The Language of Dreams
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, dream work, active imagination, and other related
topics).
Robert Hoss, MS, USA,
author of Dream Language and Executive Officer and Past
President and Chairman of the International Association for the
Study of Dreams. He has been teaching dreamwork for over 30 years
and is presently on the faculty of the Haden Institute for dream
leadership training, and the adjunct faculty at Scottsdale College
in Arizona.
Janice Baylis, PhD, USA,
authored Sleep On It! The Practical Side of Dreaming, Sex,
Symbols and Dreams and Relationship Dreams. She used
the associative thinking system, phonics, teaching 3,000 children
to read. She also taught dream study classes and workshops for
Orange County Community College District, ARE Regional and others.
Robert P. Gongloff is the
author of Dream Exploration: A New Approach. He is a former
member of the IASD Board of Directors and has hosted two
international dream conferences. He lives in Black Mountain, NC,
where he conducts dream groups and workshops. His website is
www.heartofthedream.com.
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:
Robert Hoss, MS
Applying Dream Language to
Effective Dreamwork
The combination of dream centers
that are active and inactive in dream sleep appear to create a
meaningful “language” not too different from the non-verbal
content of our waking language. Understanding the unique
characteristics of this language, and some simple techniques for
revealing the personal associations within it, can make for more
effective dreamwork.
There
are many approaches for dreamwork, each technique unlocking one or
more of the secrets a dream has to reveal, some more effective
than others. An effective dreamwork approach might be considered
one that brings about a greater understanding to the dreamer of
their inner experience as related to their waking life situation,
and which helps to bring about change in that dreamer’s life. Carl
Jung observed that dreams act on a natural tendency towards
balance or wholeness, and that the driving force within the
collective unconscious has no deliberate plan outside of an urge
towards self-realization, a constant striving toward the potential
whole being. If we can understand how to work with this process
the way our dreaming mind does, then our dreamwork can become
truly effective.
Experiences from professional an private dreamwork have
demonstrated that dreams contain story lines that can be
associated with our waking life situations. Research into waking
to dream continuity demonstrates that dreams do indeed incorporate
content from our waking life experiences. Therefore one principle
of effective dreamwork would be to compare the dream to our waking
life situations. Indeed most dreamwork techniques incorporate
various approaches for finding metaphoric relationships, an “aha”
connection, between the dream story and the waking life story.
Forming such associations usually explains what the dream was
relating to, and can at times bring up emotional memories, but
usually not much more without a lot of further in-depth work.
If we
can understand just a bit about the functioning of those brain
centers that remains active when we dream, particularly those
centers that process emotion, memories, associations and our
social and spatial relationships, a greater picture emerges of the
experiences of the dream. Some of the characteristics of the
dreaming brain, that create this unique but meaningful experience
or “language” of dreaming are:
a) Association (Metaphor)
is the Natural Language of the Dreaming Brain – this is probably
the best understood concept of dream “language”. Looking for
statements or phrases in the dream narrative that seem like
figures of speech, which also seem to apply to the deamer’s waking
life feelings or situation at the time. Since much of the visual
association is contextual, a simple technique to recover personal
associations is to define the function or purpose of the dream
image you are curious about.
b) Dreams Appear
Irrational Only to the Waking Mind – the dreaming mind uses a
holistic “logic” of its own aimed at finding a natural “fit,”
pattern or closure between dream events. Holistic logic is
simultaneous whereas waking logic (which is absent from dreams) is
time sequential with cause/effect relationships.
c) Irrational Imagery
Combinations are Quite Rational – the dream “language” expresses
concepts by combining images in a holistically meaningful fashion,
just as in waking life we express concepts by combining words in a
linearly meaningful fashion.
d) Emotions Shape our
Dreams – Dream imagery may arise from what Berne and Savary term
“Limbic Logic,” a function of the amygdala and other limbic
centers. This system, which is highly active during dreams, grasps
images and emotions and processes them by association. The limbic
system recognizes inner data such as emotions, and associates an
emotion to the sensory data it encounters. Whereas we “think” in
words, our limbic system “thinks” in images. In the waking state
the limbic system sees a world full of images and links them to
emotions, it in essence takes a “snap shot” of our emotional
crises. In the dreaming state it is reasonable to deduce that the
limbic system as it recovers emotional memories for processing
would associate them with those same images – which become what we
observe as dream images. That dream imagery contains, or is
stimulated by, emotion is supported by a number of researchers,
including Ernest Hartmann who contends that the dream, especially
the Central Image, pictures the emotion of the dreamer. Hartmann
contends that the more powerful the emotion, the more intense the
central imagery of the dream will be.
e) Dream Processing
Focuses on Self and Self Image – look for dreams to be working on
external and internal threats to your own image of self. This is
the key to taking the dreamwork a bit further into recognizing it
as a statement about our own internal conflicts that are often
stimulated by external threats or even our own internal fears and
doubts.
