Doodles & Dreams

Introduction to Doodles
It is interesting to note that in some dictionary listings, doodles are defined as being ‘diagrams of the subconscious’ - an apt description, since they are one of the many subtle voices that the subconscious uses in self-expression.

So if you have always thought that your little pictures, lines, squiggles or squares were merely meaningless scribbles produced by a bored or preoccupied mind, you couldn’t be farther from the truth! Doodles can sometimes reveal a great deal about a person’s secret desires, fears and fantasies as well as their attitude to life and people in general.

Freud and Jung realised long ago that our subconscious communicates its nature surreptitiously, via a coded language of symbols, images and gestures rather than words, and that by examining and interpreting this secret code we can reach a fuller understanding of who we are. Freud also considered dreams and doodles as symbolic expressions of repressed sexual traumas, hidden sexual desires or hostile feelings. He noticed that doodles and dreams served as an escape valve for these blocked emotions brewing in our subconscious. To begin with, the repetition of lines or shapes typical of doodling, helps to collect one’s thoughts together and relaxes the mind. Then whilst the main beam of our attention is involved in some other activity, the pent-up emotion can be ‘doodled away’ safely, without any disturbance to the status quo of our conscious mind. This makes our thinking processes clearer and more effective.

The fact that our doodles as well as our dreams can potentially reveal an intimate story of our innermost thoughts, feelings and motives is now well accepted by psychotherapists and psychiatrists who make use of this knowledge to help their clients reach a clearer understanding of who they really are.
So if you want to know a little bit more about your boss, mother in law, friend or lover, or you are feeling uptight but don’t know why, a glance at what’s just been doodled on a scrap piece of paper could hold the answers you’re looking for. You may well discover something important about the doodler’s personality that you never expected existed.