We all dream, even if we don’t always remember. Three or four times a night, when we are in that level of deep sleep characterised by rapid eye movement, our minds start to wander. Random thoughts collide, unlikely scenarios emerge and improbable things happen. Dreaming is good for us - going without the mental nourishment of deep sleep and its surreal reveries can affect our mental well-being.

But how do we unscramble the flurry of images that passes through our mind’s eye while we sleep and make sense of these strange events? Let me give you an example. A few years ago, I kept dreaming that I was being stalked by an old man. In a curious reversal of the usual stalking scenario, I was bothered by a celebrity. My stalker was J R Hartley, author of Fly Fishing and star of Yellow Pages adverts in which he would phone antiquarian bookshops in search of his book. But in my dream J R kept on calling me, sending me flowers and other gifts that he had found through the Yellow Pages. I tried to tell him I was not interested, that his gifts were unwanted. But he wouldn’t listen. So in the end I lost my temper and shouted at him down the phone. I never heard from him again.

I always had a ready explanation for this dream. At the time, I was working on a long-established, family-owned evening paper in Manchester. One of my colleagues, Paul Hartley, told me a funny story about how his uncle - whose initials were J R - was getting nuisance phone calls from people asking if he had any books about fishing. My dream was just a wacky approximation of what was happening to Paul’s uncle.

At least that’s what I thought until I met Petruska Clarkson, a consultant psychologist and psychotherapist, who suggests an alternative reading. The evening newspaper where I was working at the time was “nice, comfortable and old-fashioned - just like Mr Hartley”, and by rejecting him in the dream my subconscious was trying to tell me it was time to move on. That interpretation rings true, even though it had not occurred to me before.

The walls of Petruska’s Harley Street study are lined with volumes exploring the workings of our minds, and she has written quite a few of them herself. But she says you won’t find the answer to your dreams in a single book. The key to understanding your dreams is to keep an open mind, explore possible meanings and remember there are no right answers. “There are many, many different approaches to understanding and using dreams,” she says. “No one is completely right. All of them can be useful. You should never allow anybody to impose their meaning on your dream. They can make suggestions and offer you their ideas, but it is your dream.”

To illustrate her point, Petruska mentions the recurring dream I’d told her about the previous day. When I was about five or six, I kept dreaming that I’d shrunk and fallen inside a purple vase that we used to have in our house. Inside, it was like an empty textile mill - a vast room with low ceilings supported by pillars, and so big you couldn’t see the walls. The floor was covered in litter and I had to pick it all up. Now what would Freud make of that? The Austrian grandfather of psychoanalysis believed our dreams were the “royal road to the unconscious”, places where we lived out our unconscious sexual impulses and aggressive desires.

And, before you can say Oedipus complex, Petruska is reeling off the sex and violence symbolism. The vase represents my mother’s womb, the shrinking is an early sign of penis envy, and my domineering father (whom I may or may not want to kill in order to possess my mother) is making me pick up the litter, which could suggest anxiety caused by over-strict potty training. Blimey! Thank goodness Freud’s gloomy diagnosis is not the only way of looking at it. Jung, who famously dreamed of discovering an unknown room in his house, thought dreams signified more than just death and desire, and could be outlets for our creativity or problem-solving.

History is full of famous examples. Paul McCartney woke up with the tune for “Yesterday” in his head, and Coleridge dreamed up the epic poem “Kubla Khan”. Other therapists think dreams reflect our everyday concerns, acting as a kind of touchstone for our daily lives or, more romantically, that we are dipping our toe in the ocean of human experience passed down to us through the genes of our predecessors.

“Most good dream analysts, whatever their ‘school’, are more likely to ask you for your own associations and to explore the meanings with you,” says Petruska. She says the common experiences of flying and falling are simply the brain freeing itself from its bodily restraints (“In the dream world the brain can do whatever it likes”) and some dreams are just pure escapism. “I have dreams where I go to the theatre and watch a play and that’s it. Or I wake up laughing because I have told myself a joke.”

Of course, not all dreams are good. She advises people who suffer from recurrent nightmares or flashbacks to seek help from their doctor. But sometimes these can be anxiety dreams, in the same way that worry is a kind of bad daydream, or “daymare”. But dreams remain one of the last unmapped territories of the mind, there for us to explore and enjoy. “You can learn more about yourself and about life through your dreams. You might not do anything else creative in your life, but dreams are creative. You can think or feel whatever you like in your dreams and nobody can criticise you for it. Everyone can learn to remember their dreams better, like we can all run faster or use our IQ.

“But, to mine that richness, it helps if you have someone who knows about geology. You might find tin or an amethyst - or you might find a diamond!” Petruska Clarkson is Friday’s resident dream analyst. Her new weekly column begins on page 31. Send 300-word descriptions of your dreams, with contact details and a photograph of yourself to Jill Craven, Friday magazine, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1W 1BX. email jill.craven@tes.co.uk

HOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR DREAMS

* Have the desire to understand more about your dreams. Read about them and talk to other people about theirs. Find a way of interpreting them that suits you.

* Keep a dream diary using a notebook or tape recorder near your bed. Large unlined paper is best. Do not try to write them out like a report - dreams are psychological and come in random symbols or images, rather than conventional narrative.

* Try not to wake up too quickly. Keep the bedside light low. You remember dreams best when you are in a slightly hypnagogic state - between sleeping and waking. Experiment with this on weekends or holidays when you are more relaxed.

* Record the “high spots” - people, places and objects. Use drawings if you like. Record how you felt on waking - were you frightened, excited, happy or sad? What was going on in your life at the time?

* There is no way you can get it right or wrong. Nobody should ever criticise you for what you dream - not even you! Since you are teaching yourself how to “make friends” with your dreams, be a gentle, kind teacher.