   Do people we see and interact with during the day appear in our dreams? 6.   I have heard that I am every person in my dreams. Is that true? 7.   Do the activities that we do during the day affect our dreams? 8.   Do the activities that we do right before going to bed affect our dreams more than the things we do in the beginning and middle of the day? 9.   Can we predict the future with our dreams?       1. Why don't we always remember our dreams? Some people remember their dreams very clearly and some people hardly remember them at all. Most people remember dreams occasionally. There is apparently a monthly cycle for many people so that they remember their dreams more at one time of the month. When one is going through an emotional crisis (like the death of a loved one) one is more likely to remember one's dreams. If a person decides that their dreams are important and make a habit of trying to remember their dreams, or if they keep a dream diary, they are more likely to remember their dreams. Drinking or taking drugs will dull the ability to remember dreams for most people. As you can see, this ability to remember dreams varies greatly from person to person and may vary quite a bit for any individual. Our waking mind is not present when we are sleeping and that is why we do not experience our dreams the way we experience our waking life. But sometimes people have a lucid dream and in a lucid dream they are aware that they are dreaming and they possess most of their normal waking consciousness, their normal memory and their normal judgement. Lucid dreams are usually very clearly remembered. 2. Do emotions experienced during the day always affect our dreams? Everyone has six or more dreams a night. Sometimes dreams are repairing what we've been through. Sometimes dreams are preparing for what is to come. Sometimes dreams are just playful improvisation. Dreams are a very important part of our inner lives, trying to help us attain emotional balance, trying to express and respond to feelings we may not even acknowledge in our waking lives. People are very different and their dreams are very different. How much the emotions they experience during the day affects their dreams depends on who they are and what they are going through. For most people, the emotions of the day strongly influence the nature of their dreams at night. 3. If I watch a movie before going to bed, will I dream about it? Probably not. A movie is like a dream with a story and characters and an emotional content. If we are moved by the emotional content, we are more likely to bring elements of that movie into our dreams. Just because you watch a Tom and Jerry cartoon before you go to sleep doesn't mean you'll dream about Tom and Jerry (though you might!). 4. If I don't realize that I have an emotional connection to the movie that I watch before going to sleep, will it still affect my dreams? People are surprisingly unaware of their feelings - not everyone, but most people. People, as they grow up, create and maintain a self-image. They posture and rationalize and deny their true feelings. Many successful people, even psychiatrists, are totally detached from their true feelings and emotions. Our dreams are products of our true feelings and emotions. So it is very possible that a person will respond to a movie on a subconscious level and the feelings evoked by the movie will resonate in their dreams. 5. Do people we see and interact with during the day appear in our dreams? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes we substitute one person we know for another. There are some experts on dreams who believe that all the characters in our dreams just represent different aspects of ourself. Dreams are incredibly creative and can draw on anything in our experience to paint their pictures. Some truths are difficult to face, even in our dreams, so our dreams soften the impact by masking and transposing the elements. 6. I have heard that I am every person in my dreams. Is that true? In our Western culture the two best known theorists on dreams are Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Many Jungians believe that you are every person in your dreams. It is often useful to employ this concept to help a person interpret a dream, but I think dreams use a variety of techniques to achieve their ends and this is just one of them. 7. Do the activities that we do during the day affect our dreams? Yes, very much. But not in a predictable way. Physical activity may produce dreams of physical activity or of rest and relaxation - the exact opposite! 8. Do the activities that we do right before going to bed affect our dreams more than the things we do in the beginning and middle of the day? No. Dreams deal with the big issues of the moment whether they just happened or happened recently or are happening soon. Pregnant women have powerful dreams in the weeks and months before their due date. Having a baby is such a big event in a person's life it makes the usual ups and downs of day-to-day living pale by comparison. 9. Can we predict the future with our dreams? There are many well-documented stories of precognitive dreams. Abraham Lincoln dreamed of the President dying a few days before he was assassinated. It might have just been a coincidence. But science only knows what it knows and it keeps discovering new things. So perhaps someday there will be a scientific explanation for "magical" phenomena like precognition and telepathy. Right now, scientists would answer "no" and New Agers would answer "yes." I keep an open mind and don't pretend to have all the answers.