Dreaming of Our Species’ Survival
Meredith Sabini, PhD, is a Licensed Psychologist in the field since 1972, specializing in Dream Consultation. She is a public speaker and widely published author, with a column in DreamTime. In 2003, she founded The Dream Institute of Northern California, an experimental cultural center.
Abstract
Is our survival as a species at risk? This possibility is voiced in contemporary dreams. In this presentation, I will address this urgent and disturbing question. I will suggest, as others have as well, that our capacity to dream is itself an evolutionary achievement and that it serves a survival function for individuals, groups, and the species as a whole. We know that dreams have the ability to look back at the past (at both mythic and factual history), to reflect on the present and help us adapt to it, and to anticipate the future. Using this temporal template, I hope to show that there is a survival benefit that dreams provide – by being able to help us orient ourselves toward the past, present, and future.
On the trip to America that Jung and Freud made in 1909, they discussed the now-famous dream of Jung’s about a four-story house where each level was a different historical era; below the basement was a cave containing prehistoric shards and bones. Jung came to understand this as a depiction of our evolution over time. In 1960, he learned that excavations had been done on that house (his uncle’s in Basel) and that a cave just like the one in his dream was found. A dream of my own posed the question: Does the psyche “remember” its evolutionary history? And responded to the question by showing the human hand.
Through the material I present, I hope to make a bridge between our field of dream studies and the newly emerging field of evolutionary psychiatry/psychology. The link between them is the “survival theory of dreaming.” Such a theory could help explain, for instance, why the majority of dreams as reported as being unpleasant: because we have to practice for life tasks/survival tasks that we don’t yet do well, not for those we do. It could also help explain the occurrence of telepathic and precognitive dreams, which frequently take place when someone’s life is at risk. Brief examples will illustrate how dreaming can aid our day-to-day survival.
The more puzzling dreams are those that provide glimpses of the future. I will present a selection of dreams in which the issue of our species’ survival is explicitly mentioned, giving my commentary on them and inviting discussion. If our survival is at stake, due to our no longer living sustainably on this planet, it may be that many are having dreams that address this issue and could help us navigate this moment in time. We have enough factual information now to know that our species has developed in a way that is not “survival-fit” at the individual, group, or species’ level. The possibility that the psyche remembers its phylogeny and “wants” to tell us about it is an awe-inspiring notion. To contact this level of our human-beingness via dreams may hold unimagined potential for healing the greed and divisiveness that has plagued our species through our history. The survival function of dreaming may be one on Nature’s inherent ways of communicating its distress and showing us alternative paths.
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Dreaming About Others: When Are They Objective?
Meredith Sabini, PhD, is a Licensed Psychologist in the field since 1972, specializing in Dream Consultation. She is a public speaker and widely published author, with a column in DreamTime. In 2003, she founded The Dream Institute of Northern California, an experimental cultural center.
Abstract
We regularly dream about others and have to determine if a dream pertains to the actual person or to a subjective aspect of ourselves. I have been collecting two kinds of objective or outward-facing dreams: those that contain factually accurate (verifiable) information about others; and those that compensate or correct an existing perception we have of someone. I will give examples of both.
C. G. Jung discussed the distinction between subjective and objective dream contents and gave some guidelines for making it, which I will cover. I suggest we rename subjective dreams “inward-facing” and objective dreams “outward-facing” for more precise accuracy and less value-laden terms. It is not always easy to tell if a dream image faces inward or outward. But once we have catalogued the regular figures who live in our inner house or inner landscape, it becomes easier. I will describe a method for doing this cataloguing.
There are, as yet, no baseline studies on how often we dream about others. Two studies of dreams during psychotherapy showed that 10% of patients’ dreams contained direct reference to the therapist. We are quite capable of distinguishing between self and other in waking life, and dreams sometimes give clear indications of this as well. In the opening scene, we may be “inside my family’s house” or “outside talking with friends.” Illustrative examples of dreams that gave such clues will be offered.
