Dream Work in My Integrated Health Care Practice
IntroductionSo many people have written so much about working with dreams. I'm adding my story to this multi-generational, multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted conversation. This paper is a chance to share and explore something that has brought a lot of meaning into my life. The key themes I want to explore are:
A Note on MethodWriting this paper is all about following my passion. I decided early on that I would only read stuff that REALLY grabbed me, and kept me interested. To make the most out something that could be just a dry academic exercise, it was going to have to be a lively exploration of ideas and techniques that really matter to me.
For most of my life I've been an achiever, a pleaser. I wanted to look successful. I wanted respect and recognition. I made a lot of choices that were about proving myself to others. That was the main motivation behind my engineering degree: "You think I can't do this because I'm a woman? I'll show you!" An engineering degree commands respect. It's a clear benchmark for intelligence. It's an entry card into the professional world. Pretty quickly though, I realized I wasn't fulfilled by my engineering work. My work didn't call me, didn't need me to bring all of myself - just a brain would do. I wanted more, so I went back to school, and Naturopathic Medicine offered - and demanded - a lot more of me. But Naturopathic Medicine is a holistic health care system straining to prove itself. It requires a rigourously academic education culminating in four days of board exams and a license to practice. There was a huge emphasis in the intensive (and by intensive I mean WAY harder than engineering school) four-year program on evidence based medicine. We spend a lot of time reading and writing about double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical studies. In short, I've spend a LOT of time reading things I wasn't interested in, and writing to impress. |
None of this supported my desire to listen inwardly, to trust the deeper way of knowing. I want to stop trying to convince an external sceptic, and start responding to an inner part of me that has faith. I write my paper in part as a way to give my life force a chance to express itself. I follow the signs, Ieap from rock to rock. I follow my passion as I write this paper.
Most good resources on dream work include sections on both the history and development of dream work (often from a cross-cultural perspective), and on current research in the neurobiology of dreams. I have left both topics to other authors, as I want to scope this paper to focus on an exploration that is new and vital. I will quote Anthony Stevens here, however, and point you to his excellent chapter on dream science for more information: "We have reached a point in the history of oneirology (the study of dreams) where it is simply not good enough to discuss dreams as if they were purely psychological or entirely neurophysiological phenomena. Clearly they are both (p. 3)." Stevens also includes to chapters on history: "From Gilgamesh to Freud" and "Freud, Jung and After" for those interested in this topic.
Most good resources on dream work include sections on both the history and development of dream work (often from a cross-cultural perspective), and on current research in the neurobiology of dreams. I have left both topics to other authors, as I want to scope this paper to focus on an exploration that is new and vital. I will quote Anthony Stevens here, however, and point you to his excellent chapter on dream science for more information: "We have reached a point in the history of oneirology (the study of dreams) where it is simply not good enough to discuss dreams as if they were purely psychological or entirely neurophysiological phenomena. Clearly they are both (p. 3)." Stevens also includes to chapters on history: "From Gilgamesh to Freud" and "Freud, Jung and After" for those interested in this topic.
Beginning to Work with My Own DreamsI found dream work intimidating for a long time. It seemed like something you had to be really serious about, something that could only be done by extremely educated people. More than just educated though: gifted or genius, or something like that. People endowed with extraordinary sensitivity and wisdom. Not normal people. Not me.
I felt a painful pull toward it. I wanted it so much - how could I help but fail? Better not try. When I coordinated a first year class in Art & Practice at the Naturopathic College, I interviewed Dr. Christopher Sowton every semester. Chris is an ND whose practice is a blend of psychotherapy and homeopathy, with an emphasis on dreamwork, active imagination, and depth psychology. Every semester I would feel the pang: "I need to start recording my dreams!" Finally, during the first semester after my son was born, something changed. The interview was finished, and I moved to the audience to listen to Chris interact directly with the students and their questions. As I watched him do a live dream work session, I just knew that I was ready to begin. The next morning I wrote down a dream for the first time. |
Why Dream Work Matters So Much to Me
My life always feels richer when I'm engaged in my personal dream work. In the dry spells - I'm not remembering dreams, or not making the effort to catch and record them - my world often feels heavier and looks greyer. I seem to need a strong and active relationship with my inner life in order to feel fueled and vital.
When I listen to, and work with, other people's dreams, I often feel the terror - near certainty - that there's no way I'll be able to help or make any sense of it, but slowly the sense is revealed. I've read about or heard about this same kind of fear from several very experienced dream workers (Bosnak, Johnson, Sowton). Working with dreams seems to be a way of acknowledging and supporting the life force in us. In long-time Jungian dreamworker Robert Bosnak's electric words: "My usual first reaction after listening to a dream is, "I haven't the faintest idea what this is all about. It just proves that dreams are pure nonsense - or maybe my comprehension is just not up to the complexity of the dream world." At such a moment I feel like a charlatan, an interpreter who hasn't mastered his languages, a con man. In short, I feel terribly inferior. Dreams seem incomprehensible by nature, nonsensical, an insult to "common sense." If I don't react that way, however — if I immediately know precisely what the dream is all about — then I usually presume I'm caught in a resistance, trying to make the dream harmless by understanding it right away. A dream is not at home in our daytime consciousness. Like Mercury, the god of thieves, we have stolen the dream from its nocturnal domain. Every dream requires a switchover into a dreamlike consciousness that can follow the dream world. This switchover into dream consciousness is a shock. Daytime consciousness stumbles when confronted with a kind of logic that is essentially alien to it (p. 27)." Can I ever relate! Knowing that far more experienced practitioners suffer these feelings is a powerful incentive to continue the work.
Here is both the heartbreak and the call: "The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All the forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors -- dream, vision, ritual, and religious experience -- are largely lost to us... we cut ourselves off from... the deepest parts of ourselves (Johnson, p. 10)."
When I listen to, and work with, other people's dreams, I often feel the terror - near certainty - that there's no way I'll be able to help or make any sense of it, but slowly the sense is revealed. I've read about or heard about this same kind of fear from several very experienced dream workers (Bosnak, Johnson, Sowton). Working with dreams seems to be a way of acknowledging and supporting the life force in us. In long-time Jungian dreamworker Robert Bosnak's electric words: "My usual first reaction after listening to a dream is, "I haven't the faintest idea what this is all about. It just proves that dreams are pure nonsense - or maybe my comprehension is just not up to the complexity of the dream world." At such a moment I feel like a charlatan, an interpreter who hasn't mastered his languages, a con man. In short, I feel terribly inferior. Dreams seem incomprehensible by nature, nonsensical, an insult to "common sense." If I don't react that way, however — if I immediately know precisely what the dream is all about — then I usually presume I'm caught in a resistance, trying to make the dream harmless by understanding it right away. A dream is not at home in our daytime consciousness. Like Mercury, the god of thieves, we have stolen the dream from its nocturnal domain. Every dream requires a switchover into a dreamlike consciousness that can follow the dream world. This switchover into dream consciousness is a shock. Daytime consciousness stumbles when confronted with a kind of logic that is essentially alien to it (p. 27)." Can I ever relate! Knowing that far more experienced practitioners suffer these feelings is a powerful incentive to continue the work.
Here is both the heartbreak and the call: "The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All the forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors -- dream, vision, ritual, and religious experience -- are largely lost to us... we cut ourselves off from... the deepest parts of ourselves (Johnson, p. 10)."
Where do Dreams Come From?
A dream is like a letter from your soul: look in the mailbox!
To me, the least interesting possibilities for where dreams come from sound like this: "random firings of neurons during sleep"; "a collection of images and other stimuli from the day"; "the brain is processing the day's experience in order to organize and store memories"... The common element in these explanations is the view that dreams are random, or that their only function is biochemical.
Here are some of the metaphors about the source of dreams that I'm most
drawn to:
Delanay's book develops a detailed "film production" analogy. She writes: "I found that, when I reminded myself that I was the producer of my own dreams and that I had chosen the script, the setting, and the actors, and had directed and organized the whole dream show, the lights went on! Almost all my dreams and their meanings became more accessible to me. I stopped looking at dreams as something I received and started experiencing them as something I created (p. 4)." Marie-Louise Von Franz, a close associate of Jung's, has used similar metaphor. "One can understand every dream as a drama in which we ourselves are everything, that is, the author, director, actors, and prompter as well as the spectators. If one tries to understand a dream in this way, the result is a startling realization for the dreamer of what is happening in him psychically "behind his back," so to speak (p. 4)."
Von Franz writes of dreams having two roots: "one in conscious contents, impressions of the previous day, and so forth, the second in constellated contents of the unconscious (p. 2)."
In Anthony Stevens' book "Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming" he describes the significance of dreams this way: "By granting access to the deepest levels of human experience, dreams can contribute to our health and personal development, as well as making us more acutely aware of what it means to be alive (p. 5)."
Here are some of the metaphors about the source of dreams that I'm most
drawn to:
- A dream is like a letter from your unconscious. If you open the letter and read it, the writer will keep sending you more. If you ignore the letters, the letter writer will eventually give up (Sowton).
- A dream is like a movie that you have produced. You are the writer, the director, the lead role, and likely most of the supporting characters! Your inner film producer creates "a dream with great care and skill in order to get a message across to [your] waking self (Delaney, p. 4)."
- A dream expresses something that exists within us at the unconscious level (Johnson, p. 45)
- Here are some terms that have been used to describe the part of us that creates our dreams: Dream maker, "producer", unconscious, subconscious, "collective unconscious", "objective psyche", God, the spirit world, the inner eye.
Delanay's book develops a detailed "film production" analogy. She writes: "I found that, when I reminded myself that I was the producer of my own dreams and that I had chosen the script, the setting, and the actors, and had directed and organized the whole dream show, the lights went on! Almost all my dreams and their meanings became more accessible to me. I stopped looking at dreams as something I received and started experiencing them as something I created (p. 4)." Marie-Louise Von Franz, a close associate of Jung's, has used similar metaphor. "One can understand every dream as a drama in which we ourselves are everything, that is, the author, director, actors, and prompter as well as the spectators. If one tries to understand a dream in this way, the result is a startling realization for the dreamer of what is happening in him psychically "behind his back," so to speak (p. 4)."
Von Franz writes of dreams having two roots: "one in conscious contents, impressions of the previous day, and so forth, the second in constellated contents of the unconscious (p. 2)."
In Anthony Stevens' book "Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming" he describes the significance of dreams this way: "By granting access to the deepest levels of human experience, dreams can contribute to our health and personal development, as well as making us more acutely aware of what it means to be alive (p. 5)."
Do You Need to be an Expert to Work with Your Dreams?
Freud - a Grandfather of Modern Dream Work
I knew I was interested in dream work long before I did anything about it. One hurdle was time (I felt like I never had enough and couldn't imagine adding anything - strange how my life feels more spacious now) and another was timing (maybe some of the other therapeutic work I was doing was more important for me at the time; maybe something about my need to work with dreams just hadn't crystallized yet), but another huge hurdle was intimidation.
I think it's more important to be open, curious and persistent than learned. At the same time, once I started working with my dreams I read everything (interesting) that I could get my hands on, and that's enriched my work considerably. There's a lot that I can get out of working on my own, or with a friend of a similar level of experience, but my occasional visits with a trusted dream worker are exciting and invaluable!
My own experience of shrinking back from dream work because I thought it was something only chosen (and/or extremely well-educated) people could do drives me to learn more about accessible approaches, even "lay" methods, for working with dreams.
Gayle Delanay gives her strong opinion on the subject: "I had spent several years in Jungian analysis trying to understand my dreams. I had accepted the belief that I needed an expert to help me. What I really needed was a more immediate sense of my role in the creation of dreams and the belief that, with a few pointers and some practice, I could appreciate and understand my dreams better than anyone else could (p. 5)."
Robert A. Johnson expresses it this way: "overinvolvement with theories is the main obstacle to dreamwork (p. 16)." He goes on to encourage us to "Put your faith in your own unconscious, your own dreams. If you would learn from your dreams, then work with them." Not that he is suggesting to strike out blindly on your own, with no guidance and no safety net. He does offer some precautionary words, which I will discuss later.
I also like the way Anthony Stevens puts it: "Dreams are not esoteric phenomena that only highly qualified analysts can understand... the art of working profitably with dreams is something that anyone can learn should they really wish to do so.
I think it's more important to be open, curious and persistent than learned. At the same time, once I started working with my dreams I read everything (interesting) that I could get my hands on, and that's enriched my work considerably. There's a lot that I can get out of working on my own, or with a friend of a similar level of experience, but my occasional visits with a trusted dream worker are exciting and invaluable!
My own experience of shrinking back from dream work because I thought it was something only chosen (and/or extremely well-educated) people could do drives me to learn more about accessible approaches, even "lay" methods, for working with dreams.
Gayle Delanay gives her strong opinion on the subject: "I had spent several years in Jungian analysis trying to understand my dreams. I had accepted the belief that I needed an expert to help me. What I really needed was a more immediate sense of my role in the creation of dreams and the belief that, with a few pointers and some practice, I could appreciate and understand my dreams better than anyone else could (p. 5)."
Robert A. Johnson expresses it this way: "overinvolvement with theories is the main obstacle to dreamwork (p. 16)." He goes on to encourage us to "Put your faith in your own unconscious, your own dreams. If you would learn from your dreams, then work with them." Not that he is suggesting to strike out blindly on your own, with no guidance and no safety net. He does offer some precautionary words, which I will discuss later.
I also like the way Anthony Stevens puts it: "Dreams are not esoteric phenomena that only highly qualified analysts can understand... the art of working profitably with dreams is something that anyone can learn should they really wish to do so.
A Word of Caution
The books I reference encourage self-discovery using dream work. Most consider it safe to undertake this work on your own, although they also often point out that working with a friend, therapist, or analyist can provide a helpful outsider's point of view. The authors I read also offer some precautions for using these techniques on your own.
To paraphrase Johnson in his section called "Working Without an Analyst" (p. 17): respect the powerful forces you are working with, take the work seriously, don't practice Active Imagination without someone who can help you get back to earth if you get overwhelmed - you may need to call on a friend if you lose your bearings.
Gayle Delaney adds: "You will not become lost in your dreams to the detriment of your conscious life if you honestly seek to understand your dreams. You will not go off into some nebulous dream world, because the meaning of your dreams is so intimately related to and made up of your daily experience (p. 22; italics mine)."
I'm fascinated by this additional note of caution about working on our own dreams from Eugene Gendlin: "We tend to put on the dream the same mistaken view we put on anything in life. Then the dream seems to say the sort of thing we always say to ourselves (p. 5)." Gendlin explains how to work around this blind spot (below).
To paraphrase Johnson in his section called "Working Without an Analyst" (p. 17): respect the powerful forces you are working with, take the work seriously, don't practice Active Imagination without someone who can help you get back to earth if you get overwhelmed - you may need to call on a friend if you lose your bearings.
Gayle Delaney adds: "You will not become lost in your dreams to the detriment of your conscious life if you honestly seek to understand your dreams. You will not go off into some nebulous dream world, because the meaning of your dreams is so intimately related to and made up of your daily experience (p. 22; italics mine)."
I'm fascinated by this additional note of caution about working on our own dreams from Eugene Gendlin: "We tend to put on the dream the same mistaken view we put on anything in life. Then the dream seems to say the sort of thing we always say to ourselves (p. 5)." Gendlin explains how to work around this blind spot (below).
Why Do We Need Dreams?
Marie-Louse Von Franz describes what Jung called the compensatory function of a dream. "This means that the dream almost never refers to something already conscious, but rather brings... contents which balance a one-sided attitude (p.4)". For example, a woman who suffers from insecurity may dream of herself as a hero. A related role is the complementary function of dreams: a dream can complete "what is lacking in those contents of consciousness which are too narrow or are not considered sufficiently valuable". Von Franz gives an example of this function, also. She describes someone who can only feel superficial sympathy for their romantic parter, but who dreams of passionate love with this same partner. In a nutshell, understanding our dreams can lead to a change in the way we see ourselves.
Von Franz makes the point that dreams are a very important source of self-knowledge. She describes dreams as a mirror: often 'the [dream] image inself does not encourage nor does it warn, it simply represents a psychic fact -- as impersonally as a mirror (p.10)." The dream provides information, but not necessarily an interpretation. In these cases, it is up to us to interpret the dream and to make decisions based on the information provided. In other cases, however, dreams seem to "give advice like a well-meaning person." Sometimes the meaning is so apparent that you, and whoever you are sharing the dream with, find yourselves breaking into spontaneous laughter at the obviousness of the message.
Either way, Jungian psychotherapists "use dreams for the most part to guide the analysand to certain insights of self-knowledge; for there is no psychic healing and no progress without self-knowledge (p.11)." Von Franz describes how a coming up with a diagnosis isn't necessary in dream work; rather, the important question is "Let us see how your own soul views your situation" -- namely what the dreams say (p. 12)." She gives the illustration of an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink in several months, and is wondering if it would be ok to have just one drink. Her reply was "Try it and we will see how the unconscious reacts." That night he dreamed of driving a car to the top of the mountain. At the top, his break wasn't working, and the car rolled all the way back to the bottom of the mountain. He was back where he started: the dream maker's opinion is very clear! The man realized that "one drink" wouldn't work for him.
As Eugene Gendlin, author of "Focusing" and many other books says, "a dream is code for a hidden life-energy that leads to solving life's problems. It opens a direction that we cannot otherwise provide."
A very common image for the unconscious is water. Water is also, from the point of view of human evolution, the primordial place where we began. All that is conscious sprang up from the much richer, more complex soup of the unconscious. As Robert A. Johnson describes in his book on dreams, Jung "saw a creative force at work in nature - a cosmos laboring through timeless aeons to give birth to this rare quality we call consciousness... its growth is nourished by a continuing stream of contents from the unconsious that rises gradually to the level of consciousness, seeking to form a more complete, conscious person (p. 6)." In other words, we dream so that we may become more integrated, and more conscious. More truly us.
Von Franz makes the point that dreams are a very important source of self-knowledge. She describes dreams as a mirror: often 'the [dream] image inself does not encourage nor does it warn, it simply represents a psychic fact -- as impersonally as a mirror (p.10)." The dream provides information, but not necessarily an interpretation. In these cases, it is up to us to interpret the dream and to make decisions based on the information provided. In other cases, however, dreams seem to "give advice like a well-meaning person." Sometimes the meaning is so apparent that you, and whoever you are sharing the dream with, find yourselves breaking into spontaneous laughter at the obviousness of the message.
Either way, Jungian psychotherapists "use dreams for the most part to guide the analysand to certain insights of self-knowledge; for there is no psychic healing and no progress without self-knowledge (p.11)." Von Franz describes how a coming up with a diagnosis isn't necessary in dream work; rather, the important question is "Let us see how your own soul views your situation" -- namely what the dreams say (p. 12)." She gives the illustration of an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink in several months, and is wondering if it would be ok to have just one drink. Her reply was "Try it and we will see how the unconscious reacts." That night he dreamed of driving a car to the top of the mountain. At the top, his break wasn't working, and the car rolled all the way back to the bottom of the mountain. He was back where he started: the dream maker's opinion is very clear! The man realized that "one drink" wouldn't work for him.
