Reader’s Question

I’m a 22-year-old male and I have had a number of dreams about seeing my sister naked. We never have sex in the dreams but I do hold her and caress her body. What could this mean?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

What could this mean? Not much, actually. We tend to dream about seven dreams per night and only remember dreams that are occurring as we awake. Dreams are often a bizarre combination of events of the day, old memories, and current moods. Depressed folks think about funerals, death, dying, etc. Anxious folks are being chased or trapped. The brain and dreaming system has no moral controller and for that reason, sexual interest is often combined in dreams with people we have seen or talked to during the day. You can get some pretty interesting and bizarre dreams this way.

Even when we wake up, memory for the dream lasts only a few minutes unless the dream created a signficant emotion in us — that’s why we remember specific nightmares (terrified), erotic dreams, or odd dreams. Dreaming about your sister, naked, was somewhat shocking so you remember that dream vividly. If you go to bed thinking and worrying about the dream — guess what — you’ll likely have it again. We often dream about what we think about before going to bed. That’s why we don’t let children watch scary movies before going to bed.

This is not a big deal. It’s one of thousands of odd dreams you will have over your lifetime. I remember one I had…nevermind.