I am especially interested in the many reasons why we might dream about others and the varied purposes such dreams can have. One of my working hypotheses is that introverts are more likely than extroverts to have factually accurate outward-facing dreams. Such dreams can be a source of reality for introverts, compensating their natural tendency to view the outer world subjectively.
The characteristics common to outward-facing dreams, based on my small collection and on published material, are: the imagery in them is plain, not at all “dreamlike;” there is little or no symbolization; scenes are much as they would be in waking life; there is minimal emotion in the dream; and the dreamer does not have the usual train of associations to the dream.
In order to emphasize the importance of doing the work of discernment as to which direction a dream faces, I will cite some instances of those that were incorrectly attributed. Jung had a thrice-repeating dream just prior to World War I that he assumed pertained to himself; it left him deeply concerned about an impending mental breakdown. Only when the war broke out did he recognize that the dreams were outward-facing. We are more familiar with exteriorizing dream contents, and call this projection; I suggest it is more useful to simply designate it as a misattribution of inward-facing contents to the outer world.
This presentation is intended to reach a wide audience. It has practical application for those doing their own dreamwork; it offers research suggestions; and it gives guidelines for clinical work with dreams in psychotherapy.
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Exploring Dream Layers Through the Eyes of Kabbalah
Linda Schiller, MSW, LICSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice, an Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Social Work, and a faculty member in the Trauma Certificate Program. She works from a multi-layered orientation, incorporating energy medicine, expressive techniques, relational-cultural theory, and body/mind/spirit interventions in her work.
Abstract
Dreams can be explored at many different levels and in many different styles. Some schools of thought hold that there is a single meaning to be derived from the dream, and according to the theoretical perspective, it may reveal a psychological profile, a glimpse of the future, our current dilemmas, a look at internal self-parts, the nature of a conflict, a creative solution, or a medical condition. Some dreamwork also involves a spiritual perspective.
In Jewish mystical tradition, the Kabbalah is the name of the body of spiritual teachings that evoke the mystery layers of the sacred texts. It is the basis for Jewish Shamanism, and the study of it can reveal multiple layers of meaning simultaneously in a single story, sentence, or even word. Much as dreams themselves, Kabbalah reveals what is hidden, and helps us to hold both the manifest and the hidden meanings in a synchronistic whole.
One aspect of the Kabbalistic approach is a four part acronym called the “Pardes”, meaning, “the Orchard”; a metaphor for the Garden of Eden. The four layers are called “Pshat”, (or simple), “Remez”, (or hinted at ), “Drash”, (or chased after), and “Sod”, (or secret). These four layers can be applied to the study of the Torah. I have also found that when applied to the study of a dream, they can reveal multiple layers of meaning for both the dreamer and potentially the group or community as well. Using a spirit of spiritual inquiry, we will study how to use this system as a template, and apply it to decoding and deepening our understanding of our dreams.
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Ayahuasca and Dreams: a Comparison
Annelise Schinzinger was introduced to a spiritual group that uses Hoasca (Ayahuasca) in 1977 when she was studying at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her journey with the sacred tea spans over eighteen years. In 1995, she stopped drinking the tea to focus on her dreams, which she has been recording for over thirty years.
Abstract
There are many ways for the spirit to journey and gain insight and knowledge, and countless ways to re-establish awareness of our essential spiritual nature. Dreams and Ayahuasca are two I have chosen to address in this talk because of my experience with both, their similarities and amazing potential. Ayahuasca is a sacred tea made from plants indigenous to the Amazon. Ayahuasca is a Quechua (Inka) word meaning Vine of the Soul or Vine of the Dead and has been used in ritual context by Amerindians for millennia. With intention, Ayahuasca and dreams work with divine intelligence to create conscious awareness, especially when embraced as a spiritual path. Both facilitate attunement to the environment, as well as with other realms. Both have the potential to facilitate the acquisition of wisdom and a more profound understanding of the true nature of mind. In brief, the spiritual effect of both states is the opening of consciousness.
