ABSTRACT

The Canary In The Mind: On The Fate Of Dreams In Psychoanalysis And In Contemporary Culture –

Paul Lippmann, Ph.D.

Paul Lippmann, Ph.D. Stockbridge, Mass. Affiliation: William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute, NYC – Faculty, Training and Supervising Analyst. Director of Stockbridge Dream Society and Author of Nocturnes: On Listening to Dreams. Teaching and writing about dreams for several decades.

 

Summary of Presentation

This is a wide ranging paper touching on the love-hate relationship to dreams within psychoanalysis with implications for a consideration of the exploitation, disregard and transformation of dreams in contemporary technological-electronic society. It is suggested that the fate of dreams is an early warning signal regarding the fate of the human mind, the human spirit, as we have come to know it. A range of hypotheses are advanced about the complex uses of dreams in ancient healing, in contemporary psychotherapy, in social analysis, and particularly in relation to the destruction of the natural world and its replacement by an electronic dream-like existence.

Learning Objectives:

(1) Participants will learn, by example and by lecture, about contemporary psychoanalytic thinking on dreams, 

(2) Participants will learn in particular about a contemporary interpersonal-naturalist approach that focuses on the importance of staying with the image and on dream conversation rather than dream interpretation and 

(3) Participants will learn about ways of integrating Freud, Jung, Shamanism and modern psychotherapy in relation to dreams.


Questions:

(1) What does one gain by “staying with the image?” 

(2) How can shamanic practice influence work with dreams in contemporary psychotherapy? 

(3) What is the point, anyhow, of working with dreams in psychotherapy?

Abstract 

 This is a wide ranging paper touching on the love-hate relationship to dreams within psychoanalysis with implications for a consideration of the exploitation, disregard and transformation of dreams in a contemporary technological-electronic society. It is suggested that the fate of dreams is an early warning signal regarding the fate of the human mind, the human spirit, as we have come to know it. A range of hypotheses are advanced about the complex uses of dreams in ancient healing, in contemporary psychotherapy, in social analysis, and particularly in relation to the destruction of the natural world and its replacement by an electronic dream-like existence.

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