The Practice of Dream Incubation
Gary Goodwin has taught at
the local Jung Society for nearly ten years. He has been a dream
group leader for six years, and has recently formed a center that
provides a home for teachers of the “inner arts” : journaling, art
for reflection, dreamwork, active imagination, and other related
topics.
Robert Van de Castle, PhD, is
Professor Emeritus of the Health Sciences Center at the University
of Virginia. He is a Past President of IASD, co-author with Calvin
Hall of the dream classic The Content Analysis of Dreams,
the author of Our Dreaming Mind, and consulting editor of
the SUNY Press Series of Dreams.
Michael Schredl, PhD, works at the Sleep Laboratory, Central
Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany. He has worked in
the field of dream research since 1990, has published many
articles and has served on the IASD Board of Directors.
Anne Hill, DMin, is an
author, teacher, musician and dreamworker. Anne is co-author with
Starhawk of Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess
Traditions, and her poetry and essays have been published in
several anthologies and periodicals. She teaches and writes on
spirituality and dreamwork, and practices aikido whenever she
can.
Abstracts
Although all panelists will
participate in a robust discussion of this important topic, each
will also present material from their own studies and experiences.
The abstracts of each presentation are included below:
Summary of Anne Hill Presentation: For the past 300 years, dream
incubation has been an issue of contention between medical,
religious, and secular scholars. Does it work? Did it ever? Who
does it right? Rather than adding fuel to the fire, this
presentation will focus on what I believe is one of the universal
truths about dream incubation whatever our approach: it allows us
a “way in” to the center of our own experience. Whether it is
creative inspiration we seek, problem solving, spiritual or
psychological insight, there is a way to use incubation to that
end. Examples and suggestions for various applications will be
discussed.
Summary of Van de Castle Presentation: The practice of dream
incubation has a long history going back several millennia.The
usual conceptualization is that when someone is unable to obtain
information about a designated topic through engagement with
his/her conscious mind, deliberately making efforts to cultivate
dreaming awareness about that designated topic may yield new
information previously unavailable to that person. This
presentation will explore the possibility that the range of
available information previously available can be exponentially
increased by using a technique for group dream incubation .
Summary of Schredl Presentation: One of the longest studied areas
of dream research is the link between waking consciousness and the
content and character of our dreams. Freud clearly saw a link
between our day world and night life but he and other dream
researchers saw that the link was frequently tenuous, open to
interpretation, and not direct. Dream incubation, on the other
hand, assumes a that a strong linkage is in place and we can
get/achieve whatever we want just by asking our dreams. Dr.
Schredl will look at current research on dream “continuity”–-the
link between day and night.