As Eugene Gendlin, author of "Focusing" and many other books says, "a dream is code for a hidden life-energy that leads to solving life's problems. It opens a direction that we cannot otherwise provide."
A very common image for the unconscious is water. Water is also, from the point of view of human evolution, the primordial place where we began. All that is conscious sprang up from the much richer, more complex soup of the unconscious. As Robert A. Johnson describes in his book on dreams, Jung "saw a creative force at work in nature - a cosmos laboring through timeless aeons to give birth to this rare quality we call consciousness... its growth is nourished by a continuing stream of contents from the unconsious that rises gradually to the level of consciousness, seeking to form a more complete, conscious person (p. 6)." In other words, we dream so that we may become more integrated, and more conscious. More truly us.
Memory Exercises: "Catching" your Dreams
If You Want to Work with Your Dreams, You Need to CATCH Them
The exercises below were designed to help you improve your dream recall. They are summarized from Robert Bosnak's chapter on "Memory Exercises" (pp 8-17). "A dream is a happening in space, an articulation of space. We find ourselves in a space we call "dream" upon awakening... The dream itself is a texture woven of space and time inside of which we find ourselves. During the dream we believe we are awake, in the same way we believe we are awake when we truly are. That's why it is important to remember dreams as spatial structures, so that our experiences in dream space can be most adequately recalled."
The first four exercises help you develop the "art of memory".
Exercise 1: Moving through the Dream World
The essence of this exercise is to deliberately and intensively explore the physical world, while remembering that
even when you're asleep you think you're awake. Practice moving through space, knowing "you are moving around inside an ordinary nightly dream, while at the same time you're certain that you're awake."
Exercise 2: Recalling Dream Objects
Pick up an object. Look at it carefully. Move it, turn it around, all the while taking it in as thoroughly as possible. Then close your eyes and "look" at the object. Bosnak instructs you to "Try to recall how it rotated and what it looked like from different angles."
Exercise 3: Creating a Memory Storage Room
Walk around inside a small room. There should be several unique points of interest, and items of different shapes and sizes. Notice everything as deeply as you can. Take things in - handle them, smell them. Then rest and close your eyes, recalling the room and everything in it.
Exercise 4: An Imaginary Tour of Your House
In your mind's eye, scroll through the homes you've known best and choose the one that you remember most clearly. Now connect into your sensory perception - awaken to the experience of your breath moving in you, and notice as many bodily sensations as you can. When you have "felt your way deeply into your body, visualize the house you want to enter (p. 10)." Start at the main entrance and take in every detail as you look at the house. Turn around and look at the view - what do you see? Turn back to the door, see the door as clearly as you can, and open it. Let your eyes adjust, and look around. Look up and down, all around. Make sure to walk slowly. Take your time and notice everything. If something catches your eye, go take a closer look. Move from room to room.
"When you've looked around extensively, you slowly move to that place in the house where your bed is. Slowly, much more slowly. Slowing down is one of the most difficult exercises in the volatile world of images (p. 11)." Observe your bed, sit on it, lie down and get under the covers. What is the feeling of being in that bed? Stay for a while. When you get up, look around. Does anything look different? Leave the room and look around some more. Ask yourself if you see more, or differently now.
The following exercises are about recording dreams:
Exercise 5: Observing the Moment of Awakening
"Begin with the intention of waking up as consciously as possible." Wake up without an alarm, and lie completely still. Let the waking up happen, and be there for it, noticing everything. What changes in your sensations, breath and thoughts as you move from the sleep state into the waking state? Bosnak directs: "Do this every day for a week and decide absolutely to remember no dreams whatsoever. The only thing that matters is observing the moment of awakening."
Exercise 7: Writing Down Your Dreams
In this section (pp 14-16) Robert Bosnak describes three methods for recording dreams.
1. In his words: "You wake up with a shred of a dream that is still vaguely fluttering around. Remain very quietly in the same position, like a hunting dog observing its prey." He suggests that you stay still, looking at the dream, and write this piece down with your eyes still closed. Float along with the image you already remember - maybe another scene will float up to meet you. Write the second piece down too. At this point, you may be able to "reel in" the rest of the dream.
2. If you wake up mid-sleep with an entire dream and you fear there's so much to tell that you won't be able to get it all down, jot down "a few short descriptive words, for memory support." When you wake up the next morning, "move through the images as you did in the imaginary tour of your house (exercise 4), and try to write down each detail". You will lose some of these dreams, unable to recover them in the morning, but you will rescue others.
3. If you remember a dream in the morning, it's "ideal to describe the images from inside them, so that you just have to look around."
Bosnak adds some suggestions for keeping the dreams alive throughout the day. Go over it a few times to imprint it. Tell the dream to someone - you may even remember more of it when you do this. Muse on the dream when you have a quiet moment. Walk through the dream space while in your bathroom routine; take a look around. Just before sleep that night, "move through the dream once more."I
The exercises below were designed to help you improve your dream recall. They are summarized from Robert Bosnak's chapter on "Memory Exercises" (pp 8-17). "A dream is a happening in space, an articulation of space. We find ourselves in a space we call "dream" upon awakening... The dream itself is a texture woven of space and time inside of which we find ourselves. During the dream we believe we are awake, in the same way we believe we are awake when we truly are. That's why it is important to remember dreams as spatial structures, so that our experiences in dream space can be most adequately recalled."
The first four exercises help you develop the "art of memory".
Exercise 1: Moving through the Dream World
The essence of this exercise is to deliberately and intensively explore the physical world, while remembering that
even when you're asleep you think you're awake. Practice moving through space, knowing "you are moving around inside an ordinary nightly dream, while at the same time you're certain that you're awake."
Exercise 2: Recalling Dream Objects
Pick up an object. Look at it carefully. Move it, turn it around, all the while taking it in as thoroughly as possible. Then close your eyes and "look" at the object. Bosnak instructs you to "Try to recall how it rotated and what it looked like from different angles."
Exercise 3: Creating a Memory Storage Room
Walk around inside a small room. There should be several unique points of interest, and items of different shapes and sizes. Notice everything as deeply as you can. Take things in - handle them, smell them. Then rest and close your eyes, recalling the room and everything in it.
Exercise 4: An Imaginary Tour of Your House
In your mind's eye, scroll through the homes you've known best and choose the one that you remember most clearly. Now connect into your sensory perception - awaken to the experience of your breath moving in you, and notice as many bodily sensations as you can. When you have "felt your way deeply into your body, visualize the house you want to enter (p. 10)." Start at the main entrance and take in every detail as you look at the house. Turn around and look at the view - what do you see? Turn back to the door, see the door as clearly as you can, and open it. Let your eyes adjust, and look around. Look up and down, all around. Make sure to walk slowly. Take your time and notice everything. If something catches your eye, go take a closer look. Move from room to room.
"When you've looked around extensively, you slowly move to that place in the house where your bed is. Slowly, much more slowly. Slowing down is one of the most difficult exercises in the volatile world of images (p. 11)." Observe your bed, sit on it, lie down and get under the covers. What is the feeling of being in that bed? Stay for a while. When you get up, look around. Does anything look different? Leave the room and look around some more. Ask yourself if you see more, or differently now.
The following exercises are about recording dreams:
Exercise 5: Observing the Moment of Awakening
"Begin with the intention of waking up as consciously as possible." Wake up without an alarm, and lie completely still. Let the waking up happen, and be there for it, noticing everything. What changes in your sensations, breath and thoughts as you move from the sleep state into the waking state? Bosnak directs: "Do this every day for a week and decide absolutely to remember no dreams whatsoever. The only thing that matters is observing the moment of awakening."
Exercise 7: Writing Down Your Dreams
In this section (pp 14-16) Robert Bosnak describes three methods for recording dreams.
1. In his words: "You wake up with a shred of a dream that is still vaguely fluttering around. Remain very quietly in the same position, like a hunting dog observing its prey." He suggests that you stay still, looking at the dream, and write this piece down with your eyes still closed. Float along with the image you already remember - maybe another scene will float up to meet you. Write the second piece down too. At this point, you may be able to "reel in" the rest of the dream.
2. If you wake up mid-sleep with an entire dream and you fear there's so much to tell that you won't be able to get it all down, jot down "a few short descriptive words, for memory support." When you wake up the next morning, "move through the images as you did in the imaginary tour of your house (exercise 4), and try to write down each detail". You will lose some of these dreams, unable to recover them in the morning, but you will rescue others.
3. If you remember a dream in the morning, it's "ideal to describe the images from inside them, so that you just have to look around."
Bosnak adds some suggestions for keeping the dreams alive throughout the day. Go over it a few times to imprint it. Tell the dream to someone - you may even remember more of it when you do this. Muse on the dream when you have a quiet moment. Walk through the dream space while in your bathroom routine; take a look around. Just before sleep that night, "move through the dream once more."I
Ask and You Will Receive - Is it That Simple? (A Method for Incubating Dreams)
In her book "Living Your Dreams" Gayle Delaney describes the phenomenon that "sleeping on a problem" often brings an answer - it may be a math problem, a design for a new creative project, or a relationship issue. Nothing is too big or too small. Delaney says that "You can learn to ask your dreams to help you with your problems or answer your questions (p. 8)." Although our culture has lost contact with a sense of value of dreams, there have been many times and places in which dreams were valued. In some traditions they've been seen as a part of medical treatment: either giving diagnostic or prognostic information, or having healing value for the dreamer. They've also been seen as an access point to guidance - for an individual, or for a tribe. In a culture where dreams are valued in these ways, medical practitioners and group leaders will begin to wonder if there's anything that can be done to INDUCE a dream - especially at times when guidance is needed. Many cultures have developed incubation rituals in response to this need. These rituals had a home within specific spiritual traditions, or world views. Many of them wouldn't resonate with modern dreamers, or wouldn't be practical in an urban setting.
Delaney describes a step-by-step method for "incubating" dreams in response to a specific question. She calls this "phrase focusing" or "secular dream incubation" (p. 27), and its a method she's used and taught for decades with what she describes as good results. She notes that a dream is easier to interpret if you know what question it is answering! She describes how exciting and empowering it can be to ask a specific question and get an answer from the dream world. This method is suitable for contemporary, urban life, as it doesn't require fasting, mind-altering plants or drugs, any special location, or any particular belief system. Delaney writes that this method works best if you ask for help with a problem that is close to your heart, and that you are ready and willing to address. The steps below are summarized from pages 29-34 of her book "Living Your Dreams".
Step 1: Choose the Right Night. Ideally this means: you're not too tired, your consciousness isn't altered by alcohol or drugs (recreational or prescription). She also notes that "most users [of Valium or sleeping pills] who take an active interest in their dream life find they no longer need them (p. 29)", and they can often be tapered off under your doctor's supervision. Make it a day where you can set aside 20 minutes to write before bed, and another 10 minutes the next morning to record your dream.
Step 2: Day Notes. Record "day notes", getting thoughts and feelings down to clear your mind, relax and orient you. Delaney writes that all it takes is a few lines about the day's activities and your feelings.
Step 3: Incubation Discussion. Delaney nicknames this step "lights!" (as in "lights, camera, action!") because it's about illuminating the movie "set", and taking a close look at the situation you've chosen. Its purpose is to direct attention to "areas that have previously been insufficiently illuminated (p. 30)." You are having a discussion with yourself, and you are recording the discussion in your journal. You are talking amongst yourself. She highlights this as one of the most important steps in the incubation process, especially while you're learning it. "The more completely you use your conscious mind to grapple with the issue and actually write out the discussion, the more positive you can be about getting an answer to your question in the morning (p. 31)." Here are some questions (pp. 30-31) to include in your inner discussion:
Step 4: Incubation Phrase. Your incubation phrase is a short, direct question or request that gets to the heart of the issue. Delaney provides a few examples: "Help me to understand why I am afraid of heights and what I can do about it" or "What are the dynamics of our relationship; what's really going on between X and me (pp. 31-32)?" Make your request for help as specific as you can - then the responding dream will be more specific too. Write this phrase in BOLD letters and put a big star beside it in your dream journal.
Step 5: Focus! Camera! Now it's time to close your journal, and let the show begin. In this step, Delaney counsels visualizing yourself operating the movie camera: zoom right in on your incubation phrase, and concentrate all your thoughts and feelings on it. Fall asleep with your full attention on your question..
Step 6: Action! "This step is the easiest. Just sleep," explains Delaney.
Step 7: Record. As soon as you wake up, write your dreams down in as much detail as you can. Try to relive the dream, and record the sensations, feelings, songs, or fantasies that occur to you as you write. You may be able to scribble down a few associations that come. Think about your incubation phrase again, and write about what you feel the dream is trying to tell you.
Delaney describes a step-by-step method for "incubating" dreams in response to a specific question. She calls this "phrase focusing" or "secular dream incubation" (p. 27), and its a method she's used and taught for decades with what she describes as good results. She notes that a dream is easier to interpret if you know what question it is answering! She describes how exciting and empowering it can be to ask a specific question and get an answer from the dream world. This method is suitable for contemporary, urban life, as it doesn't require fasting, mind-altering plants or drugs, any special location, or any particular belief system. Delaney writes that this method works best if you ask for help with a problem that is close to your heart, and that you are ready and willing to address. The steps below are summarized from pages 29-34 of her book "Living Your Dreams".
Step 1: Choose the Right Night. Ideally this means: you're not too tired, your consciousness isn't altered by alcohol or drugs (recreational or prescription). She also notes that "most users [of Valium or sleeping pills] who take an active interest in their dream life find they no longer need them (p. 29)", and they can often be tapered off under your doctor's supervision. Make it a day where you can set aside 20 minutes to write before bed, and another 10 minutes the next morning to record your dream.
Step 2: Day Notes. Record "day notes", getting thoughts and feelings down to clear your mind, relax and orient you. Delaney writes that all it takes is a few lines about the day's activities and your feelings.
Step 3: Incubation Discussion. Delaney nicknames this step "lights!" (as in "lights, camera, action!") because it's about illuminating the movie "set", and taking a close look at the situation you've chosen. Its purpose is to direct attention to "areas that have previously been insufficiently illuminated (p. 30)." You are having a discussion with yourself, and you are recording the discussion in your journal. You are talking amongst yourself. She highlights this as one of the most important steps in the incubation process, especially while you're learning it. "The more completely you use your conscious mind to grapple with the issue and actually write out the discussion, the more positive you can be about getting an answer to your question in the morning (p. 31)." Here are some questions (pp. 30-31) to include in your inner discussion:
- What do you see as the causes of the problem?
- What are some possible solutions, and why don't any of them seem right?
- How are you feeling as you write this?
- What "secondary gains" or benefits might you be getting from perpetuating this conflict?
- Does living with the problem feel safer, or more comfortable, than resolving it?
- What would you have to give up (for example sympathy, martyrdom) if the problem were resolved?
- How would your life be different if you didn't have this problem anymore?
Step 4: Incubation Phrase. Your incubation phrase is a short, direct question or request that gets to the heart of the issue. Delaney provides a few examples: "Help me to understand why I am afraid of heights and what I can do about it" or "What are the dynamics of our relationship; what's really going on between X and me (pp. 31-32)?" Make your request for help as specific as you can - then the responding dream will be more specific too. Write this phrase in BOLD letters and put a big star beside it in your dream journal.
Step 5: Focus! Camera! Now it's time to close your journal, and let the show begin. In this step, Delaney counsels visualizing yourself operating the movie camera: zoom right in on your incubation phrase, and concentrate all your thoughts and feelings on it. Fall asleep with your full attention on your question..
Step 6: Action! "This step is the easiest. Just sleep," explains Delaney.
Step 7: Record. As soon as you wake up, write your dreams down in as much detail as you can. Try to relive the dream, and record the sensations, feelings, songs, or fantasies that occur to you as you write. You may be able to scribble down a few associations that come. Think about your incubation phrase again, and write about what you feel the dream is trying to tell you.
Many Approaches to Dream Work - Common Threads
Entering the dream world is like travelling. It helps to have a map.
I've found a number of approaches or methods for working with dreams that resonate for me. I include a summary of the key steps involved, below. They share some common threads. The first step is so basic that it doesn't always get mentioned: first you must remember the dream (and ideally write it down). We dream many more dreams than what we remember, and even those we remember may be fragmentary, and often fade quickly if we don't get them down. The second step is to return to the dream, to bring it back to life, to have a sensory experience of the dream place, people and action. The third step involves exploring what the setting, characters and plot mean to you. To you in particular - they won't mean the same thing to anybody else. What is the emotional tone of the dream? What are the themes? What recurring pattern is it pointing out? The fourth step is about relating all of these things to your waking life: where in your life have you visited a place like that? When do you have feelings just like those? Where in your life does that pattern play out? Once you have connected the dream to your waking life, it will become clearer what does the dream means for you. You will discover the message the dream wants to communicate to you. The fifth step is very important: now that the dream has sent you a message and you have opened the envelope, read it, and understood it, what is the dream asking for? What direction is it giving? What will you DO in your life to respond to the dream?
I've found a number of approaches or methods for working with dreams that resonate for me. I include a summary of the key steps involved, below. They share some common threads. The first step is so basic that it doesn't always get mentioned: first you must remember the dream (and ideally write it down). We dream many more dreams than what we remember, and even those we remember may be fragmentary, and often fade quickly if we don't get them down. The second step is to return to the dream, to bring it back to life, to have a sensory experience of the dream place, people and action. The third step involves exploring what the setting, characters and plot mean to you. To you in particular - they won't mean the same thing to anybody else. What is the emotional tone of the dream? What are the themes? What recurring pattern is it pointing out? The fourth step is about relating all of these things to your waking life: where in your life have you visited a place like that? When do you have feelings just like those? Where in your life does that pattern play out? Once you have connected the dream to your waking life, it will become clearer what does the dream means for you. You will discover the message the dream wants to communicate to you. The fifth step is very important: now that the dream has sent you a message and you have opened the envelope, read it, and understood it, what is the dream asking for? What direction is it giving? What will you DO in your life to respond to the dream?
Dreamreading Method (Sowton) - 5 steps:
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Inner Work (Johnson) - Four-Step Approach:
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Dream Interviewing (Delaney)
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A Simple Introduction to Working with Dreams: The Dreamworking Manual
“Dream interpretation, like psychotherapy, is an art and not a science. There is no right or wrong way of doing it. Each School inculcates its own doctrines into its trainees, but, with time and experience, every therapist evolves a personal style (Stevens p. 190).” For me, there are two important points in this quotation. The first is that we need to start somewhere – a technique or a method that we can follow is essential to most beginners. The second is that we each eventually find a unique and personal way of doing the work.
The foundation of my personal training in dream work is the Dreamreading Method developed by Dr. Christopher Sowton, ND. I have been studying with him for several years, in one-on-one sessions with my own dreams, in supervision sessions discussing my clients' dreams and as a member of the dream sharing and dream worker training group that Chris facilitates (described below). Chris's recent publication on the method is called The Dreamworking Manual: A Guide to Using Dreams in Health Care. Chris' teaching style is very warm and grounded. He illustrates his points with dozens of examples of dreams. He makes topics that could be airy fairy and esoteric very accessible. Although his book provides a wealth of information for the beginning dreamworker and experienced practitioners alike, his writing style is as down-to-earth and conversational as his teaching. In the Foreword to the book, respected author and dreamwork practitioner Robert Van de Castle writes: "If you are thinking about extending the parameters of your current clinical practice, or just want to better understand your own dreams, this is definitely the book that you should read, study and absorb. It is simply superb!"
