On Sept. 9, 2001, Carol L. Cummings had a puzzling, torturous dream.

"I dreamed I was in a downtown area that was extremely crowded," said the Arizona-based dream analyst. "The sky was moving, making this weird kind of shape. I was trying to get people's attention to look in the sky. I said, 'Doesn't anyone see what's coming?' People were on fire, running out of buildings. Metal was melting. It was the most horrific dream."

Though she couldn't immediately understand the dream, two days later — on Sept. 11, 2001 — it made perfect sense.

Psychic dreams are virtually unexplainable and account for about 3 percent of all dreams, Cummings said. Though she's been decoding dreams for 40 years — on TV and radio stations, in magazines such as Marie Claire or simply over the phone — she said it's impossible to interpret psychic dreams until the foreshadowed event occurs.

Excluding psychic dreams, Cummings can usually decipher dreams within 15 minutes. After listening to clients' dreams, she asks them questions about their lives and relates her dream-decoding expertise to their everyday problems.

"Frankly, only you know the real meaning of your dream," she said. "My job is to ask the right questions to get you to have the 'Aha!' experience and you get it. I can throw ideas out there, but I can't come up with the right meaning of your dream. You have to do that."

Dreams can teach people about themselves, said Mike Stratton, an East Lansing psychotherapist.

They can help solve problems, make decisions and provide honest answers as to how individuals feel about various issues.

Through dreams, repressed emotions can surface, Stratton said.

"Dreams are pictures of feelings," he said. "It's like your brain comes up with a little poem, and it's not always a linear explanation. Instead of one plus one equals two, sometimes it's like one plus two equals orange.

"(Sigmund) Freud thought dreams obscured what was going on in your life, and Carl Jung thought they illuminated what's going on in your life. I tend to be more like Jung. Dreams are really trying to process information of what happened that day."

Stratton, who has lectured nationally, became interested in dream analysis in the 1970s after joining a dream group to explain why he was having recurring nightmares about vampires.

Through examination and discussion, Stratton discovered vampires represented characteristics of himself he wanted to disown.

Upon this realization, the upsetting dream stopped returning.

In most cases, every character in a dream represents the dreamer's traits, Cummings said.

These are usually characteristics the dreamer doesn't like about him or herself.

"When people show up in the dream —I call them the cast of characters — I ask you about each person," Cummings said. "I'll say, 'What kind of person is that' If you say, 'She's my sister ,and she's two-faced,' I'll say, 'How are you being two-faced? How are you not happy about the way you acted toward someone?'"

Cummings herself had a disturbing dream in which she was sitting on her mother's chest, ferociously beating her.

She awoke startled and went to a psychologist. Cummings realized it was herself she was attacking, not her mother.

"It was me beating myself up over not being the best mom I could be," she said. "I was really angry because I was separated from my own children at that time while I was getting re-established. It wasn't OK within myself to be away from my children even for three months. I put my mother's face on it because my mother left me when I was 2 years old."

Although specific meanings of dreams vary from person to person, Cummings said there are universal dreams everyone experiences because all people share common fears.

Dreams of being chased generally mean the dreamer is haunted by an issue he's trying to avoid. Dreams of death usually represent a part of the dreamer that is dying or changing.

Cummings said specific colors and elements in dreams also are helpful interpreters.

Her book, "The Sex of Your Dreams," provides a step-by-step guide to deciphering dreams.

"For me, colors are one of the most important ways to interpret dreams because color is very person-specific," she said. "We have different colors that we associate with different things. Colors are always vivid and one of the first things that's lost when you wake up."

The color green represents jealousy. Red can symbolize anger, passion or a life-changing event.

But these interpretations aren't always accurate, Cummings said. Dream symbols are used to circulate ideas, which can assist in arriving at an accurate interpretation.

MSU English Professor Kenneth Harrow, who also has taught psychoanalytic theory, views universal dream symbols as insignificant.

"There's no one-to-one correspondence between the material you have in the unconscious and a particular meaning," he said. "We each individually attach an individual value to what surrounds us to the world around us. It's like our own history."

With practice, people can not only analyze, but also control their dreams.

This concept, called lucid dreaming, is the act of gaining awareness during a dream and changing its plot.

When Stratton performed lucid dreaming, he gained more control over interactions in his daily life.

Lucid dreaming takes approximately 28 days to achieve, Cummings said, as that's how long it takes to stop a habit.

The first step is to convince the brain you're willing to listen to the subconscious by writing down your objective.

"Writing it out makes it stronger," she said. "Then just before you go to bed, read it out loud so you also hear it, so it's sort of penetrating the senses. Then stick it under your pillow.

"As you're falling asleep, think about that — 'Tonight I'm going to dream about this.' For some people, it takes only three days. One time it took me 60 days to get the answer to a problem."

Cummings' dilemma was deciding what to do next, as she was in between jobs.

After 60 days of trying to find the answer through lucid dreaming, an unidentified character in her dream told her to go to Lake Powell, where she would receive further instructions.

Lake Powell — an area Cummings had never heard of — was about 500 miles away from her current home. She moved there, though, and spent the next 18 months studying astrology.

Aside from interpreting emotions and providing insight into people's lives, dreams may be necessary to maintain health, Cummings said.

Though all dreams may not be remembered, people dream every night. Mundane dreams may be forgotten, Stratton said, as they might not have impacted the dreamer.

"We have to dream or we get sick," Cummings said. "At one university, they did a sleep study with mice. They took these mice and would not let them dream. Every time the mice went into REM sleep, they would wake them up. Within one month, all the mice died.

"Dreams have a purpose for us. They help us release unhealthy emotions, mental stress and strain. They help us act out things we wouldn't normally act out. Dreams help us stay healthy."

Elizabeth Swanson can be reached at swans130@msu.edu.