Considering the unique
characteristics of the dream process above, how then can we
translate this into a more effective approach to working with our
dreams to help resolve internal issues that the dream itself is
struggling with. Certainly we understand the associations and
metaphors that our dream narrative contains. Uncovering the more
important material, the emotions or emotional memories that are
contained within the dream imagery, and then relating that to our
own internal struggles and fears that effect our external waking
life situations, is the key. There are many therapies aimed at
doing just that, however, there is a simple approach derived from
Gestalt therapy that I call Image Activation Dreamwork that is
effective in revealing not only the emotional content within dream
imagery but relating it to our internal and external conflicts.
The technique scripts the Gestalt role-play procedure into six
simple statements that are targeted to reveal: a) the emotional
memories within the dream image; b) the emotional conflicts within
the dream or dream image; and c) the fears and desires driving
those conflicts - relating all of these to our waking life
feelings and situation. The procedure is as follows:
A) Pick one or more dream images
that seem important, curious or emotionally significant. B) Let
the Image Speak: Go back into the dream and “become” the dream
image. Speak as the dream image and record your statements. Speak
in the first person present tense.
1) Who or what are you (describe
yourself and how you feel): “I am ______”
2) What is your purpose or
function? “My purpose is to _________”
3) What do you like about being
that dream image? “I like ____________”
4) What do you dislike about
being that dream image? “I dislike ________”
5) What do you fear most as that
dream image? “I fear _____________”
6) What do you desire most as
that dream image? "What I desire most is ___”
C) Relate Your Responses to your
Waking Life Situation: Do one or more of the statements sound like
a way you feel or a situation in your waking life? Recall a
specific situation and define your feelings at the time. Do the “I
am” and “My purpose” statements sound like a role you are playing
in waking life? Do the “I like” versus “I dislike” statements
sound like a conflict going on? Do the “I fear” and “I desire”
statements sound like waking life fears and desires, perhaps
feeding the conflict?
Note: If the dream image is a
person you know then alternatively substitute the following for
question #1: a) describe your personality; b) in what ways are you
like the dreamer; c) in what ways you are different. Ask - do one
or more of the personality statements relate to a manner in which
you are approaching the waking life situation? Or alternatively,
does this dream character have a personality trait that you admire
or wish you had more of, in order to better handle this waking
life situation?
Janice Baylis, PhD
Associative Thinking Processes
and the Language of Dream-mind
In Midnight’s Children, Salman
Rushdie wrote, “As a people we are obsessed with correspondences.
Similarities between this and that, between apparently
disconnected things make us clap our hands delightedly when we
find them out.” (p. 291). He was referring to the people of India
but it is a universal trait.
Associative thinking is relatively simple, it even exists in
animals as Pavlov proved. When I pick up my car keys my dog runs
to the garage door, tail wagging. He obviously associates car keys
with an enjoyable ride.
Teaching 3,000 children to read using phonics, associating sounds
to squiggles on paper, tuned my mind to associative thinking
processes and systems. As phonics is to reading, so associative
thinking is to dreaming. As Chaos Theory simple deterministic
systems, the simple associative thinking process can breed
complexity.
In my
Webster’s Dictionary the first definition of thinking is “to
engage in the process of arranging ideas in a pattern of
relationship, or adding new ideas to be related to such a
pattern.” In associative thinking the pattern is relationship on
the basis of one or more features of similarity.
Associative thinking
is pretty easy to understand in waking life because we are
consciously aware of both sides of the equation. For example
President Bush asked CIA chief, George Tenant how certain was the
Iraq weapons of mass destruction connection. Tenant replied, “It’s
a slam-dunk!” Associating a political certainty with a basketball
maneuver was easily understood.
Dream-mind associative thinking isn’t always so easy. The trigger
side of the equation is in the unconscious mind, active in
dreaming, but not within conscious awareness. All we get in
conscious mind is the associated target image (if we remember it
upon awakening).
Learning the many limbs and branches of associative thinking helps
in thinking backwards from the dream image to its trigger thought,
idea, feeling, etc. Noticing the various limbs and branches led me
to the “associative thinking tree” analogy. An analogy is one form
of associative thinking where
a whole series of features of
similarity exists between two seemingly unconnected things,
different domains.
The “associative thinking tree”
consists of:
- Roots – Memories – personal
and collective – in the dreamer’s mind.
- Trunk – Associative thinking
process – associating, connecting, linking two items from
different domains on the basis of some feature(s) of similarity.
- Limbs – Areas or types of
associations:
- Life Experiences, Qualities
and Properties, Words, Figures-of-speech, Psychological
Components, Family, Other People
- Branches – Offshoots within
the given limb’s area (two examples).
- Life Experiences:
- Personal – Cultural –
Universal
- Qualities and Properties:
- Shape – Location – Action –
Function – Change or alteration – Feeling tone (similar to “The
Ladder of Abstraction” used to teach children to write
descriptively).
- Leaves – Individual dream
images
Drawing from sources ranging from
Artemidorus, The Bible, and Cayce to Zeller, dream examples for
each of the branches are available. Incidentally, comic-strip
examples show that cartoonists use associative thinking to illicit
humor.
Robert Gongloff (summary)
Themes reflect the major issues
going on in one’s life. A theme is the important message, idea, or
perception that a dream or waking life event is attempting to
bring to your conscious mind. By encouraging dreamers to focus on
the dream as a story rather than as a group of symbols to be
interpreted, finding the basic message the dream is attempting to
deliver becomes easy and enjoyable.