This method is the right fit for me for several key reasons: it's inviting and unintimidating; it's provides simple steps that you can return to whenever you feel lost; the dreamer is understood to be the true expert about his or her own dream, and; and the method emphasizes the importance of connecting the dream to dreamer's waking life and responding to the message that is being conveyed by the dreammaker. As Chris writes about his book "It is a practical hands-on manual for dreamworking - it gives you the technique, the phrases and questions you will need to use, and the theoretical guidelines to follow as you put the theory into practice (p. 11). I outlined the five steps of the method in the section above. In Chapter 9, "An Overview of the Method", Chris summarizes the 5 key steps (taken from pp. 100 - 184):
In addition to the 5 steps outlined above, it is good to keep these important tips (among many others shared in Chris' book) in mind as you work:
In closing this section I will quote from Chris' introductory section "How to Use This Book": "The goal of the method is twofold -- to help dreamers arrive at resonant insights about how their dreams connect to their lives, and then to support them in doing something with those insights (p. 11)."
The foundation of my personal training in dream work is the Dreamreading Method developed by Dr. Christopher Sowton, ND. I have been studying with him for several years, in one-on-one sessions with my own dreams, in supervision sessions discussing my clients' dreams and as a member of the dream sharing and dream worker training group that Chris facilitates (described below). Chris's recent publication on the method is called The Dreamworking Manual: A Guide to Using Dreams in Health Care. Chris' teaching style is very warm and grounded. He illustrates his points with dozens of examples of dreams. He makes topics that could be airy fairy and esoteric very accessible. Although his book provides a wealth of information for the beginning dreamworker and experienced practitioners alike, his writing style is as down-to-earth and conversational as his teaching. In the Foreword to the book, respected author and dreamwork practitioner Robert Van de Castle writes: "If you are thinking about extending the parameters of your current clinical practice, or just want to better understand your own dreams, this is definitely the book that you should read, study and absorb. It is simply superb!"
This method is the right fit for me for several key reasons: it's inviting and unintimidating; it's provides simple steps that you can return to whenever you feel lost; the dreamer is understood to be the true expert about his or her own dream, and; and the method emphasizes the importance of connecting the dream to dreamer's waking life and responding to the message that is being conveyed by the dreammaker. As Chris writes about his book "It is a practical hands-on manual for dreamworking - it gives you the technique, the phrases and questions you will need to use, and the theoretical guidelines to follow as you put the theory into practice (p. 11). I outlined the five steps of the method in the section above. In Chapter 9, "An Overview of the Method", Chris summarizes the 5 key steps (taken from pp. 100 - 184):
- Catching - the practices and techniques associated with stimulating dream recall, remembering and recording dreams, and preparing to do something with them. These include: revisiting old dreams, incubating a dream, go back into the dream as soon as you wake up and relive it and/or tell it; spend "shoreline time" - between wakefulness and sleep; record the dream; give the dream a short and meaningful name. See also the five tips for catching a dream on p. 272.
- Amplifying - the practices and techniques associated with a person telling the dream while another person (or inner facilitator) listens, questions, and facilitates so the recollection is as full and rich as possible. You want to get clear on the events and feeling tones, as well as with the dreamer's associations with each of the key figures/elements. Ask the dreamer to relive the dream, and to tell it to you in the present tense. Good questions include; "what did you feel when...?; what did you mean by...?"
- Orienting - the techniques and skills that enable someone to recognize elements of a dreamscape and make some sense of them. Good questions include: "What have you made of the dream so far?"; "What do you think the dream is asking for?"; "Do you intuitively feel that the X is part of you, or is referring to something outside of you?"; "Can you be the part of [any figure or element]?"; "Is it a good thing or a bad thing that you are in this situation in the dream?";"What is trying to happen/ What is the stuck point? Why can't it happen?" Chris' book also describes universal dream motifs such as ego check motifs, family field motifs, shadow motifs, personal sprit motifs, introject motifs, self-discovery motifs, positive feedback motifs... (chapter 16).
- Connecting - the practices and techniques associated with making connections between a dream and the dreamer's life. This is the primary goal of the Dreamreading Method. Try to connect through feeling tones or through the "highlight and ask" technique (pp. 160-161), feeding back a key feature using the dreamer's own words. Connection is an "aha" moment - quite unmistakable when it happens. Possible connections must pass the double resonance test, resonating for the dreamer and the practitioner.
- Responding - the practices and techniques associated with responding to and using the message of the dream in some way. There are three basic types of responses: imaginal (responding through active imagination); ritual, and; actions taken in waking life to, say, change an old pattern. Page 184 gives a useful chart of examples of responses matched to common dream motifs.
In addition to the 5 steps outlined above, it is good to keep these important tips (among many others shared in Chris' book) in mind as you work:
- Keep your questions clear, short, and simple... just ask one short simple question at a time (p. 100).
- If you feel lost, come back to amplification until you feel more oriented. If you still feel lost, skip ahead and try to connect the dream to waking life. If you still feel lost, you may have to come back to the dream in a different session (p. 106).
- Amplifying should only take 5-10 minutes when you're more experienced with it; look out for clues to help you get oriented. Be alert to guideposts (p. 124).
- You can't respond to the dream until you know if the key figures are inner or outer figures (p. 134).
- Asking the dreamer to "be the part" is a very powerful orienting technique. A good rule of thumb is to start with the figure/element that the dreamer is least identified with - this often yields more dynamic results (p. 143).
In closing this section I will quote from Chris' introductory section "How to Use This Book": "The goal of the method is twofold -- to help dreamers arrive at resonant insights about how their dreams connect to their lives, and then to support them in doing something with those insights (p. 11)."
On Jung and Dream Interpretation - in his own words
In writing this paper, I've been most drawn to contemporary authors and practitioners, reading and teaching in an accessible style. Those of us who take dreams seriously owe so much to Carl Jung, however, that it seemed disrespectful to leave him entirely out of it. The book "Children's Dreams", an edited proceedings from a series of seminars that Jung gave on working with children's dreams, begins with an introduction to Jung's method of dream interpretation, in his own words.
On pages 4-5, Jung describes the four types of meanings that dreams can have:
Later in the introduction, Jung describes the six sources (causes or conditions) of dreams:
Key assumptions and techniques when working with dreams (pp. 23-29):
In the last part of the chapter on the method of dream interpretation, Jung encourages his students to use a schema that can be generally applied, and may be especially helpful in complicated dreams (p. 30):
On pages 4-5, Jung describes the four types of meanings that dreams can have:
- The unconscious is responding to specific situation taking place in waking life (On page 31 he notes that the dream never simply repeats waking events except in the case of shock or trauma: the dream tries
and fails to integrate the experience into metaphor); - The dream depicts a conflict that exists between a conscious situation and the unconscious point of view;
- The unconscious is trying to change or correct a conscious attitude;
- The dream is a spontaneous depiction of an unconscious process. These, according to Jung, are very powerful. They can be experienced as an illumination, or may portend a mental breakdown.
Later in the introduction, Jung describes the six sources (causes or conditions) of dreams:
- The body (sensation, posture, physical illness);
- Other physical (environmental) stimuli, which may precede the dream or may even follow it in chronological time;
- Stimuli in the psychological environment or atmosphere - moods and secrets connected to friends or family, for example;
- Past events concerning historical figures - the life of the dreamed-of figure may illuminate the dreamer's situation;
- Personal experiences which have fallen out of conscious memory;
- Anticipatory dreams, telling of future events or psychological states. If something pursues you in a dream it wants to come to you to unite and make you stronger.
Key assumptions and techniques when working with dreams (pp. 23-29):
- Dreams are not random;
- Dreams reveal the orientation of the psyche: the psyche has a purpose and goal;
- Free association always leads us into our complexes, and often away from the message of dream;
- To get to the real meaning of a dream, collect associations on the original image in the dream, always returning to the image and branching out from it, rather than following associations in a linear or zigzag pattern out to the complexes;
- This amplification must be done with all the dream elements (symbols);
- To read the dream "sentence," replace each symbol in the narrative with the dreamer's personal associations;
- Since most symbols have meanings in common use, personal associates may not be essential - the approach of using more general associations is needed when the dreamer doesn't have personal associations or for children's dreams as the adult may not remember what was going on at the time and a child may not be able to describe associations.
In the last part of the chapter on the method of dream interpretation, Jung encourages his students to use a schema that can be generally applied, and may be especially helpful in complicated dreams (p. 30):
- Locale: Place, time, "dramatis personae."
- Exposition: Illustration of the problem.
- Peripateia: Illustration of the transformation - which can also leave room for a catastrophe.
- Lysis: Result of the dream. Meaningful closure. Compensating illustration of the action of the dream.
Connecting with Dream Reality
I find this quotation from Robert Bosnak's "Little Course in Dreams" really compelling: "there is a vast difference between a dream and a dream story - as vast as the difference between a story in a newspaper and the actual event it describes (p. 18)".
Chapter 4 of Bosnak's book is called "Returning to Dream Reality." It begins this way: “A vital element in dream work is the return to the reality of the dream. The dreamer moves into the inner space of the dream… In this remembered dream space, the dream events reoccur. This is an essential component of dreamwork (p. 39).” In the following pages, he connects dreamwork and active imagination. Bosnak’s definition of active imagination is different than other descriptions I’ve read. He describes it this way: “The activity of entering the dream world by way of daytime consciousness is a discipline of the imagination… an active interaction with the image world takes place…. It is possible to continue dreaming the dream. This art is called active imagination (p. 39).”
In a specific dream example that Bosnak recounts in the next few pages, something important about this process becomes clearer to me: “In dreams, just as in daily
life, we frequently react to the figures we encounter from the standpoint of all kinds of prejudices. When reliving the dream, it can be useful to suspend this prejudice and let the dream figure speak for himself (p. 41).” Bosnak illustrates this with the story of a stiff, white professor who encounters a young black man in his dream. To the professor’s surprise, he discovers that this young man wants to make contact with him, wants to encourage him to “hang loose” – the aggression the professor expects just isn’t there. Once the professor makes room for a relationship to develop with his dream figure, he has an ally. Now he can return for advice on “hanging loose” by returning to the dream reality. When we return to a dream in as much detail as possible, when we really revisit that place, it makes it much easier to interact with the people we find there – to identify with them, to ask for their help or perspective.
Later in this chapter Bosnak explains something that I’ve experienced in myself, and in dreamers I’m working with. It highlights the vital importance of connecting with dream reality. “If you do not begin active imagination in such a state of consciousness [an alternate state reached through very detailed recall of a dream image until the reality of the image world is intensified], there is a chance that you will just fabricate stories, which produces a sense of unreality. In active imagination… it is rather as if you participate in two equally true realities simultaneously (p. 44).”
Chapter 4 of Bosnak's book is called "Returning to Dream Reality." It begins this way: “A vital element in dream work is the return to the reality of the dream. The dreamer moves into the inner space of the dream… In this remembered dream space, the dream events reoccur. This is an essential component of dreamwork (p. 39).” In the following pages, he connects dreamwork and active imagination. Bosnak’s definition of active imagination is different than other descriptions I’ve read. He describes it this way: “The activity of entering the dream world by way of daytime consciousness is a discipline of the imagination… an active interaction with the image world takes place…. It is possible to continue dreaming the dream. This art is called active imagination (p. 39).”
In a specific dream example that Bosnak recounts in the next few pages, something important about this process becomes clearer to me: “In dreams, just as in daily
life, we frequently react to the figures we encounter from the standpoint of all kinds of prejudices. When reliving the dream, it can be useful to suspend this prejudice and let the dream figure speak for himself (p. 41).” Bosnak illustrates this with the story of a stiff, white professor who encounters a young black man in his dream. To the professor’s surprise, he discovers that this young man wants to make contact with him, wants to encourage him to “hang loose” – the aggression the professor expects just isn’t there. Once the professor makes room for a relationship to develop with his dream figure, he has an ally. Now he can return for advice on “hanging loose” by returning to the dream reality. When we return to a dream in as much detail as possible, when we really revisit that place, it makes it much easier to interact with the people we find there – to identify with them, to ask for their help or perspective.
Later in this chapter Bosnak explains something that I’ve experienced in myself, and in dreamers I’m working with. It highlights the vital importance of connecting with dream reality. “If you do not begin active imagination in such a state of consciousness [an alternate state reached through very detailed recall of a dream image until the reality of the image world is intensified], there is a chance that you will just fabricate stories, which produces a sense of unreality. In active imagination… it is rather as if you participate in two equally true realities simultaneously (p. 44).”
The "Inner Work" of Responding to Dreams
The phrase "inner work" in this section's title comes from the title of Robert A. Johnson's book, subtitled "using dreams and active imagination for personal growth". Robert Johnson is a long-time Jungian analyst and auther. He writes that there are two natural bridges between the unconscious and consious minds: one is dreams, and the other is imagination. The language of the unconscious is symbols. If we want to learn to communicate with our own unconscious parts, so that we can get a truer sense of all that we are, we need to learn that language.
Johnson describes "inner work" this way: "the effort by which we gain awareness of the deeper layers of consciousness within us and move toward integration of the total self (p. 13)."
The Poverty of Modern Life: Outer Life Untethered from Inner Life
Johnson describes our plight grippingly: "The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All the forms of interaction of the unconscious that nourished our ancestors -- dream, vision, ritual, and religious exerience -- are largely lost to us, dismissed by the modern mind as primitive or superstitious... we cut ourselves off from our origins in the unconscious and from the deepest parts of ourselves (p. 10)." Johnson describes how we concentrate all of our attention on the outer, material world, acting as though the "realm of the soul" doesn't exist. Most of us live a neurotic, fragmented life. We feel alone, longing for meaning, with "a vague sense that we have lost a part of ourselves, that something that once belonged to us is missing (p. 10)." Johnson believes that if we don't go looking for connection with our unconscious selves, our unconscious will come looking for us, in the form of neurosis. In other words, when we are untethered from our inner life, we go a little crazy. If we ignore the inner world, it "will find its way into our lives through pathology: our psychosomatic symptoms, compulsions, depressions, and neuroses (p. 11)." We do have a choice, though. We can choose to engage consciously through "inner work: our prayers, meditation, dream work, ceremonies, and Active Imagination (p. 11)."
Discovering a Richer Way of Living our Modern Lives
There are many old ways that helped people do inner work. Johnson names several: "yogic meditation, zazen in Zen Buddhism, Christian contemplative prayer... Sufi meditation (p. 14). He also describes the way some aboriginal people have held on to ancient form in contemporary times. He notes Jung's observation that "the aboriginal people of Australia spend two-thirds of their waking lives in some form of inner work. They do religious ceremony, discuss and interpret their dreams, make spirit quests, "go walkabout"" and compares this to the few hours that a week that most of us may devote to inner work (p. 14).
Johnson describes "inner work" this way: "the effort by which we gain awareness of the deeper layers of consciousness within us and move toward integration of the total self (p. 13)."
The Poverty of Modern Life: Outer Life Untethered from Inner Life
Johnson describes our plight grippingly: "The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting off of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All the forms of interaction of the unconscious that nourished our ancestors -- dream, vision, ritual, and religious exerience -- are largely lost to us, dismissed by the modern mind as primitive or superstitious... we cut ourselves off from our origins in the unconscious and from the deepest parts of ourselves (p. 10)." Johnson describes how we concentrate all of our attention on the outer, material world, acting as though the "realm of the soul" doesn't exist. Most of us live a neurotic, fragmented life. We feel alone, longing for meaning, with "a vague sense that we have lost a part of ourselves, that something that once belonged to us is missing (p. 10)." Johnson believes that if we don't go looking for connection with our unconscious selves, our unconscious will come looking for us, in the form of neurosis. In other words, when we are untethered from our inner life, we go a little crazy. If we ignore the inner world, it "will find its way into our lives through pathology: our psychosomatic symptoms, compulsions, depressions, and neuroses (p. 11)." We do have a choice, though. We can choose to engage consciously through "inner work: our prayers, meditation, dream work, ceremonies, and Active Imagination (p. 11)."
Discovering a Richer Way of Living our Modern Lives
There are many old ways that helped people do inner work. Johnson names several: "yogic meditation, zazen in Zen Buddhism, Christian contemplative prayer... Sufi meditation (p. 14). He also describes the way some aboriginal people have held on to ancient form in contemporary times. He notes Jung's observation that "the aboriginal people of Australia spend two-thirds of their waking lives in some form of inner work. They do religious ceremony, discuss and interpret their dreams, make spirit quests, "go walkabout"" and compares this to the few hours that a week that most of us may devote to inner work (p. 14).
The Power of a Dream Sharing Group
I'm in a dream sharing group. I love it. It is one of the most sacred events in my schedule. It's rare in modern life to find community
that is so mutually supportive. I feel heard and helped. I listen and support others. I feel my need for caring human contact and I feel needed.
The group I'm part of is both a dream sharing group and a training group for fledgling dream workers. Most of us are health care practitioners of one kind or another. Almost all of us already do dream work with our patients and clients, or wish to.
Everyone who joins commits to a minimum of one term (3-4 months of monthly meetings). This way a feeling of group safety can develop. We have a core group of true regulars who have rarely missed a meeting over the past few years. A few others are semi-regular depending on work and travel schedules. New members are invited to simply observe for their first meeting. On their second visit they can bring a dream of their own to share, but not yet participate in feedback or facilitation of others' dreams.
At each group meeting we hear dreamers' reflections and follow-ups from response homework to dreams shared at last month's meeting. Next, 2-3 members share dreams. The group works with each dream in turn. Members share the role of dream worker, helping the dreamer to make a resonant connection between the dream and his or her waking life, and to develop a practical response to the dream ("what is the dream asking for?"). Chris Sowton is the group facilitator, providing guidance to group members in the dream work. We use the dreamreading method described in Chris' book. He regularly helps us get oriented, and often debriefs the dream with us, showing us how an individual dream fits in with the larger motif map.
To quote our facilitator, Chris Sowton, "if you're not already part of a dream group…would you like to be? If there isn't one up and running in your area already…would you consider trying to start one? Do you have clients or patients who you think might benefit from being in a dream group? If so do you have somewhere to send them?
"This was the subject of a recent radio interview I did with Patti Allen on her show Dream Investigator. In case you didn't catch it live -- here's the link, you can put it on your must-listen list..."
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joycafenetwork/2013/06/03/patti-allen-dream-investigator-the-power-of-dream-sharing
Robert Bosnak's book "A Little Course in Dreams" includes two chapters describing working with dreams in a dream group. In the "Maggie in San Francisco" chapter and the "Underwater" chapter, Bosnak invites us to "attend" a few of these dream group sessions. Bosnak calls it a dream practicum. The group works on participant's dreams as a way of demonstrating and experience different ways of working with dreams. As always, with this book, I love the frank and revealing way he starts the "Maggie" session: "I've worked the whole day and I feel the aversion and repugnance that always comes up in me when I publicly work on dreams, because with dreams you never know. With most dreams, you get the feeling there's nothing you can do, and yet you've got to do something (p. 74)."
