Dream appreciation is not the same as dream analysis, but both share a similarity.  However, the linking of themes with symbolism is far more tentative in dream appreciation. While dream appreciation sees one possible interpretation, it recognizes that there may be many other viewpoints. Therefore a personal association is always the starting point from which to build a personal narrative. Only then is it meaningful to amplify the possible narrative of the dream with mythological, artistic or relevant imagery.
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My perspective is that figures, animals or even objects that present in a dream may represent different parts of yourself, otherwise known as self-states. A dream may be seen as a conversation between different self-states, some of which some may be an internalization of external people (sometimes parents), societal and cultural beliefs, or ancestral burdens such as inter-generational trauma. My inspiration in this is the archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who focused on soul as a simultaneous multiplicity of autonomous states.

​Dreams have been called the “royal road to the unconscious". In  Freud's narrow view dreams are a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges and memories that lie outside our conscious awareness, with most of the contents of the unconscious being unacceptable or unpleasant -  such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. Carl Jung had a more inclusive view of the unconscious as the seat of creativeness and source of wholeness.  
 

Jungian perspective 

Jungian psychoanalyst Robert Bosnak's  method of Embodied Imagination 
encompasses a therapeutic and creative form of working with dreams, inspired by his extensive knowledge of alchemy. Starting from the basic assumption that all psychological states are experienced in the body, this approach invites dreams or memories “to work on us”.  The principle of Embodied Imagination encounters images from a dream perspective, not a waking one. From this perspective an image is a live environment that surrounds us and presents itself as self-evidently real and embodied. Images belong to the involuntary imagination and embody their own intelligence. 
  “When you pay attention to your dreams, you inhabit a much larger part of your soul.” - Robert Bosnak 

Mystical perspective

Toko-pa Turner is an author, teacher and “dreamworker”. She blends the mystical tradition of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dream work. Toko-pa's "Acquisitional Approach" to working with dreams involves courting the Dream, inviting our exiled and orphaned selves back into belonging and wholeness.  Rather than asking, “what does it mean?”  she asks instead, “what is the dream’s secret longing?”  If we embrace the medicine of a dream we open ourselves up and make ourselves hospitable, inviting the Mystery to approach us.
"Like a living bridge, dreamwork is a practice in which we coax, weave, and tend to the roots of our separation—and in so doing, restore our membership in belonging" - Toko-pa

  Shamanic perspective

Bestselling author and world-renowned dream explorer Robert Moss, sees dreams as portals to the imaginal realm, a higher reality that exists at the intersection of time and eternity. Dreaming is an awakening to deeper realities which we glimpse in special moments of synchronicity. 
"You are embarking on a path of limitless adventure.  Every night, your sleep dreams bring you keys to self-healing and self- understanding,  glimpses of challenges that lie around the corner in waking life and direct access to your deeper Self.  As you become an Active Dreamer, you will learn how to step outside time and embark on conscious dream journeys to places of initiation and adventure inside the Dreaming where spiritual teachers and protectors are waiting for you" - Robert Moss