Bosnak begins by asking his class to check in. "How do your feet feel? Your legs? A little pain in the knees. Take another look. Your stomach, your heart, your neck. What kind of mood pervades you?... The purpose of this introspection is to know what's going on inside yourself, at least a little bit, so that you can detect changes while listening to a dream. A dream brings a certain atmosphere with it (p. 75)." This check takes about two minutes at the beginning of the practicum. More than just to mark the baseline, this quiet time also tunes the participants to the inner world and makes the room where the work will happen feel more intimate.
He asks Maggie to tell her dream twice. "First, I urge Maggie to tell us the dream I the present tense, not just as a story, but as a direct recollection... to function
as a tour guide... as graphic and precise as possible (p. 76)." He notes that she closes her eyes to concentrate and that many of the other participants also have their eyes closed. (Medical professionals such as MDs or NDs tend to take notes during patient visits; one advantage of taking notes is that the dream worker can read the dreamer's own words back to them, in order to help achieve a connection with waking life; a disadvantage of note-taking is that it can make it harder for the practitioner to enter into the dream's atmosphere with the dreamer.)
After Maggie tells her dream (the first telling is on pages 76-77 and the second telling on pages 78-79), Bosnak asks the practicum participants to share their initial impressions. They may note things such as how detached Maggie seemed, or their own personal feeling of sadness at a key moment in the dream. When the dreamer is not very connected, the atmosphere and feelings may be transferred to those listening. Feeling bored while listening to a dream is another sign
that that the dreamer is dissociating.
On the second telling, Bosnak asks his group to switch their attention from their own reactions to the details of Maggie's dream world. Now, what strikes
the listeners about the images? What angle grabs their interest, calling them to ask questions? "The craving for associations is spontaneously coming to the surface. You hear the images and you begin to wonder about things you would really like to hear more about from the dreamer in order to be able to imagine the specific context (p. 80)." If a word association or pun comes up, it can be a great lead to follow, Bosnak adds, but first, stay close to the "reality of the dream images" - stick to the image and try to enter it; later it may help to associate more freely, but this is likely to lead toward the person's complexes rather than focusing in on what this dream in particular is trying to say. After listening (twice), it is time for associations that "remain directly bound to the dream elements (p. 81)." On the topic of asking questions, Bosnak recommends asking a more open, general question to begin, and gradually zoom in. Something like: "What comes to mind when you think of San Francisco," followed later by "Where are we in the city? Does that square in San Francisco remind you of anything (p.82)?" At the same time, the inner work of asking questions connects to "pushing" the dreamer more deeply "into the dream image, so that she experiences the dream from inside (p. 83)." The dreamer begins to connect more and more to the moods of the dream. To move beyond this point, to begin to help the dreamer connect the mood of the dream to the mood of her waking life or her childhood requires intimacy. "When working on dreams in a group setting," Bosnak explains, "it is of great importance to make an accurate assessment of how much intimacy a group can bear. The more personal the material that is brought into a group, the greater the cohesiveness of the group must be.
Otherwise the dreamer soon feels that his or her very sensitive material is being exposed to a cold observing eye. In such a case, feelings of overwhelming shame can easily develop. Dreams can be worked on much more profoundly in a group where there is a cohesive bond of intimacy (p. 84)."
Part 4 of Gayle Delaney's book "Living Your Dreams" is called "Getting Your Show on the Road". This section leads with the book's chapter 12 (p. 291) and offers tips on how to start a dream group. She notes that people studying dreams "benefit tremendously from watching other dreams and interviewers struggle, and finally succeed, in posing artful questions that elicit insight without imposing external preconceptions (p. 292)." She compares working in a dream group to meeting up with other second-language students to practice speaking.
The groups that are part of Delany and Flowers' "dream center" meet for 1.5 hours weekly and participants attend for at least 1-2 years; many participants continue for much longer. She recommends finding assistance from an experienced professional, but if you can't find one in your area, she encourages dreamers to form groups based on the guidelines she outlines in this chapter. She suggests 4-6 members, all who keep a dream journal. My own experience with a larger group has been
fantastic - although each member doesn't get to bring a dream as frequently (maybe once every 3 months at our monthly meetings), we get to hear and work on
a dreams from a wider variety of dreamers. Delaney suggests meetings of 2-3 hours in length, between 1-4 sessions a month (depending on member schedules). She stresses the importance of a "nonjudgmental atmosphere of trust and joint adventure... established from the beginning (p. 293)" and of confidentiality.
Delany suggests that everyone bring their dream journal to meetings, and suggests opening with a preliminary discussion on what people have been reading, thinking or studying about dream work recently. In her groups, one dreamer brings a dream each session and the other members take turns interviewing. She says the best dreams to pick are recent ones with highly charged feelings or that are baffling for the dreamer. The facilitator coaches the interviewers and helps when they get stuck. "If the dream is told in the present tense and first person," Delaney explains, "the immediacy of the dream experience will be enhanced (p. 295)." Next, the dreamer describes any work they've done or discoveries they've already made about the dream. Interviewers take turns interviewing; other members are encouraged
not to interrupt so as not to disrupt the train of thought. "The interview should be pursued until the dreamer has an "aha" or aesthetic experience of the dream (p. 296)," according to Delaney. She has noticed that interviews take longer in the beginning, and go more quickly as group members gain experience. Once the "aha" moment happens, it might be good to debrief: "Which attitudes, which questions, were most productive? Where did the interviewers lead the witness...? How best to rephrase awkward or pushy questions (p. 296)?" Delaney ends the dream group by inviting the dreamer to "relive the dream by telling it one more time with feeling (p. 297)."
that is so mutually supportive. I feel heard and helped. I listen and support others. I feel my need for caring human contact and I feel needed.
The group I'm part of is both a dream sharing group and a training group for fledgling dream workers. Most of us are health care practitioners of one kind or another. Almost all of us already do dream work with our patients and clients, or wish to.
Everyone who joins commits to a minimum of one term (3-4 months of monthly meetings). This way a feeling of group safety can develop. We have a core group of true regulars who have rarely missed a meeting over the past few years. A few others are semi-regular depending on work and travel schedules. New members are invited to simply observe for their first meeting. On their second visit they can bring a dream of their own to share, but not yet participate in feedback or facilitation of others' dreams.
At each group meeting we hear dreamers' reflections and follow-ups from response homework to dreams shared at last month's meeting. Next, 2-3 members share dreams. The group works with each dream in turn. Members share the role of dream worker, helping the dreamer to make a resonant connection between the dream and his or her waking life, and to develop a practical response to the dream ("what is the dream asking for?"). Chris Sowton is the group facilitator, providing guidance to group members in the dream work. We use the dreamreading method described in Chris' book. He regularly helps us get oriented, and often debriefs the dream with us, showing us how an individual dream fits in with the larger motif map.
To quote our facilitator, Chris Sowton, "if you're not already part of a dream group…would you like to be? If there isn't one up and running in your area already…would you consider trying to start one? Do you have clients or patients who you think might benefit from being in a dream group? If so do you have somewhere to send them?
"This was the subject of a recent radio interview I did with Patti Allen on her show Dream Investigator. In case you didn't catch it live -- here's the link, you can put it on your must-listen list..."
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joycafenetwork/2013/06/03/patti-allen-dream-investigator-the-power-of-dream-sharing
Robert Bosnak's book "A Little Course in Dreams" includes two chapters describing working with dreams in a dream group. In the "Maggie in San Francisco" chapter and the "Underwater" chapter, Bosnak invites us to "attend" a few of these dream group sessions. Bosnak calls it a dream practicum. The group works on participant's dreams as a way of demonstrating and experience different ways of working with dreams. As always, with this book, I love the frank and revealing way he starts the "Maggie" session: "I've worked the whole day and I feel the aversion and repugnance that always comes up in me when I publicly work on dreams, because with dreams you never know. With most dreams, you get the feeling there's nothing you can do, and yet you've got to do something (p. 74)."
Bosnak begins by asking his class to check in. "How do your feet feel? Your legs? A little pain in the knees. Take another look. Your stomach, your heart, your neck. What kind of mood pervades you?... The purpose of this introspection is to know what's going on inside yourself, at least a little bit, so that you can detect changes while listening to a dream. A dream brings a certain atmosphere with it (p. 75)." This check takes about two minutes at the beginning of the practicum. More than just to mark the baseline, this quiet time also tunes the participants to the inner world and makes the room where the work will happen feel more intimate.
He asks Maggie to tell her dream twice. "First, I urge Maggie to tell us the dream I the present tense, not just as a story, but as a direct recollection... to function
as a tour guide... as graphic and precise as possible (p. 76)." He notes that she closes her eyes to concentrate and that many of the other participants also have their eyes closed. (Medical professionals such as MDs or NDs tend to take notes during patient visits; one advantage of taking notes is that the dream worker can read the dreamer's own words back to them, in order to help achieve a connection with waking life; a disadvantage of note-taking is that it can make it harder for the practitioner to enter into the dream's atmosphere with the dreamer.)
After Maggie tells her dream (the first telling is on pages 76-77 and the second telling on pages 78-79), Bosnak asks the practicum participants to share their initial impressions. They may note things such as how detached Maggie seemed, or their own personal feeling of sadness at a key moment in the dream. When the dreamer is not very connected, the atmosphere and feelings may be transferred to those listening. Feeling bored while listening to a dream is another sign
that that the dreamer is dissociating.
On the second telling, Bosnak asks his group to switch their attention from their own reactions to the details of Maggie's dream world. Now, what strikes
the listeners about the images? What angle grabs their interest, calling them to ask questions? "The craving for associations is spontaneously coming to the surface. You hear the images and you begin to wonder about things you would really like to hear more about from the dreamer in order to be able to imagine the specific context (p. 80)." If a word association or pun comes up, it can be a great lead to follow, Bosnak adds, but first, stay close to the "reality of the dream images" - stick to the image and try to enter it; later it may help to associate more freely, but this is likely to lead toward the person's complexes rather than focusing in on what this dream in particular is trying to say. After listening (twice), it is time for associations that "remain directly bound to the dream elements (p. 81)." On the topic of asking questions, Bosnak recommends asking a more open, general question to begin, and gradually zoom in. Something like: "What comes to mind when you think of San Francisco," followed later by "Where are we in the city? Does that square in San Francisco remind you of anything (p.82)?" At the same time, the inner work of asking questions connects to "pushing" the dreamer more deeply "into the dream image, so that she experiences the dream from inside (p. 83)." The dreamer begins to connect more and more to the moods of the dream. To move beyond this point, to begin to help the dreamer connect the mood of the dream to the mood of her waking life or her childhood requires intimacy. "When working on dreams in a group setting," Bosnak explains, "it is of great importance to make an accurate assessment of how much intimacy a group can bear. The more personal the material that is brought into a group, the greater the cohesiveness of the group must be.
Otherwise the dreamer soon feels that his or her very sensitive material is being exposed to a cold observing eye. In such a case, feelings of overwhelming shame can easily develop. Dreams can be worked on much more profoundly in a group where there is a cohesive bond of intimacy (p. 84)."
Part 4 of Gayle Delaney's book "Living Your Dreams" is called "Getting Your Show on the Road". This section leads with the book's chapter 12 (p. 291) and offers tips on how to start a dream group. She notes that people studying dreams "benefit tremendously from watching other dreams and interviewers struggle, and finally succeed, in posing artful questions that elicit insight without imposing external preconceptions (p. 292)." She compares working in a dream group to meeting up with other second-language students to practice speaking.
The groups that are part of Delany and Flowers' "dream center" meet for 1.5 hours weekly and participants attend for at least 1-2 years; many participants continue for much longer. She recommends finding assistance from an experienced professional, but if you can't find one in your area, she encourages dreamers to form groups based on the guidelines she outlines in this chapter. She suggests 4-6 members, all who keep a dream journal. My own experience with a larger group has been
fantastic - although each member doesn't get to bring a dream as frequently (maybe once every 3 months at our monthly meetings), we get to hear and work on
a dreams from a wider variety of dreamers. Delaney suggests meetings of 2-3 hours in length, between 1-4 sessions a month (depending on member schedules). She stresses the importance of a "nonjudgmental atmosphere of trust and joint adventure... established from the beginning (p. 293)" and of confidentiality.
Delany suggests that everyone bring their dream journal to meetings, and suggests opening with a preliminary discussion on what people have been reading, thinking or studying about dream work recently. In her groups, one dreamer brings a dream each session and the other members take turns interviewing. She says the best dreams to pick are recent ones with highly charged feelings or that are baffling for the dreamer. The facilitator coaches the interviewers and helps when they get stuck. "If the dream is told in the present tense and first person," Delaney explains, "the immediacy of the dream experience will be enhanced (p. 295)." Next, the dreamer describes any work they've done or discoveries they've already made about the dream. Interviewers take turns interviewing; other members are encouraged
not to interrupt so as not to disrupt the train of thought. "The interview should be pursued until the dreamer has an "aha" or aesthetic experience of the dream (p. 296)," according to Delaney. She has noticed that interviews take longer in the beginning, and go more quickly as group members gain experience. Once the "aha" moment happens, it might be good to debrief: "Which attitudes, which questions, were most productive? Where did the interviewers lead the witness...? How best to rephrase awkward or pushy questions (p. 296)?" Delaney ends the dream group by inviting the dreamer to "relive the dream by telling it one more time with feeling (p. 297)."
Working with Dreams in Clinical Practice
Dreamwork can be a very helpful part of many types of clinical practice in which working with dreams is not the principle modality. This may include mainstream or complementary medical practice, or psychotherapy. Anthony Stevens summarizes the power of working with dreams: “This, in a nutshell, is why the dream is indispensable: it provides the data necessary to establish the history, the diagnosis, the treatment, and not infrequently the cure (p. 191). Why would we ever ignore such a helpful tool?
Quoting extensively from Dr. Sowton's article on this subject: “As I suspect is the case for many health care practitioners who work with their patient’s dreams, I often find that I cannot devote as much time and focus to a particular dream as I would ideally want. I have often had to do my dreamwork quite quickly. This is all the more true because many of my patients have not necessarily signed up for dream therapy; they are consulting with me for their health issues. They and I are usually in agreement that dreams have a lot to say about our health and disease, but still they may not be ready for an hour long immersion into the depths of their dream, as fascinating as that may turn out to be. When we have the luxury of a willing client and lots of available time it is wonderful to explore all the associations and possible meanings of the dream figures, the setting, the feelings, etc. In the end I believe this kind of method usually allows for the richest and fullest experience of the dream. But, sadly, the choice is often between working quickly with the dream or not working with it at all (Sowton, 2011).”
Here are some of the tips that Chris Sowton gives for working with dreams in a clinical setting, under time constraints:
Quoting extensively from Dr. Sowton's article on this subject: “As I suspect is the case for many health care practitioners who work with their patient’s dreams, I often find that I cannot devote as much time and focus to a particular dream as I would ideally want. I have often had to do my dreamwork quite quickly. This is all the more true because many of my patients have not necessarily signed up for dream therapy; they are consulting with me for their health issues. They and I are usually in agreement that dreams have a lot to say about our health and disease, but still they may not be ready for an hour long immersion into the depths of their dream, as fascinating as that may turn out to be. When we have the luxury of a willing client and lots of available time it is wonderful to explore all the associations and possible meanings of the dream figures, the setting, the feelings, etc. In the end I believe this kind of method usually allows for the richest and fullest experience of the dream. But, sadly, the choice is often between working quickly with the dream or not working with it at all (Sowton, 2011).”
Here are some of the tips that Chris Sowton gives for working with dreams in a clinical setting, under time constraints:
- Change the starting point from: “what does this dream mean?” to: “what does this dream want?”-- this question can cause a "jumping to the punch line", because dreams are asking us to do something in response to them, not just understand their message.
- Zero in on the element in the dream that the dreamer is least identified with (ie: frightened of, intimidated by, angry at, fighting with, running away from, in awe of, etc) -- it is very likely that the dreamer's unconscious wants them to change their attitude to, or relationship with, this element. Here are some examples of ways to help the dreamer connect with this element: a) ask for associations (e.g.: "what does that kind of big wind mean to you?"); b) ask the dreamer if they can identify with the part (e.g.: “Can we look at big wind as a part of you? What part of you would it be?”); c) highlight and ask (highlight and reiterate
the qualities of the dream element, and ask the dreamer if she sees any of those qualities in herself); d) ask the dreamer to be the part (e.g.: “Be the big wind” or “Imagine that you are the big wind”). - Be prepared to hand the work back to the dreamer when the session ends -- homework for the client can help keep the dream alive between sessions. Examples include: asking the dreamer to think about or write about an appropriate response to the dream ("what does this dream want") if the response
hasn't been articulated yet, or it may be something like visualizing being the element that they have been attempting to connect with.
Dream Work in Relation to Energy Anatomy and Energy Work
What is the relationship between dream work and energy anatomy, and between dream work and energy healing? I see the relationships as interconnected and reciprocal. Dreams can be used as a part of diagnosis when choosing an energy modality such as acupuncture, homeopathy or the transfer of healing energy from the therapist's hands to the client. Dreams can also help in assessing the impact of a subtle form of healing: after taking a homeopathic remedy or receiving an energy work session, it can be very helpful to notice and write down the dreams that come: maybe they show movement, where you had been feeling stuck; maybe you turn to face the monster that has chased you through recurring dreams for ages. If an energetic treatment is a good match for the client and is starting to help, there are other early indicators to look out for: overall energy level may improve, sleep may be more restful, the client may feel "lighter" or more optimistic.
Anodea Judith's book Eastern Body, Western Mind "integrates techniques from bioenergetics to visualization, depth psychology to spiritual practice (p. vii)". It "shows how to use the chakra system as a tool for diagnosis and healing (ibid)." Judith describes the importance of dreams, and later describes how they can be used in a clinical practice that includes energy assessment. "Dreams link the conscious and unconscious mind (p. 368)." In this way they spark our awakening into conscious people, and connect that consciousness with "the dynamic ground of Earth and nature (ibid)." They help link the individual person to the universal whole. "Dreams open the way for us to see things in a new light, revealing hidden feelings and understandings, desires and needs, rejected selves, unused talents, and missing pieces of our wholeness (ibid)." Dreams help us to bring our lives back into balance. "They communicate essential information to the conscious mind about our health, relationships, work, growth (p. 369)."
Judith links dreaming to the sixth chakra, sometimes called "the third eye". This chakra is typically linked to inner vision and intuition. Its Sanskrit name is "Ajna" (to perceive). Judith describes its purpose as pattern recognition and gives the following as its balanced characteristics: "intuitive, perceptive, imaginative, good memory, able to access and remember dreams, able to think symbolically, able to visualize (p. 352)."
Information about dream recall can help in diagnosing sixth chakra deficiency or excess. According to Judith, not remembering dreams may be a sign of 6th chakra deficiency, or it may mean that this chakra is being used so much during the daytime that it is less active at night (p. 383). If someone has difficulty visualizing, imagining and dreaming it points to a sixth chakra deficiency. In cases of sixth chakra excess, dissociated images, not grounded in experience "may haunt the person in dreams, appear as obsessive fantasies, or become full-blown delusions or hallucinations... Such people appear to be laboring under the burden of too much psychic input (p. 385)." Judith describes how recurring nightmares can point to either excess or deficiency. They "can be seen as dissociated fragments rising up from the unconscious, which cannot be integrated into waking life. If the chakra is very closed down, it may be that the dreams are attempting to bring the unconscious material to light... one must [consider] other elements of the sixth chakra checklist before determining the state of the chakra (p. 387)."
In her section on healing the sixth chakra, Judith writes that "The most potent place to begin development of the sixth chakra is through dreamwork. Dreams teach us to think symbolically, to see and integrate what is hidden, and to access the archetypal realm (p. 390)." She gives tips on remembering dreams. I especially appreciated her suggestion to write down dreams in present tense, using as much detail as you can -- "describe colors, tastes, sounds, and especially feelings. Draw pictures of symbols and images when possible (p. 391)." The section on healing the sixth chakra includes related recommendations such as studying mythology; making visual art connected to chakras and mandalas; visualization; developing intuition; vision quest; exposure to full spectrum light; meditation. Judith describes the benefits of a healthy sixth chakra as offering a "new vista" that "gives us increased understanding, as we not only perceive the patterns around us, but also perceive our own place and purpose in them (p. 402)."
The following charts summarize some links between chakras and the psyche that may be helpful in dreamwork (associated character structures given in Judith (pp. 23, 39); developmental stages found on pp. 10-11; archetype links and stage of individuation correlations come from Judith (pp. 363-364); spectrum of consciousness connections were taken from Judith (p. 368)) and the themes column was drawn from Judith's introductory chapter):
Anodea Judith's book Eastern Body, Western Mind "integrates techniques from bioenergetics to visualization, depth psychology to spiritual practice (p. vii)". It "shows how to use the chakra system as a tool for diagnosis and healing (ibid)." Judith describes the importance of dreams, and later describes how they can be used in a clinical practice that includes energy assessment. "Dreams link the conscious and unconscious mind (p. 368)." In this way they spark our awakening into conscious people, and connect that consciousness with "the dynamic ground of Earth and nature (ibid)." They help link the individual person to the universal whole. "Dreams open the way for us to see things in a new light, revealing hidden feelings and understandings, desires and needs, rejected selves, unused talents, and missing pieces of our wholeness (ibid)." Dreams help us to bring our lives back into balance. "They communicate essential information to the conscious mind about our health, relationships, work, growth (p. 369)."
Judith links dreaming to the sixth chakra, sometimes called "the third eye". This chakra is typically linked to inner vision and intuition. Its Sanskrit name is "Ajna" (to perceive). Judith describes its purpose as pattern recognition and gives the following as its balanced characteristics: "intuitive, perceptive, imaginative, good memory, able to access and remember dreams, able to think symbolically, able to visualize (p. 352)."
Information about dream recall can help in diagnosing sixth chakra deficiency or excess. According to Judith, not remembering dreams may be a sign of 6th chakra deficiency, or it may mean that this chakra is being used so much during the daytime that it is less active at night (p. 383). If someone has difficulty visualizing, imagining and dreaming it points to a sixth chakra deficiency. In cases of sixth chakra excess, dissociated images, not grounded in experience "may haunt the person in dreams, appear as obsessive fantasies, or become full-blown delusions or hallucinations... Such people appear to be laboring under the burden of too much psychic input (p. 385)." Judith describes how recurring nightmares can point to either excess or deficiency. They "can be seen as dissociated fragments rising up from the unconscious, which cannot be integrated into waking life. If the chakra is very closed down, it may be that the dreams are attempting to bring the unconscious material to light... one must [consider] other elements of the sixth chakra checklist before determining the state of the chakra (p. 387)."
In her section on healing the sixth chakra, Judith writes that "The most potent place to begin development of the sixth chakra is through dreamwork. Dreams teach us to think symbolically, to see and integrate what is hidden, and to access the archetypal realm (p. 390)." She gives tips on remembering dreams. I especially appreciated her suggestion to write down dreams in present tense, using as much detail as you can -- "describe colors, tastes, sounds, and especially feelings. Draw pictures of symbols and images when possible (p. 391)." The section on healing the sixth chakra includes related recommendations such as studying mythology; making visual art connected to chakras and mandalas; visualization; developing intuition; vision quest; exposure to full spectrum light; meditation. Judith describes the benefits of a healthy sixth chakra as offering a "new vista" that "gives us increased understanding, as we not only perceive the patterns around us, but also perceive our own place and purpose in them (p. 402)."
The following charts summarize some links between chakras and the psyche that may be helpful in dreamwork (associated character structures given in Judith (pp. 23, 39); developmental stages found on pp. 10-11; archetype links and stage of individuation correlations come from Judith (pp. 363-364); spectrum of consciousness connections were taken from Judith (p. 368)) and the themes column was drawn from Judith's introductory chapter):
Chakra #
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 |
Character Structure
Rigid (Achiever) and Hysteric Masochist (Endurer) and Psychopath (Challenger/Defender) Oral (Lover) Schizoid (Creative) and Oral (Lover) |
Developmental Stage
Adulthood Adolescence 7 - 12 years 3 - 7 years 18 months - 3 years 6 - 24 months In utero - 12 months |
Chakra # 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 |
Associated
Archetype Sage/Master Seer Artist Healer Hero Lover Earth mother |
Stage of
Individuation Integrate these elements See archetypal influences Express individuality Integrate anima/animus Establish autonomy Reclaim the shadow Reclaim the shadow |
Spectrum of
Consciousness Higher Chakras: Conscious mind; Larger world of spirit; Universal Lower Chakras: Unconscious; Instincts, feelings, impulses; Individual |
Associated Themes/Motifs
(may occur in Dreams) Cognition, awareness, inspiration; attachment Intuition, imagination, vision; illusion Communication, expression; lies Love, relationships; grief Power, will; shame Sexuality, emotions, creativity; guilt Survival; fear |
Barbara Ann Brennan is another key figure in the integration of energy work and body-based psychotherapy. I didn't find any references to dreams in her 1987 book Hands of Light, or in her 1993 publication, Emerging Light.
Body-based Dream Work
This section is about the relationship between dream work and the body. The key question that I want to explore is the question of how to work with dreams in an embodied way. As an integrated health care practitioner, I'm also interested in the related question of what dreams tell about what's going on in the body.
Combining Dream Work and Body-Based Psychotherapy
There's not much written about dream work in the foundational bioenergetics literature. The word "dream" is not found in the index of most of the key works on body-based psychotherapy that my training is based in. These books include: "Character Analysis" by Wilhelm Reich, one of the key figures in somatic psychotherapy and the originator of the concepts of character armour and character analysis; "The Language of the Body" by Lowen, co-founder of Bioenergetics, "Characterological Transformation: The Hard Work Miracle" and "Character Styles" by Stephen M. Johnson.
In Lowen's "Bioenergetics," there is an entry for "dream interpretation, bioenergetics and." On page 109, Lowen describes neck pain that began to trouble him. Physical exercises and massage helped, but did not resolve the pain. He goes on to describe the moment in a therapy session when he realizes that the neck pain - intensified during the session to the sensation of having his throat cut with a knife - connects to the way his mother psychologically sliced his throat to keep him from speaking or crying out. In the session, he cried out, and experienced deep relief (p. 110). Lowen then relates two dreams which came to him shortly after this realization. Both dreams are about imminent death, and in the second one, the death was to come by having his head cut off at the neck. In the dream, he has been an advisor to an infantile king, who has now ordered his execution for betrayal. Lowen writes that he shared these dreams in two different workshops (one of them was an evening workshop about dreams for bioenergetics therapists). He connects the dreams to his own childhood and tells how it helps him to truly leave his past behind and hold his head up high (p. 112). Later, he realizes that he has missed some essential ingredients of the interpretation. The king who never grows old is his heart, and the "I" in the dream is the intellect and ego who advise the king and try to run things. "This new interpretation of my dreams," writes Lowen, "can be called a bioenergetic interpretation, because it refers to the dynamic interaction between the parts of my body which are aspects of my personality. The previous interpretation was more of Freudian analysis," he explains. Both interpretations, to his mind, are true, but "the latter simply goes deeper than the former (p. 115)." I wonder if he means that the former has the power to begin to change an attitude, to release a habit of mind, but the latter has the potential to make a change at a cellular level and have wider implications.
I suspect that many body psychotherapists and integral psychotherapists do, in fact, incorporate dream work into their practices. One example is Jean Campbell, a body psychotherapist and a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, who has also commented on the lack of conversation linking dream work with body work. Her article titled Dreamwork/Bodywork (http://www.imageproject.org/dreamworkbodyworkpaper.htm; written in 2000, accessed Oct 2013) is an effort to encourage dialogue. Campbell studied with Hector Kuri, a student of Alexander Lowen's. She had been practicing dream work for 20 years when she began to study body work, so it was natural for her to integrate body work with her existing dream work orientation. "The first time I saw a dream worked via body work," Campbell says, "it was as if some missing piece of a puzzle clunked into place. 'This is it,' I told myself as I watched open mouthed. 'This is the piece I've been
missing.'" She adds: "The pleasure of combining dream work with body work is that it has the ability to bypass the talking defense, and go straight to the source of the problem." In her article she discusses the approaches of several body-based dream workers (Eugene Gendlin, Arnold Mindell and Stanley Keleman), including her main criticisms of each. She also includes a quick mention of "Gabrielle Roth's wonderful idea of dancing our dreams." Body-based dream work goes deep, explains Campbell, "quickly reaching levels of the psyche which in more traditional methods can take months or years, if they are attained at all."
I want to end this discussion of Jean Campbell's article by quoting extensively from an illustrative session she shared. It goes right to the heart of the power and truth of working with dreams in a body-based way. In this session, Campbell's client tells of a dream about looking for her purse. The client jumps to the immediate conclusion that the purse represents female sexuality, as Freud said. Jean Campbell reserves judgement about the meaning of the dream and began to lead her client "through an hour of work with becoming the major figures in the dream, feeling how they felt, becoming them by assuming their physical attitudes." At the end of the hour, Campbell asked her client to become the purse: "She sat, folded over her bent knees. 'I'm so heavy,' she moaned as the purse. Then her head jerked up. 'This is my depression," she said with certainty. By then she was paying attention to her body and the information it was giving her, not just to her mind... And why, was the obvious question, was she looking for her lost depression? Why was it so valuable to her? These are the types of questions we must be prepared to address with DreamWork/BodyWork."
In Carl Jung's writing, in contrast to the foundational Bioenergetics literature, he does speak about the importance of dream work becoming integrated in the body. As I read Jung and Yoga: The Psyche-Body Connection by Judith Harris (reviewed below), the quotation of the following exchange between Jung and one of his students really grabbed me:
"Dr. Jung: The Self is here leading the patient back to the tangible realty. You know in the psychology of the unconscious, the body is always something like earth... It is the here and now, for to be really in the here and now, one must be in the body. But we have a peculiar faculty of stepping out of the body...
"Miss Hannah: How much would it help the patient if she should get back into her body? Would she be able to understand it or would she have to begin all over?
"Dr. Jung: Anything experienced outside the body has the quality of being without body; so you must experience the whole thing over again, it must come in a new way... Whatever you experience outside of the body, in a dream for instance, is not experiences unless you take it into the body, because the body means the here and now. If you have a dream and let it pass by you, nothing has happened at all, even if it is the most amazing dream; but if you look at it with the purpose of trying to understand it, and succeed in understanding it, then you have taken it into the here and now, the body being a visible expression of the here and now. For instance, if you had not taken your body into this room, nobody would know you were here; though even if you seem to be in the body, it is by no means sure that you are, because your mind might be wandering without your realizing it. Then whatever is going on here would not be realized; it would be like a vague dream that floats in and out, and nothing has happened (Harris, pp. 62-63, quoting from Carl Jung's The Visions Seminares, p. 1316)."
In Judith Harris' words: "We must undertake the immense task of connecting the dream world to the world of bodily reality (p. 62)". In another part of her book, Judith Harris draws links between active imagination (a common dreamwork technique) and yoga (her strongest reference point for bodywork), explaining that they share the common goal of transformation through "the profound concentration of the imagination. A modern form of active imagination is a specific type of visualization where dream images, for example, can be implanted into various parts of the body allowing transformation to happen at the level of the subtle body (p. 44)." A few pages later she exposes a unique aspect of physical touch used in a therapeutic session; she describes how the therapist's touch "when given correctly, is always given from both the personal and the archetypal realms (p. 46)." In my understanding, this is saying that when we touch our clients, it is a literal bridge between these worlds (personal and transpersonal, or conscious and unconscious) because unlike other trusted people (friends or family), the therapist holds both.
On pages 29-30 of her book, Judith Harris tells the story of her client Susan, who began to suffer skin problems as her chronic bulimia was finally healing. Susan saw images during bodywork sessions with Harris. The word Harris uses to describe Susan's image of three Egyptian women and three clay ovens joined at the top is "vision". The vision twigs for Harris - it reminds her of the Egyptian hieroglyph made up of three joined skins, meaning "to be born." She wonders out loud
if Susan may be growing a new skin, and Susan relays how her entire skin had begun peeling off. Harris relates this bodily phenomenon to the transformation she witnessed in her client. Susan had arrived to therapy too "thin skinned" and grew able to bear conflict, and to protect her boundaries with others (skin). I was particularly interested in this passage as I have often witnessed this type of spontaneous waking-dream-like state in body-based psychotherapy sessions -- my own and my clients. I have found it productive to work with this spontaneous dream-like material in the same way I would work with night time dreams.
As an integral practitioner, Anodea Judith is also concerned with the relationship between dreams and the body. "Dreams take us beyond the limits of the body... Dreams may also bring us into the body," she adds, "by giving us symbolic information about its needs or by allowing us to practice movements or feelings that are denied in waking life. Thus dreams are an essential link between somatic and transcendent experience (p. 369)."
In Chris Sowton's book "The Dreamworking Manual: A Guide to Using Dreams in Healthcare" he talks about how the physical body shows up in dreams. As a naturopathic doctor, he is attuned to a "whole person" (mind, body, spirit) approach to health care. In his glossary of terms (p. 15) he offers this definition for a body hot spot: "a particular area of the body that is noticed or featured in a dream, often signifying some difficulty or charge centered in that part of the dreamer's body and often pointing toward the role or symbolic meaning of that part." He goes on to define body memory as "something that is remembered not in the mind but in the body. It may find its way back into consciousness through a dream featuring a certain part of the body." I have found that these memories can also resurface through body work such as massage or Rolfing, or through body-based psychotherapy.
In Dr. Sowton's chapter on orientation he presents a number of approached that can help the dreamer and dream worker get oriented in the dream landscape. The section begins with helpful tips that apply to most dreams, such as asking the dreamer what they have already made of the dream, or asking what the dream is asking for. For some dreams, you'll need to get more specific. One example is of orienting through the body. In the case of a dream that features "the body or a part of the body, a gesture, a movement, a posture" Chris points out that the dream is putting a spotlight on the body. For these, he says, "the best orientation may come by working in a physical way. Pick out the physical element in the dream and amplify it (p. 129)." Later in the chapter, he gives more tips for working in this way. The amplification can be through picking out a movement, gesture, or posture found in the dream and acting that out during the dream work session. He also suggests dancing, using the voice or doing something physical when a dream points out something in the body. As Chris says, "most dreamwork tends to be sedentary and cerebral, but some dreams urge us to get up out of the chair, stop talking, and let the body lead the way (p. 152)."
Sometimes the dream is trying to call attention to a particular body part or organ system that is not well - "holding too much tension, or harbouring an early manifestation of disease (p. 152)." Dr. Sowton points out that these dreams can be especially helpful to a practitioner with a medical background. It may also point to referral to an MD or medical specialist for a thorough check-up. The dreammaker may draw attention to the dreamer's own body (or part), or may us metaphors such as a car with broken wheels (consider legs or feet) or a fuel line problem (consider the energy systems).
Chris points out that it's important to identify whether a body focus in a dream has a physical, functional, or figurative meaning. A physical meaning indicates a problem with an actual physical part; for example, if the dreamer's foot is highlighted, it could point to "an old unresolved injury, a body memory, the beginning of a disease process, poor circulation, fungal infection, loss of bone density, etc (p. 153)." If the problem is functional, the dream may be pointing out "a problem with balance, lack of support, grounding, lack of exercise, not walking enough, wanting to kick someone, etc (p. 153)." A figurative meaning may employ a foot as a figure of speech of pun. For example: "not taking a stand, getting cold feet..., soul (sole) problem, doesn't have her feet on the ground, needs healing (heeling), has really put her foot in it, etc (p. 153)." Chris suggests that the best way to get oriented (especially for physical and functional dreams) is likely through working directly in a physical way. On pages 153-154 he gives a list of suggestions for working with dreams through the body - here is that list:
Stanley Keleman, author of Emotional Anatomy, Your Body Speaks Its Mind, and several other books about the relationship between lived experience, our physical structure and our psyche, has also written about embodied dream work. An experienced body psychotherapist of 40 years, Keleman has named his style of work "formative psychology" and describes it this way: "Life makes shapes. Life is a natural, evolutionary process in which series of shapes are continually forming. These shapes are part of an organizing process that embodies emotions, thoughts, and experiences into structure. This structure, in turn, orders the events of existence... With practice and commitment, we can have some say in our embodied life. How we encourage or inhibit our innate actions personalizes and establishes the autonomy to transcend the past and present and orient to the future. Formative Psychology™ is concerned with the act of daily living and with body process as the basis for how individuals form both themselves and their worlds... Somatic emotional education uses individual experience, emotions, states of feeling, action patterns, insights and images to discover how life has been shaped and what is seeking to emerge (Keleman at www.formative-psychology-eu.com, accessed Oct 2013)." Keleman's background includes chiropractic medicine as well as year as being a senior trainer at Alexander Lowen’s Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis.
Keleman is currently working on a book about dreams and the body. In the meantime, he has published a short article that describes some of his thoughts on the topic. Keleman became interested in somatic dream work when he noticed that working physically with people brought more dreams, and dream themes connected to the themes explored in the recent body work. According to Keleman "Dreaming presents us with how the somatic self is rehearsing and getting ready to appear... The underformed and undersomatized body has a hunger for more body and it announces this in the dream. To work somatically with a dream is to feel the characters in the dream as desires or emotions seeking to be embodied in the awake reality (Keleman at http://www.centerpress.com/articles/dreams_and_the_body.html, accessed Oct 2013." When he works with dreams, his goal is to connect the dream to the body: "the focus is on somatic experience rather than meaning and interpretation (ibid)." Keleman invites dreamers to tell their dreams "forward and backward" in order to break down linear reality. He helps people to move between postures and movements called up by the dream in a "slow and controlled way." He explains that this work engages the brain and muscle and, in fact, begins to grow a kind of new body out of the dream images. Although I find Keleman's jargon-rich writing difficult to penetrate at times, I'm intrigued by this idea that body-based dream work is a way of creating - in real, physical form - the self image that is presented to the dreamer in the dream.
As I followed the Keleman thread, I came across a recent book that quotes his work, and also Alexander Lowen's. The book is Integral Dreaming: A Holistic Approach to Dreams, by Fariba Bogzaran & Daniel Deslauriers (a Canadian, and fellow Aikidoist, although we have not met). The method they call Integral Dream Practice emphasizes the dreamer’s creative participation, reflective capacities, and mindful awareness in working with dreams. Integral dream work "brings different paradigms into dialogue in order to develop a... theory of wholeness (p. XVIII)." In a chapter called "Philosophy of Practice" the authors explore several body centred influences, invoking the body awareness of Eastern contemplative practices, indigenous culture (ritual, dance...), Wilhelm Reich and character structure (they also note that Reich focussed much more on the body than on dreams, a departure from colleagues Freud and Jung; this sparked my interest in context of the "missing" discussion of dreams that I noticed in my Bioenergetics texts). They go on to mention pioneers of body centred dreamwork such as Keleman, Arnold Mindell (Working With the Dreaming Body and other books), Patricia Garfield (Women's Bodies, Women's Dreams, etc) and Eugene Gendlin (see the next section). In phase one (reflective emergence) of the Integral Dreaming approach, meditation, body-awareness techniques and instruments such as shamanic drumming are used to help the dreamer reenter the world of the dream; next come creative expression (often through embodied practices such as theatre) and poetic synthesis. Phase two (reflective integration) culminates in transformative action (p. 226). The book ends with a single dream, worked with over time, and in many ways.
Inviting the Body to Participate in Discovering the Meaning of Dreams
Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams is the title of a book by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D. Before writing this book he developed a technique called Focusing (and wrote a book by the same name). He was curious about why some people get better in therapy and others don't. He wanted to discover objective principles to help anyone wanting to learn to bring about real change in unsatisfying parts of their lives. Gendlin developed and tested the focusing technique - a way of getting very quiet, looking inward and using subtle shifts in your body's felt sense to help you identify what is troubling you and what response or action or understanding you (deeply you) need in order to feel better.
In Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams, Eugene Gendlin describes a body-based way of working with dreams that does not depend on dogma. His style of writing is very plain and conversational. Gendlin's body-based approach can be used by a therapist or doctor with clients, or it can be used by anyone interested in working with their own dreams. Because Gendlin’s technique relies on asking questions of your own body and being sensitive to the way it responds, it does not rely on any particular therapeutic orientation. The way he puts it is “the basic touchstone of the method is your own bodily experience of something opening up in you. An interpretation is sure if, and only if, you have a breakthrough, a physical felt shift… Such a breakthrough comes with a physically felt release, a bit of energy freed up in your body. Before the breakthrough, various ideas could fit the dream. Now there is no question of mere fitting, mere likelihood. You know what it is about (pp. 1-2).” Gendlin developed this method while teaching college students with all sorts of working class people, and found that nearly all the students were able to learn it, and use it on their own dreams and to help friends with their dreams.
Although this method does not rely on any school of dream interpretation, Gendlin did, however, draw on many dream work traditions when he developed his list of
questions to ask your body. As with other techniques that I am drawn to, this one can be used on your own, or with a partner – you don’t need a professional. The dreamer begins by connecting to the particular felt sense that the dream brings. It's an "indefinable, global, puzzling, odd, uneasy, fuzzy sense in your body (p. 3)." As the first question (say "what does the dream remind you of?") for about a minute - until the question "touches" the felt sense of the dream. This is the first part of the method - the second part is a kind of bias check that helps ensure that the dreamer learns something new, and doesn't stop at an old, familiar interpretation. In this way, the dream can teach and change you. Gendlin suggests identifying the parts of the dream that are still puzzling you: the part you don't yet understand lead you into stage 2 of the dream work.
In stage 2, the first thing is to be able to recognize the "growth direction (pp. 54-55)." It has these qualities: "an inner stirring", "something is glad to move and speak", "You expand, you are more, the energy flows from inside you outward"; "feels like fresh air". Once you are able to feel this, you can introduce the "bias control (pp. 59-59)." In a dream, Gendlin says, the growth direction "is not always the opposite of what you thought, but often it is. It isn't always in the part of the dream you reject most, but it is often in just that part... if we ask how it might represent something needed inside you, what is needed can come in your body very quickly -- and very positively (p. 61)." This is an important question for bias control. If there is something you quickly reject, ask your body if you need a little more of that energy in your life. Just be careful not to be to verbally specific when you identify the growth direction; keep it vague enough to match the big felt sense. Gendlin encourages us to use the phrase "something like that" to leave an opening for the growth direction to come in our body (p. 66). Once you have the sense, return to it often by reconnecting to the dream image and feeling the change energy in your body.
Dreams and Health: a Psycho-Physical Perspective
As a postscript to this section on Body-Based Dream Work, I want to explore the question of what dreams tell us about what is going on in our bodies. Christopher Sowton dedicates a chapter to "Common Somatic Dream Motifs We All Have (and Why They May Still be Important)." He describes how "input from the body and from our sense organs (somatic input) very commonly gets taken up by the dreammaker and woven into dreams we are having (p. 244)." He suggests giving more importance to spontaneous material created by the dreammaker, but not discounting "the somatic contribution." He gives an example that makes the difference clearer to me: a dreamer has a full bladder and has a dream about needing to pee - "if he pees successfully and not much else happens, then we have a purely somatic dream -- universal, but not very interesting. But what if, after much seeking, he cannot find a private place to urinate? Now we have an element that may being carrying an important message... about a critical lack of privacy in some aspect of his life (p. 245)." In addition to "full bladder motifs", Chris discusses "hunger and thirst motifs", "paralysis motifs", "falling and starting motifs", and "illness motifs" - I'll talk a little more about this last one, as it falls under a topic I'm particularly interested in as a Naturopathic Doctor: using dreams about the body to help with medical diagnosis and treatment.
Chris discusses how physical illness or discomfort such as fever, headache and sleep apnea can appear literally or metaphorically in dreams. He describes the dreams of sick people as "distressing, repetitive, fatiguing, and long lasting... when the somatic input into the dream is very strong, as it is in acute illness, it can temporarily hijack and organize most or all of the dreaming function (p. 247)." The dreammaker will likely try to warn the dreamer of an serious illness that is not yet manifesting in physical symptoms. Chris notes that these health warning dreams, "(also referred to as prodromal, healing, diagnostic or prognostic drams) have been much studied and described in the literature. He provides a list of recommended reading on this topic on page 248. Here are a few examples:
* Robert Van de Castle. Our Dreaming Mind. Chapter 13 -- "Somatic Contributions to Dreams" includes a review of the literature on prodromal and healing dreams;
* Patricia Garfield. The Healing Power of Dreams. What dreams tell us about our physical bodies, and how to use the information for healing.
* Marc Ian Barasch. Healing Dreams. Warning dreams and how they help us heal.
Chapter 5 of Gayle Delaney's book "Living Your Dreams" is called "Your Dreams and Your Body". Delaney opens this chapter with a history of the beliefs about how dreams can be used to diagnose and treat physical (as well as psychological and psychosexual) ailments. She reminds us that the ancients built sacred temples to gods of healing and "conducted elaborate dream incubation rituals designed to elicit divine assistance in combating physical illness (pp. 145-6)." When we understand that mind and body are connected parts of one whole human it's not surprising that they influence each other and reveal things about the other. Dreams, "capable of revealing the condition of the dreamer's body and mind - could give early warning of illness and thus make diagnosis and treatment easier (p. 146)."
Delaney also describes how dreams are used in some contemporary medical practices - they are considered to give clues about our pathology. She mentions Dr. Robert Smith, MD, a cardiologist who has correlated dream images to the heart's pumping efficiency (p. 148), and Dr. Bernie Siegel, MD, a cancer specialist who used
patient's dreams and drawings to help with diagnosis and prognosis. She also talks about how dreams can be used to help heal physical conditions such as allergies, headaches, and hypertension. Delaney's colleague Dr. Loma Flowers, MD, uses dream incubation to help understand and to help patients cope with their illnesses (p. 149). When the health concern or the dreamer's perception of it is influences by psychological factors, or when the physical symptoms are trying to get the dreamer to pay attention to some imbalance, incubating a dream can help show the dreamer how to transform an attitude, or point to an old grief that still needs attention. Delanay suggests an incubation question such as "What am I trying to avoid or get out of?"
Combining Dream Work and Body-Based Psychotherapy
There's not much written about dream work in the foundational bioenergetics literature. The word "dream" is not found in the index of most of the key works on body-based psychotherapy that my training is based in. These books include: "Character Analysis" by Wilhelm Reich, one of the key figures in somatic psychotherapy and the originator of the concepts of character armour and character analysis; "The Language of the Body" by Lowen, co-founder of Bioenergetics, "Characterological Transformation: The Hard Work Miracle" and "Character Styles" by Stephen M. Johnson.
In Lowen's "Bioenergetics," there is an entry for "dream interpretation, bioenergetics and." On page 109, Lowen describes neck pain that began to trouble him. Physical exercises and massage helped, but did not resolve the pain. He goes on to describe the moment in a therapy session when he realizes that the neck pain - intensified during the session to the sensation of having his throat cut with a knife - connects to the way his mother psychologically sliced his throat to keep him from speaking or crying out. In the session, he cried out, and experienced deep relief (p. 110). Lowen then relates two dreams which came to him shortly after this realization. Both dreams are about imminent death, and in the second one, the death was to come by having his head cut off at the neck. In the dream, he has been an advisor to an infantile king, who has now ordered his execution for betrayal. Lowen writes that he shared these dreams in two different workshops (one of them was an evening workshop about dreams for bioenergetics therapists). He connects the dreams to his own childhood and tells how it helps him to truly leave his past behind and hold his head up high (p. 112). Later, he realizes that he has missed some essential ingredients of the interpretation. The king who never grows old is his heart, and the "I" in the dream is the intellect and ego who advise the king and try to run things. "This new interpretation of my dreams," writes Lowen, "can be called a bioenergetic interpretation, because it refers to the dynamic interaction between the parts of my body which are aspects of my personality. The previous interpretation was more of Freudian analysis," he explains. Both interpretations, to his mind, are true, but "the latter simply goes deeper than the former (p. 115)." I wonder if he means that the former has the power to begin to change an attitude, to release a habit of mind, but the latter has the potential to make a change at a cellular level and have wider implications.
I suspect that many body psychotherapists and integral psychotherapists do, in fact, incorporate dream work into their practices. One example is Jean Campbell, a body psychotherapist and a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, who has also commented on the lack of conversation linking dream work with body work. Her article titled Dreamwork/Bodywork (http://www.imageproject.org/dreamworkbodyworkpaper.htm; written in 2000, accessed Oct 2013) is an effort to encourage dialogue. Campbell studied with Hector Kuri, a student of Alexander Lowen's. She had been practicing dream work for 20 years when she began to study body work, so it was natural for her to integrate body work with her existing dream work orientation. "The first time I saw a dream worked via body work," Campbell says, "it was as if some missing piece of a puzzle clunked into place. 'This is it,' I told myself as I watched open mouthed. 'This is the piece I've been
missing.'" She adds: "The pleasure of combining dream work with body work is that it has the ability to bypass the talking defense, and go straight to the source of the problem." In her article she discusses the approaches of several body-based dream workers (Eugene Gendlin, Arnold Mindell and Stanley Keleman), including her main criticisms of each. She also includes a quick mention of "Gabrielle Roth's wonderful idea of dancing our dreams." Body-based dream work goes deep, explains Campbell, "quickly reaching levels of the psyche which in more traditional methods can take months or years, if they are attained at all."
I want to end this discussion of Jean Campbell's article by quoting extensively from an illustrative session she shared. It goes right to the heart of the power and truth of working with dreams in a body-based way. In this session, Campbell's client tells of a dream about looking for her purse. The client jumps to the immediate conclusion that the purse represents female sexuality, as Freud said. Jean Campbell reserves judgement about the meaning of the dream and began to lead her client "through an hour of work with becoming the major figures in the dream, feeling how they felt, becoming them by assuming their physical attitudes." At the end of the hour, Campbell asked her client to become the purse: "She sat, folded over her bent knees. 'I'm so heavy,' she moaned as the purse. Then her head jerked up. 'This is my depression," she said with certainty. By then she was paying attention to her body and the information it was giving her, not just to her mind... And why, was the obvious question, was she looking for her lost depression? Why was it so valuable to her? These are the types of questions we must be prepared to address with DreamWork/BodyWork."
In Carl Jung's writing, in contrast to the foundational Bioenergetics literature, he does speak about the importance of dream work becoming integrated in the body. As I read Jung and Yoga: The Psyche-Body Connection by Judith Harris (reviewed below), the quotation of the following exchange between Jung and one of his students really grabbed me:
"Dr. Jung: The Self is here leading the patient back to the tangible realty. You know in the psychology of the unconscious, the body is always something like earth... It is the here and now, for to be really in the here and now, one must be in the body. But we have a peculiar faculty of stepping out of the body...
"Miss Hannah: How much would it help the patient if she should get back into her body? Would she be able to understand it or would she have to begin all over?
"Dr. Jung: Anything experienced outside the body has the quality of being without body; so you must experience the whole thing over again, it must come in a new way... Whatever you experience outside of the body, in a dream for instance, is not experiences unless you take it into the body, because the body means the here and now. If you have a dream and let it pass by you, nothing has happened at all, even if it is the most amazing dream; but if you look at it with the purpose of trying to understand it, and succeed in understanding it, then you have taken it into the here and now, the body being a visible expression of the here and now. For instance, if you had not taken your body into this room, nobody would know you were here; though even if you seem to be in the body, it is by no means sure that you are, because your mind might be wandering without your realizing it. Then whatever is going on here would not be realized; it would be like a vague dream that floats in and out, and nothing has happened (Harris, pp. 62-63, quoting from Carl Jung's The Visions Seminares, p. 1316)."
In Judith Harris' words: "We must undertake the immense task of connecting the dream world to the world of bodily reality (p. 62)". In another part of her book, Judith Harris draws links between active imagination (a common dreamwork technique) and yoga (her strongest reference point for bodywork), explaining that they share the common goal of transformation through "the profound concentration of the imagination. A modern form of active imagination is a specific type of visualization where dream images, for example, can be implanted into various parts of the body allowing transformation to happen at the level of the subtle body (p. 44)." A few pages later she exposes a unique aspect of physical touch used in a therapeutic session; she describes how the therapist's touch "when given correctly, is always given from both the personal and the archetypal realms (p. 46)." In my understanding, this is saying that when we touch our clients, it is a literal bridge between these worlds (personal and transpersonal, or conscious and unconscious) because unlike other trusted people (friends or family), the therapist holds both.
On pages 29-30 of her book, Judith Harris tells the story of her client Susan, who began to suffer skin problems as her chronic bulimia was finally healing. Susan saw images during bodywork sessions with Harris. The word Harris uses to describe Susan's image of three Egyptian women and three clay ovens joined at the top is "vision". The vision twigs for Harris - it reminds her of the Egyptian hieroglyph made up of three joined skins, meaning "to be born." She wonders out loud
if Susan may be growing a new skin, and Susan relays how her entire skin had begun peeling off. Harris relates this bodily phenomenon to the transformation she witnessed in her client. Susan had arrived to therapy too "thin skinned" and grew able to bear conflict, and to protect her boundaries with others (skin). I was particularly interested in this passage as I have often witnessed this type of spontaneous waking-dream-like state in body-based psychotherapy sessions -- my own and my clients. I have found it productive to work with this spontaneous dream-like material in the same way I would work with night time dreams.
As an integral practitioner, Anodea Judith is also concerned with the relationship between dreams and the body. "Dreams take us beyond the limits of the body... Dreams may also bring us into the body," she adds, "by giving us symbolic information about its needs or by allowing us to practice movements or feelings that are denied in waking life. Thus dreams are an essential link between somatic and transcendent experience (p. 369)."
In Chris Sowton's book "The Dreamworking Manual: A Guide to Using Dreams in Healthcare" he talks about how the physical body shows up in dreams. As a naturopathic doctor, he is attuned to a "whole person" (mind, body, spirit) approach to health care. In his glossary of terms (p. 15) he offers this definition for a body hot spot: "a particular area of the body that is noticed or featured in a dream, often signifying some difficulty or charge centered in that part of the dreamer's body and often pointing toward the role or symbolic meaning of that part." He goes on to define body memory as "something that is remembered not in the mind but in the body. It may find its way back into consciousness through a dream featuring a certain part of the body." I have found that these memories can also resurface through body work such as massage or Rolfing, or through body-based psychotherapy.
In Dr. Sowton's chapter on orientation he presents a number of approached that can help the dreamer and dream worker get oriented in the dream landscape. The section begins with helpful tips that apply to most dreams, such as asking the dreamer what they have already made of the dream, or asking what the dream is asking for. For some dreams, you'll need to get more specific. One example is of orienting through the body. In the case of a dream that features "the body or a part of the body, a gesture, a movement, a posture" Chris points out that the dream is putting a spotlight on the body. For these, he says, "the best orientation may come by working in a physical way. Pick out the physical element in the dream and amplify it (p. 129)." Later in the chapter, he gives more tips for working in this way. The amplification can be through picking out a movement, gesture, or posture found in the dream and acting that out during the dream work session. He also suggests dancing, using the voice or doing something physical when a dream points out something in the body. As Chris says, "most dreamwork tends to be sedentary and cerebral, but some dreams urge us to get up out of the chair, stop talking, and let the body lead the way (p. 152)."
Sometimes the dream is trying to call attention to a particular body part or organ system that is not well - "holding too much tension, or harbouring an early manifestation of disease (p. 152)." Dr. Sowton points out that these dreams can be especially helpful to a practitioner with a medical background. It may also point to referral to an MD or medical specialist for a thorough check-up. The dreammaker may draw attention to the dreamer's own body (or part), or may us metaphors such as a car with broken wheels (consider legs or feet) or a fuel line problem (consider the energy systems).
Chris points out that it's important to identify whether a body focus in a dream has a physical, functional, or figurative meaning. A physical meaning indicates a problem with an actual physical part; for example, if the dreamer's foot is highlighted, it could point to "an old unresolved injury, a body memory, the beginning of a disease process, poor circulation, fungal infection, loss of bone density, etc (p. 153)." If the problem is functional, the dream may be pointing out "a problem with balance, lack of support, grounding, lack of exercise, not walking enough, wanting to kick someone, etc (p. 153)." A figurative meaning may employ a foot as a figure of speech of pun. For example: "not taking a stand, getting cold feet..., soul (sole) problem, doesn't have her feet on the ground, needs healing (heeling), has really put her foot in it, etc (p. 153)." Chris suggests that the best way to get oriented (especially for physical and functional dreams) is likely through working directly in a physical way. On pages 153-154 he gives a list of suggestions for working with dreams through the body - here is that list:
- As soon as you suspect a body focus, ask clients to tune into that part of their body. What do they feel there?
- You may ask them directly "What is going on in that part of your body? What associations do you have with that part? Have you ever had a problem there?
- Have them stand up, change position, move around, take full breaths, make a sound. This may help them enter the physical body more fully.
- Use the "be the part" technique ("Be your foot"... "Be the rusty old car"... "Be the leaking roof").
- Use exaggeration - if a gesture, movement, or posture appeared in the dream, get them to do it in an exaggerated way. Repeat it. You may want to do it with them [As a bioenergetics practitioner, my experience is that it's easier to tune into my body, and use its resonance with the client to help give me important information about what is taking place]. If the dream contained a subtle sensation or feeling, have them imagine that the sensation is very strong, more intense than in the dream.
- Anytime you sense that the dreamer is holding a particular feeling or emotion in a certain body part, try to bring it out in words or movement. If he cannot express it verbally, try movement, gesture, or posture.
- If they cannot make any direct literal connection, perhaps the connection is functional - based on the role of that body part. Ask them what that part of their body is supposed to do. What is its job?
- If you think of a figure of speech involving that part of the body may apply to the dream, go ahead and suggest it. Be prepared to drop it if it doesn't quite fit the dream or resonate with the dreamer.
Stanley Keleman, author of Emotional Anatomy, Your Body Speaks Its Mind, and several other books about the relationship between lived experience, our physical structure and our psyche, has also written about embodied dream work. An experienced body psychotherapist of 40 years, Keleman has named his style of work "formative psychology" and describes it this way: "Life makes shapes. Life is a natural, evolutionary process in which series of shapes are continually forming. These shapes are part of an organizing process that embodies emotions, thoughts, and experiences into structure. This structure, in turn, orders the events of existence... With practice and commitment, we can have some say in our embodied life. How we encourage or inhibit our innate actions personalizes and establishes the autonomy to transcend the past and present and orient to the future. Formative Psychology™ is concerned with the act of daily living and with body process as the basis for how individuals form both themselves and their worlds... Somatic emotional education uses individual experience, emotions, states of feeling, action patterns, insights and images to discover how life has been shaped and what is seeking to emerge (Keleman at www.formative-psychology-eu.com, accessed Oct 2013)." Keleman's background includes chiropractic medicine as well as year as being a senior trainer at Alexander Lowen’s Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis.
Keleman is currently working on a book about dreams and the body. In the meantime, he has published a short article that describes some of his thoughts on the topic. Keleman became interested in somatic dream work when he noticed that working physically with people brought more dreams, and dream themes connected to the themes explored in the recent body work. According to Keleman "Dreaming presents us with how the somatic self is rehearsing and getting ready to appear... The underformed and undersomatized body has a hunger for more body and it announces this in the dream. To work somatically with a dream is to feel the characters in the dream as desires or emotions seeking to be embodied in the awake reality (Keleman at http://www.centerpress.com/articles/dreams_and_the_body.html, accessed Oct 2013." When he works with dreams, his goal is to connect the dream to the body: "the focus is on somatic experience rather than meaning and interpretation (ibid)." Keleman invites dreamers to tell their dreams "forward and backward" in order to break down linear reality. He helps people to move between postures and movements called up by the dream in a "slow and controlled way." He explains that this work engages the brain and muscle and, in fact, begins to grow a kind of new body out of the dream images. Although I find Keleman's jargon-rich writing difficult to penetrate at times, I'm intrigued by this idea that body-based dream work is a way of creating - in real, physical form - the self image that is presented to the dreamer in the dream.
As I followed the Keleman thread, I came across a recent book that quotes his work, and also Alexander Lowen's. The book is Integral Dreaming: A Holistic Approach to Dreams, by Fariba Bogzaran & Daniel Deslauriers (a Canadian, and fellow Aikidoist, although we have not met). The method they call Integral Dream Practice emphasizes the dreamer’s creative participation, reflective capacities, and mindful awareness in working with dreams. Integral dream work "brings different paradigms into dialogue in order to develop a... theory of wholeness (p. XVIII)." In a chapter called "Philosophy of Practice" the authors explore several body centred influences, invoking the body awareness of Eastern contemplative practices, indigenous culture (ritual, dance...), Wilhelm Reich and character structure (they also note that Reich focussed much more on the body than on dreams, a departure from colleagues Freud and Jung; this sparked my interest in context of the "missing" discussion of dreams that I noticed in my Bioenergetics texts). They go on to mention pioneers of body centred dreamwork such as Keleman, Arnold Mindell (Working With the Dreaming Body and other books), Patricia Garfield (Women's Bodies, Women's Dreams, etc) and Eugene Gendlin (see the next section). In phase one (reflective emergence) of the Integral Dreaming approach, meditation, body-awareness techniques and instruments such as shamanic drumming are used to help the dreamer reenter the world of the dream; next come creative expression (often through embodied practices such as theatre) and poetic synthesis. Phase two (reflective integration) culminates in transformative action (p. 226). The book ends with a single dream, worked with over time, and in many ways.
Inviting the Body to Participate in Discovering the Meaning of Dreams
Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams is the title of a book by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D. Before writing this book he developed a technique called Focusing (and wrote a book by the same name). He was curious about why some people get better in therapy and others don't. He wanted to discover objective principles to help anyone wanting to learn to bring about real change in unsatisfying parts of their lives. Gendlin developed and tested the focusing technique - a way of getting very quiet, looking inward and using subtle shifts in your body's felt sense to help you identify what is troubling you and what response or action or understanding you (deeply you) need in order to feel better.
In Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams, Eugene Gendlin describes a body-based way of working with dreams that does not depend on dogma. His style of writing is very plain and conversational. Gendlin's body-based approach can be used by a therapist or doctor with clients, or it can be used by anyone interested in working with their own dreams. Because Gendlin’s technique relies on asking questions of your own body and being sensitive to the way it responds, it does not rely on any particular therapeutic orientation. The way he puts it is “the basic touchstone of the method is your own bodily experience of something opening up in you. An interpretation is sure if, and only if, you have a breakthrough, a physical felt shift… Such a breakthrough comes with a physically felt release, a bit of energy freed up in your body. Before the breakthrough, various ideas could fit the dream. Now there is no question of mere fitting, mere likelihood. You know what it is about (pp. 1-2).” Gendlin developed this method while teaching college students with all sorts of working class people, and found that nearly all the students were able to learn it, and use it on their own dreams and to help friends with their dreams.
Although this method does not rely on any school of dream interpretation, Gendlin did, however, draw on many dream work traditions when he developed his list of
questions to ask your body. As with other techniques that I am drawn to, this one can be used on your own, or with a partner – you don’t need a professional. The dreamer begins by connecting to the particular felt sense that the dream brings. It's an "indefinable, global, puzzling, odd, uneasy, fuzzy sense in your body (p. 3)." As the first question (say "what does the dream remind you of?") for about a minute - until the question "touches" the felt sense of the dream. This is the first part of the method - the second part is a kind of bias check that helps ensure that the dreamer learns something new, and doesn't stop at an old, familiar interpretation. In this way, the dream can teach and change you. Gendlin suggests identifying the parts of the dream that are still puzzling you: the part you don't yet understand lead you into stage 2 of the dream work.
In stage 2, the first thing is to be able to recognize the "growth direction (pp. 54-55)." It has these qualities: "an inner stirring", "something is glad to move and speak", "You expand, you are more, the energy flows from inside you outward"; "feels like fresh air". Once you are able to feel this, you can introduce the "bias control (pp. 59-59)." In a dream, Gendlin says, the growth direction "is not always the opposite of what you thought, but often it is. It isn't always in the part of the dream you reject most, but it is often in just that part... if we ask how it might represent something needed inside you, what is needed can come in your body very quickly -- and very positively (p. 61)." This is an important question for bias control. If there is something you quickly reject, ask your body if you need a little more of that energy in your life. Just be careful not to be to verbally specific when you identify the growth direction; keep it vague enough to match the big felt sense. Gendlin encourages us to use the phrase "something like that" to leave an opening for the growth direction to come in our body (p. 66). Once you have the sense, return to it often by reconnecting to the dream image and feeling the change energy in your body.
Dreams and Health: a Psycho-Physical Perspective
As a postscript to this section on Body-Based Dream Work, I want to explore the question of what dreams tell us about what is going on in our bodies. Christopher Sowton dedicates a chapter to "Common Somatic Dream Motifs We All Have (and Why They May Still be Important)." He describes how "input from the body and from our sense organs (somatic input) very commonly gets taken up by the dreammaker and woven into dreams we are having (p. 244)." He suggests giving more importance to spontaneous material created by the dreammaker, but not discounting "the somatic contribution." He gives an example that makes the difference clearer to me: a dreamer has a full bladder and has a dream about needing to pee - "if he pees successfully and not much else happens, then we have a purely somatic dream -- universal, but not very interesting. But what if, after much seeking, he cannot find a private place to urinate? Now we have an element that may being carrying an important message... about a critical lack of privacy in some aspect of his life (p. 245)." In addition to "full bladder motifs", Chris discusses "hunger and thirst motifs", "paralysis motifs", "falling and starting motifs", and "illness motifs" - I'll talk a little more about this last one, as it falls under a topic I'm particularly interested in as a Naturopathic Doctor: using dreams about the body to help with medical diagnosis and treatment.
Chris discusses how physical illness or discomfort such as fever, headache and sleep apnea can appear literally or metaphorically in dreams. He describes the dreams of sick people as "distressing, repetitive, fatiguing, and long lasting... when the somatic input into the dream is very strong, as it is in acute illness, it can temporarily hijack and organize most or all of the dreaming function (p. 247)." The dreammaker will likely try to warn the dreamer of an serious illness that is not yet manifesting in physical symptoms. Chris notes that these health warning dreams, "(also referred to as prodromal, healing, diagnostic or prognostic drams) have been much studied and described in the literature. He provides a list of recommended reading on this topic on page 248. Here are a few examples:
* Robert Van de Castle. Our Dreaming Mind. Chapter 13 -- "Somatic Contributions to Dreams" includes a review of the literature on prodromal and healing dreams;
* Patricia Garfield. The Healing Power of Dreams. What dreams tell us about our physical bodies, and how to use the information for healing.
* Marc Ian Barasch. Healing Dreams. Warning dreams and how they help us heal.
Chapter 5 of Gayle Delaney's book "Living Your Dreams" is called "Your Dreams and Your Body". Delaney opens this chapter with a history of the beliefs about how dreams can be used to diagnose and treat physical (as well as psychological and psychosexual) ailments. She reminds us that the ancients built sacred temples to gods of healing and "conducted elaborate dream incubation rituals designed to elicit divine assistance in combating physical illness (pp. 145-6)." When we understand that mind and body are connected parts of one whole human it's not surprising that they influence each other and reveal things about the other. Dreams, "capable of revealing the condition of the dreamer's body and mind - could give early warning of illness and thus make diagnosis and treatment easier (p. 146)."
Delaney also describes how dreams are used in some contemporary medical practices - they are considered to give clues about our pathology. She mentions Dr. Robert Smith, MD, a cardiologist who has correlated dream images to the heart's pumping efficiency (p. 148), and Dr. Bernie Siegel, MD, a cancer specialist who used
patient's dreams and drawings to help with diagnosis and prognosis. She also talks about how dreams can be used to help heal physical conditions such as allergies, headaches, and hypertension. Delaney's colleague Dr. Loma Flowers, MD, uses dream incubation to help understand and to help patients cope with their illnesses (p. 149). When the health concern or the dreamer's perception of it is influences by psychological factors, or when the physical symptoms are trying to get the dreamer to pay attention to some imbalance, incubating a dream can help show the dreamer how to transform an attitude, or point to an old grief that still needs attention. Delanay suggests an incubation question such as "What am I trying to avoid or get out of?"
Practitioner Spotlight: Julia Ray and "Dance the Part"
In the dreamreading method developed by Chris Sowton (and I'm sure this is a common technique, found under other names), one of the key ways to get oriented in the dreamscape is the "be the part." The dreamer can be any part - character, location, inanimate object... In Chris' words, when this technique works "it can be spectacular, leading quickly and experientially to a resonant understanding of the dream (p. 128)."
Julia Ray is a colleague of mine in the dream sharing (and dreamwork training) group. Although Julia is capable of many things, I see her primarily as a mind-body-spirit person, and she weaves body intelligence into everything she does. She is a yoga teacher, dancer, creator of intentional ecstatic dance community, group moment facilitator, DJ, cranial sacral therapist, and has worked with dreams for 15 years. I consider her to be a pioneer in developing a way of working with dreams in movement. In her body-centred dream work (sometimes referred to as Dream BodyDance), Julia helps dreamers experience ways of connecting the dream in an embodied way to their waking lives.
In her own words... "Dreams show us parts of ourselves that we cannot see, parts that are out of sight, below the radar ... tucked away in the unconscious. Dreams are intimate and personal and generated by you. I love that about dreams... the fact that the dream content came from you. You might see a dream as a bridge linking the unconscious and conscious. Each dream holds relevant information about our life and often is asking something of us..to recognize something, or take action on some front etc. Our work oftentimes is to activate the dream and connect it to our life so that we may understand what the message of the dream is. Once we understand the message and have connected the dream to our life, we can decide how to respond to the dream.
"Dreamwork has been at the core of my life and personal growth process and the benefits have been countless. I can say that dreams are endlessly fascinating, unfailingly useful and informative, and I often marvel at the brilliant insights that come from them. Even though we can dream about anything under the sun,
we do often end up dreaming about our health and well-being which is my particular area of interest.
"There is no doubt that talking about a dream in a chair is very effective. For myself though the body piece has always been missing. Oftentimes I seek to understand the dream with my body intelligence as a way of integrating the content of the dreams after talking about them. So I take my dreams onto the dance floor for further
exploration and integration and completion. I yearn to bring these two pieces together. I often wonder whether working through the dream in the body is a more integrated healing approach to connecting the dream to our life as opposed to keeping these two powerful ways of transformation as separate pieces. The difference between recalling the dream in our head, and activating the dream in our body. This is the bridge I am exploring with Dream BodyDance.
"BodyDance developed from both my professional training and personal growth work in movement, alternative healing and therapeutic process. But if I had to point to
one experience, I would say that the most influential was Tribal Dance Community ... a practise I created and ran for 4 years that involved movement, sound, music, theatre and art ... an experiential exploratorium for self guided expression. [personal communication]"
In a typical group Dream BodyDance experience, Julia begins with freestyle stretching and warm ups, then leads participants to come more into the body and merge with the group, using music as a support. She then encourages dreamers to activate their dream through the dance. Everyone is invited to write out a dream and email it to Julia ahead of time and bring a copy with them to the workshop (she asks the group to recall a dream they have had in the last year that involves a body movement, posture, or body part that stands out for them). She then provides some teaching about the Dream BodyDance format. The last hour or so is reserved for work with individual dreams, with involvement of the group. Her intention is to help connect the dream to the dreamer's waking life.
In the dreamreading method developed by Chris Sowton (and I'm sure this is a common technique, found under other names), one of the key ways to get oriented in the dreamscape is the "be the part." The dreamer can be any part - character, location, inanimate object... In Chris' words, when this technique works "it can be spectacular, leading quickly and experientially to a resonant understanding of the dream (p. 128)."
Julia Ray is a colleague of mine in the dream sharing (and dreamwork training) group. Although Julia is capable of many things, I see her primarily as a mind-body-spirit person, and she weaves body intelligence into everything she does. She is a yoga teacher, dancer, creator of intentional ecstatic dance community, group moment facilitator, DJ, cranial sacral therapist, and has worked with dreams for 15 years. I consider her to be a pioneer in developing a way of working with dreams in movement. In her body-centred dream work (sometimes referred to as Dream BodyDance), Julia helps dreamers experience ways of connecting the dream in an embodied way to their waking lives.
In her own words... "Dreams show us parts of ourselves that we cannot see, parts that are out of sight, below the radar ... tucked away in the unconscious. Dreams are intimate and personal and generated by you. I love that about dreams... the fact that the dream content came from you. You might see a dream as a bridge linking the unconscious and conscious. Each dream holds relevant information about our life and often is asking something of us..to recognize something, or take action on some front etc. Our work oftentimes is to activate the dream and connect it to our life so that we may understand what the message of the dream is. Once we understand the message and have connected the dream to our life, we can decide how to respond to the dream.
"Dreamwork has been at the core of my life and personal growth process and the benefits have been countless. I can say that dreams are endlessly fascinating, unfailingly useful and informative, and I often marvel at the brilliant insights that come from them. Even though we can dream about anything under the sun,
we do often end up dreaming about our health and well-being which is my particular area of interest.
"There is no doubt that talking about a dream in a chair is very effective. For myself though the body piece has always been missing. Oftentimes I seek to understand the dream with my body intelligence as a way of integrating the content of the dreams after talking about them. So I take my dreams onto the dance floor for further
exploration and integration and completion. I yearn to bring these two pieces together. I often wonder whether working through the dream in the body is a more integrated healing approach to connecting the dream to our life as opposed to keeping these two powerful ways of transformation as separate pieces. The difference between recalling the dream in our head, and activating the dream in our body. This is the bridge I am exploring with Dream BodyDance.
"BodyDance developed from both my professional training and personal growth work in movement, alternative healing and therapeutic process. But if I had to point to
one experience, I would say that the most influential was Tribal Dance Community ... a practise I created and ran for 4 years that involved movement, sound, music, theatre and art ... an experiential exploratorium for self guided expression. [personal communication]"
In a typical group Dream BodyDance experience, Julia begins with freestyle stretching and warm ups, then leads participants to come more into the body and merge with the group, using music as a support. She then encourages dreamers to activate their dream through the dance. Everyone is invited to write out a dream and email it to Julia ahead of time and bring a copy with them to the workshop (she asks the group to recall a dream they have had in the last year that involves a body movement, posture, or body part that stands out for them). She then provides some teaching about the Dream BodyDance format. The last hour or so is reserved for work with individual dreams, with involvement of the group. Her intention is to help connect the dream to the dreamer's waking life.
A Pause for Breath
In a way this paper doesn't feel finished. There's so much more I want to explore - more books to read, more workshops to take, more dreams to work with... And yet, it's time to pause for now. It's time to let this cycle end so that the next can begin. Sometimes I still feel like a rank beginner, and yet, as I look back over the sections of this exploration, I can see how much I've learned during the two years that I've been working on this paper.
The next phase is for me to share what I've learned verbally - to put it into spoken words, live: what parts of my reading and practicing have so I so thoroughly digested that they have become part of me? And after that, to share more experientially - to work with more dreams; to organize a body-based dream work lab with colleagues who share my interests; to be willing to fumble my way into the mystery of dream reality; to practice the searching art of dream work with individual clients and, ideally, with groups. And for now, a pause. A pause to let this movement wind down and to wait until the next movement stirs.
The next phase is for me to share what I've learned verbally - to put it into spoken words, live: what parts of my reading and practicing have so I so thoroughly digested that they have become part of me? And after that, to share more experientially - to work with more dreams; to organize a body-based dream work lab with colleagues who share my interests; to be willing to fumble my way into the mystery of dream reality; to practice the searching art of dream work with individual clients and, ideally, with groups. And for now, a pause. A pause to let this movement wind down and to wait until the next movement stirs.
Book Reviews - For Those Interested in Further Reading
"A Little Course in Dreams" by Robert Bosnak
This book is one of my very favorite books on working with dreams. Bosnak writes with a vivid, personal style. The book offers a window into his life as a Jungian analyst working one on one, in a group dream practicum, and with his own
dreams. I found myself rereading early sections of the book even as I finished reading the closing chapters. As a beginning dream worker, this book is a gold mine, and I can tell that I'll uncover more insight as my experience grows.
In the forward to the book, Denise Levertov writes: "Robert Bosnak permits the reader to enter his own experience both as dreamer and as "creative listener" to the dreams of others. For the lay reader, his candor and a lucid and vivacious style of expression impart a new concreteness to terms like "resistance" or "transference," or to such distinctions as "free association" and "active imagination." I couldn't agree more!
"Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming" by Anthony Stevens
This is another favourite. The book is full of theoretical and practical information, and is interesting and accessible. Anthony Stevens is an experienced psychiatrist, and has worked for over twenty years as a Jungian analyst. His post-graduate education included psychological research grounded in the scientific method. He nimbly bridges the gap between reductionist neurobiology and the sometimes cult-like fervor of psychologists defending the writings of their favourite theorist. This book covers a lot of territory: theories of dreams (chapters 2 and 3), dream science (chapter 4), Jung's concepts (chapter 5), dream formation (chapter 6), symbolism (chapter 7), dreamwork in analytic therapy (chapter 8), how to work with your dreams (chapter 9), common dreams (chapter 10) and more. Stevens writes that his "overriding purpose... is to give my readers a feel for dreams, by initiating them into the secrets of dream language and syntax, so that they may begin to appreciate the messages contained in those rich and inspiring communications for themselves (p. 6)."
"Living Your Dreams" by Gayle Delaney, PhD
I got a lot out of this book. The author has ego (there's a lot of "I pioneered" and "my method" in her book) but I think you need ego to publish unconventional
ideas, start a training centre and more. She's an interesting mix of being all about herself, but ultimately handing it back to the dreamer and being all about
the dream.
Delaney describes the essence of her technique in this way: "This book also introduced my dream interviewing technique which enables individuals to interpret their own dreams. Using my technique, the interviewer (who can be the dreamer herself) poses as an alien from another planet who knows very little about life on earth and has no preconceptions about dreams and their meaning. By asking very basic questions, the interviewer has the dreamer describe each element of the dream (the people, the places, etc.) so that the dreamer herself will come to recognize the meanings they hold. All this is done without reference to any external traditional interpretations. Because the meanings of the symbols in our dreams are unique to each of us, only we can decode our own dreams. All we need are the skills to ask the right questions at the right time (p. xiii)."
The theory of dreaming that Delaney and her partner Dr. Loma Flowers developed includes these basic assumptions (pp. 5-7):
1) We are the producers of our own dreams
2) We are the writers of our own screenplays
3) We are the directors of our dream shows
4) We are the stars of our dream scenes
5) Dreams not only have a meaning, they have a purpose and a message
Delaney acknowledges that these five assumptions aren't new, and that the biggest names in dream interpretation (Freud, Jung) included similar or identical messages. She makes this distinction: "Please note, however, that we do not include in our assumptions assertions such as: all dreams express wishes; dreams are disguises of our true wishes and feelings; the male and female psyches are thus and so; all dream images represent the dreamer, and so on. We try to keep our assumptions to a minimum so that the dream can speak in its own voice."
"Jung and Yoga: The Psyche Body Connection" by Judith Harris, foreword by Marion Woodman
Judith Harris trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, as well as at the Esther Myers Studio in yoga. This small book is described as a practical look at "the understanding of Jung's ideas as they may be experienced through bodywork, and... offers a new psychological perspective to practitioners of bodywork (cover)." Judith Harris "became aware that her physical problems could not be resolved without attention to their psychic components (Foreword, p. 7). She began to coordinate her yoga with her Jungian analysis. In her foreword, Marion Woodman reminds us that spiritual insight must be grounded; the tree branches stretching up need equally deep roots. Woodman adds that this book validates Jung's "understanding of the image as the connector between soma and psyche (p. 8)."
Judith Harris begins with her own story, and I find this section personal and compelling. She writes about her early experience in yoga class this way: "I began to feel what it was like to be in my body for the first time. Whenever a loving hand was placed on my back, my body responded with deep gratitude (p. 9)."
The book is not primarily about dream work. It spans a broad range of topics connected to Jungian analysis, myth and the body. Her first chapter, "Creation," is about returning to the prima materia (original substance), the body. She expresses her sense that "simultaneous transformation of the body and the psyche is only possible if both sides are worked on at the same time (p. 19)." On page 20, she places dreams at the psychological pole of the physiological-psychological (or instinct-archetype or body-mind) spectrum, and describes how each pole needs the other; there is no freedom in being consumed by one extreme or the other.
Judith Harris interweaves her theoretical exploration with clinical cases, including cases of symptoms that appear first in the body and point to a need for bringing something painful into consciousness. In her account of work with clients, she weaves together dream work, Jungian analysis, breath work and body work. She also discusses connections between psychotherapy and her patients' medical issues such as dermatitis, chronic fatigue syndrome and autoimmune disorders. These
passages are particularly practical, although other sections are more theoretical (or mythopoetic).
"The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit" by Donald Kalsched
Donald Kalsched is a teaching member of the C.G. Jung Institute in New York. This book is not ideal for the beginning dreamworker. It is for those who have knowledge and experience with dream work and clinical psychotherapy, as well as a knowledge of the vocabulary of object-relations, self-psychology and Jungian mythopoetic language. In the Introduction, Kalsched writes that he hopes to show how the "psyche responds inwardly to overwhelming life events. What happens in the inner world, for example, when life in the outer world becomes unbearable? What do dreams tell us about the inner "object-images" of the psyche? And how do these "inner objects" compensate for the catastrophic experience with "outer objects"? What patters of unconscious fantasy provide an inner meaning to the trauma victim when life-shattering events destroy outer meaning altogether? Finally, what do these inner images and fantasy structures tell us about the miraculous life-saving defenses that assure the survival of the human spirit when it is threatened by the annihilating blow of trauma? These are the questions I will attempt to answer... (p. 1)."
Kalsched's "inner world of trauma" relates to "dreams and other spontaneous fantasy-products that occur in response to outer trauma (p. 2)." His key hypothesis in the book is that dream imagery linked to trauma, such as archetypal demonic images that follow recent trauma in waking life, are actually "the psyche's self-portrait of its own archaic defensive operations (p. 2)" -- showing us how the psyche is trying to prevent the personal spirit from being annihilated. The personal spirit is often depicted in dreams as a young and vulnerable child or small animal. The defenses are often represented by a powerful being - either protective or diabolical. Kalsched describes the problem that this set-up engenders: "Once the trauma defense is organized, all relations with the outer world are "screened" by the self-care system. What was intended to be a defense against further trauma becomes a major resistance to all unguarded spontaneous expressions of self in the world. The person survives but cannot live creatively... Each new life opportunity is mistakenly seen as a dangerous threat of re-traumatization and is therefore attacked (pp.4-5)."
The first chapter of the book focuses on three clinical cases as a way of beginning to explore these hypotheses. Chapter two describes self-soothing, using clinical examples. Chapters three through five follow Freud and Jung in their early attempts to unravel the inner world of trauma, and describe additional Jungian exploration. Chapter six broadens the conversation to other psychoanalytic theorists. In part two of the book, Kalched explores archetypal defenses in myths and fairy tales, reminding us that before thee was a scientific exploration of psyche, myth held that role.
"Children's Dreams" by C. G. Jung
(Edited by Lorenz Jung and Maria Meyer-Grass. Translated by Ernst Falzeder with the collaboration of Tony Woolfson).
The contents of this book come from written recordings at a series of four seminars (1936-1940) given by Jung to select students. The style is less formal, more conversational, than much of his other written work. The book begins with an introduction to Jung's method of dream interpretation, and goes on to apply the method to children's dreams.
This book focusses almost exclusively on childhood dreams told by adults. Because so much time has passed, very little personal association can be captured. Jung says that "we have to use the ethno-psychological method with dreams that cannot be solved by personal questioning or personal amplification." The book is full of dreams (with interpretation) brought by Jung's seminar students, or by Jung, himself. Typically, there are very few personal associations elicited from the children. There also isn't a great deal of psychological or medical history presented. The students take each of the symbols in the dreams and link them to symbols in literature or myth. This work is densely layered with metaphor and analysis of symbols. Jung's students form dream interpretations from these symbols, and Jung adds his additions, corrections and interjections.
Jung makes some interesting general points about childhood dreams:
* Early dreams "come out of the totality of the personality (p. 20)" and often foreshadow the child's future. When a child has a cosmic dream it may point to a future where the child grows up to give up a personal life for collective role (such as a leader or political figure).
* Children's dreams often "surface uninhibited from the collective unconscious" because personal consciousness is weaker in children (p.80)
* Children are closer to the collective unconscious and to archaic images and archetypes than are adults, as they came out of them more recently, and have had less time to develop a personal consciousness (p. 107).
I found very little information in my quick scan of the book that relates to how to help the child who is having the dream. I gleaned one piece of practical advice: "pay attention to the child and try to stabilize his or her consciousness" by having the child draw or write about the dreams. This will help to make the "freely floating danger" concrete. I believe Jung is suggesting that this will make children less sensitive to powerful dreams and less afraid of them. I suspect that therapists who work regularly with children and their dreams, or with the childhood dreams of adults, would find this book helpful when they get stuck on a complicated
dream. Because I'm so drawn to the approach of helping the dreamer to connect the dream to his or her waking life and to develop a response to what the dream is asking for, the book didn't resonate with me.
This book is one of my very favorite books on working with dreams. Bosnak writes with a vivid, personal style. The book offers a window into his life as a Jungian analyst working one on one, in a group dream practicum, and with his own
dreams. I found myself rereading early sections of the book even as I finished reading the closing chapters. As a beginning dream worker, this book is a gold mine, and I can tell that I'll uncover more insight as my experience grows.
In the forward to the book, Denise Levertov writes: "Robert Bosnak permits the reader to enter his own experience both as dreamer and as "creative listener" to the dreams of others. For the lay reader, his candor and a lucid and vivacious style of expression impart a new concreteness to terms like "resistance" or "transference," or to such distinctions as "free association" and "active imagination." I couldn't agree more!
"Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming" by Anthony Stevens
This is another favourite. The book is full of theoretical and practical information, and is interesting and accessible. Anthony Stevens is an experienced psychiatrist, and has worked for over twenty years as a Jungian analyst. His post-graduate education included psychological research grounded in the scientific method. He nimbly bridges the gap between reductionist neurobiology and the sometimes cult-like fervor of psychologists defending the writings of their favourite theorist. This book covers a lot of territory: theories of dreams (chapters 2 and 3), dream science (chapter 4), Jung's concepts (chapter 5), dream formation (chapter 6), symbolism (chapter 7), dreamwork in analytic therapy (chapter 8), how to work with your dreams (chapter 9), common dreams (chapter 10) and more. Stevens writes that his "overriding purpose... is to give my readers a feel for dreams, by initiating them into the secrets of dream language and syntax, so that they may begin to appreciate the messages contained in those rich and inspiring communications for themselves (p. 6)."
"Living Your Dreams" by Gayle Delaney, PhD
I got a lot out of this book. The author has ego (there's a lot of "I pioneered" and "my method" in her book) but I think you need ego to publish unconventional
ideas, start a training centre and more. She's an interesting mix of being all about herself, but ultimately handing it back to the dreamer and being all about
the dream.
Delaney describes the essence of her technique in this way: "This book also introduced my dream interviewing technique which enables individuals to interpret their own dreams. Using my technique, the interviewer (who can be the dreamer herself) poses as an alien from another planet who knows very little about life on earth and has no preconceptions about dreams and their meaning. By asking very basic questions, the interviewer has the dreamer describe each element of the dream (the people, the places, etc.) so that the dreamer herself will come to recognize the meanings they hold. All this is done without reference to any external traditional interpretations. Because the meanings of the symbols in our dreams are unique to each of us, only we can decode our own dreams. All we need are the skills to ask the right questions at the right time (p. xiii)."
The theory of dreaming that Delaney and her partner Dr. Loma Flowers developed includes these basic assumptions (pp. 5-7):
1) We are the producers of our own dreams
2) We are the writers of our own screenplays
3) We are the directors of our dream shows
4) We are the stars of our dream scenes
5) Dreams not only have a meaning, they have a purpose and a message
Delaney acknowledges that these five assumptions aren't new, and that the biggest names in dream interpretation (Freud, Jung) included similar or identical messages. She makes this distinction: "Please note, however, that we do not include in our assumptions assertions such as: all dreams express wishes; dreams are disguises of our true wishes and feelings; the male and female psyches are thus and so; all dream images represent the dreamer, and so on. We try to keep our assumptions to a minimum so that the dream can speak in its own voice."
"Jung and Yoga: The Psyche Body Connection" by Judith Harris, foreword by Marion Woodman
Judith Harris trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, as well as at the Esther Myers Studio in yoga. This small book is described as a practical look at "the understanding of Jung's ideas as they may be experienced through bodywork, and... offers a new psychological perspective to practitioners of bodywork (cover)." Judith Harris "became aware that her physical problems could not be resolved without attention to their psychic components (Foreword, p. 7). She began to coordinate her yoga with her Jungian analysis. In her foreword, Marion Woodman reminds us that spiritual insight must be grounded; the tree branches stretching up need equally deep roots. Woodman adds that this book validates Jung's "understanding of the image as the connector between soma and psyche (p. 8)."
Judith Harris begins with her own story, and I find this section personal and compelling. She writes about her early experience in yoga class this way: "I began to feel what it was like to be in my body for the first time. Whenever a loving hand was placed on my back, my body responded with deep gratitude (p. 9)."
The book is not primarily about dream work. It spans a broad range of topics connected to Jungian analysis, myth and the body. Her first chapter, "Creation," is about returning to the prima materia (original substance), the body. She expresses her sense that "simultaneous transformation of the body and the psyche is only possible if both sides are worked on at the same time (p. 19)." On page 20, she places dreams at the psychological pole of the physiological-psychological (or instinct-archetype or body-mind) spectrum, and describes how each pole needs the other; there is no freedom in being consumed by one extreme or the other.
Judith Harris interweaves her theoretical exploration with clinical cases, including cases of symptoms that appear first in the body and point to a need for bringing something painful into consciousness. In her account of work with clients, she weaves together dream work, Jungian analysis, breath work and body work. She also discusses connections between psychotherapy and her patients' medical issues such as dermatitis, chronic fatigue syndrome and autoimmune disorders. These
passages are particularly practical, although other sections are more theoretical (or mythopoetic).
"The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit" by Donald Kalsched
Donald Kalsched is a teaching member of the C.G. Jung Institute in New York. This book is not ideal for the beginning dreamworker. It is for those who have knowledge and experience with dream work and clinical psychotherapy, as well as a knowledge of the vocabulary of object-relations, self-psychology and Jungian mythopoetic language. In the Introduction, Kalsched writes that he hopes to show how the "psyche responds inwardly to overwhelming life events. What happens in the inner world, for example, when life in the outer world becomes unbearable? What do dreams tell us about the inner "object-images" of the psyche? And how do these "inner objects" compensate for the catastrophic experience with "outer objects"? What patters of unconscious fantasy provide an inner meaning to the trauma victim when life-shattering events destroy outer meaning altogether? Finally, what do these inner images and fantasy structures tell us about the miraculous life-saving defenses that assure the survival of the human spirit when it is threatened by the annihilating blow of trauma? These are the questions I will attempt to answer... (p. 1)."
Kalsched's "inner world of trauma" relates to "dreams and other spontaneous fantasy-products that occur in response to outer trauma (p. 2)." His key hypothesis in the book is that dream imagery linked to trauma, such as archetypal demonic images that follow recent trauma in waking life, are actually "the psyche's self-portrait of its own archaic defensive operations (p. 2)" -- showing us how the psyche is trying to prevent the personal spirit from being annihilated. The personal spirit is often depicted in dreams as a young and vulnerable child or small animal. The defenses are often represented by a powerful being - either protective or diabolical. Kalsched describes the problem that this set-up engenders: "Once the trauma defense is organized, all relations with the outer world are "screened" by the self-care system. What was intended to be a defense against further trauma becomes a major resistance to all unguarded spontaneous expressions of self in the world. The person survives but cannot live creatively... Each new life opportunity is mistakenly seen as a dangerous threat of re-traumatization and is therefore attacked (pp.4-5)."
The first chapter of the book focuses on three clinical cases as a way of beginning to explore these hypotheses. Chapter two describes self-soothing, using clinical examples. Chapters three through five follow Freud and Jung in their early attempts to unravel the inner world of trauma, and describe additional Jungian exploration. Chapter six broadens the conversation to other psychoanalytic theorists. In part two of the book, Kalched explores archetypal defenses in myths and fairy tales, reminding us that before thee was a scientific exploration of psyche, myth held that role.
"Children's Dreams" by C. G. Jung
(Edited by Lorenz Jung and Maria Meyer-Grass. Translated by Ernst Falzeder with the collaboration of Tony Woolfson).
The contents of this book come from written recordings at a series of four seminars (1936-1940) given by Jung to select students. The style is less formal, more conversational, than much of his other written work. The book begins with an introduction to Jung's method of dream interpretation, and goes on to apply the method to children's dreams.
This book focusses almost exclusively on childhood dreams told by adults. Because so much time has passed, very little personal association can be captured. Jung says that "we have to use the ethno-psychological method with dreams that cannot be solved by personal questioning or personal amplification." The book is full of dreams (with interpretation) brought by Jung's seminar students, or by Jung, himself. Typically, there are very few personal associations elicited from the children. There also isn't a great deal of psychological or medical history presented. The students take each of the symbols in the dreams and link them to symbols in literature or myth. This work is densely layered with metaphor and analysis of symbols. Jung's students form dream interpretations from these symbols, and Jung adds his additions, corrections and interjections.
Jung makes some interesting general points about childhood dreams:
* Early dreams "come out of the totality of the personality (p. 20)" and often foreshadow the child's future. When a child has a cosmic dream it may point to a future where the child grows up to give up a personal life for collective role (such as a leader or political figure).
* Children's dreams often "surface uninhibited from the collective unconscious" because personal consciousness is weaker in children (p.80)
* Children are closer to the collective unconscious and to archaic images and archetypes than are adults, as they came out of them more recently, and have had less time to develop a personal consciousness (p. 107).
I found very little information in my quick scan of the book that relates to how to help the child who is having the dream. I gleaned one piece of practical advice: "pay attention to the child and try to stabilize his or her consciousness" by having the child draw or write about the dreams. This will help to make the "freely floating danger" concrete. I believe Jung is suggesting that this will make children less sensitive to powerful dreams and less afraid of them. I suspect that therapists who work regularly with children and their dreams, or with the childhood dreams of adults, would find this book helpful when they get stuck on a complicated
dream. Because I'm so drawn to the approach of helping the dreamer to connect the dream to his or her waking life and to develop a response to what the dream is asking for, the book didn't resonate with me.