A key difference between Ayahuasca and the dream state is the quality of the energetic experience. This is due in great part to the nature and origin of the sacred forest tea and the specific openings it facilitates to the divinity of the natural world. Among the fundamental differences are: the physiological effects of Ayahuasca’s interaction within the human organism; rituals involved; and plant spirit presence. Other qualities that distinguish the Ayahuasca journey are profound awareness arising from kinesthetic experience; the rapid flow of images that sometimes occurs in the visionary state (which are often difficult for the rational mind to fully grasp); and preponderance for other-dimensional experiences. This may be due to the fact that the mind and body are ‘awake’ during an Ayahuasca experience and ‘asleep’ during the dream experience. In the later case, the average dream experience may not be powerful enough to leave a memory trace that will transfer into the normal waking state and become integrated into conscious memory.
In my talk I will delve more deeply into the differences and similarities between the Ayahuasca experience and the dream world. Among the similarities are the quality and content of the experiences. Both states have the potential to assist in the cultivation of presence and focus; awareness of subtle energies; empathy and compassion; and listening to inner guidance. Both states provide opportunities for healing, unity consciousness, and experiences of the Divine.
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Dreaming for the Collective
Marilyn Schlitz is Vice President for Research and Education at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin.
Frank Pascoe is a PhD student in Transpersonal Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology studying shared dreams.
Abstract
This paper describes the results of a detailed study of the dream sharing practices of the Achuar people. It is based on field research and interviews conducted in the Amazon from 1997-2003. The purpose of this study is to create a detailed description of the Achuar view of reality through a greater understanding of their dream-sharing practices and use of plant medicines. A secondary goal is to compare and contrast the Achuar experience with the dominant Western perspective towards dreaming. Finally, a third goal is to record the Achuar “dreaming” for the future with regard to their interaction with Western culture.
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Dreams and Tarot: Innovative Approaches to DreamWork and Depth Therapy
Lauren Z. Schneider, MA, MFT, is a psychotherapist who integrates family systems, dream therapy and her pioneering method, ‘Tarotpy’ in private practice. She supervises dream and ‘Tarotpy’ groups for laypersons and training therapists; lectures throughout So. California; she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley; and is certified in ‘Advanced DreamTending’ from Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Abstract
“There were considered to be three worlds: the world of matter below, the world of spirit above, and the world of image in between – each realm entirely real…. Today I see the prototype of this intermediate realm in the world of dreaming.”
Robert Bosnak
This psychotherapeutic method called Tarotpy® utilizes the rich symbolic imagery of Tarot, Dream Cards, Soul Cards, and other representational images to actively engage deeper unconscious processes and lay the imaginal world out on the table. Strephen Kaplan Williams, the renowned Jungian therapist, created the Dream Cards for this purpose: to understand “symbolism, dreams and the application of dreams to life. [It will] help you create strong bonds between dreaming and waking consciousness.” Using this method of Tarot Therapy, we can gain greater insight into our dreams and into the psyche that dreams; the archetypal patterns, psychological and interpersonal dynamics that influence our life come into clearer view.
Tarotpy® enhances dreamwork and visa versa. I use Tarotpy® with a client to contemplate and gain further insight on a specific night dream; or to stimulate imagination that may be otherwise blocked in some clients – for instance, with those clients who do not remember their dreams. Often, I find that a Tarotpy® session will be followed by reports of more vivid dreaming. These archetypal symbols represent a universal language of imagery, which is cross-cultural, perhaps birthed from the same collective and psychic pool from which emerges the dream. In her book, Jung and the Tarot, Sallie Nichols states that “these old cards were conceived deep in the guts of human experience, at the most profound level of the human psyche…Studying a specific card seems to unlock hidden stores of creative imagination so that sudden insights and ideas can burst forth into consciousness – seemingly from nowhere.”
As with dreamwork, the core principal of Tarotpy® embodies a profound respect for the inherent wisdom, creativity and wholeness of the psyche. Unlike traditional Tarot readings in which there are set formats and definitions, this method is a hands-on interactive process with the client: I carefully attend to the individual’s verbal and non-verbal cues as the client selects the deck, the number of cards, the form and name of each placement. On the one hand, the therapeutic use of Tarot cards is a highly effective projective tool or Rorschach, for assessment and exploration. This simple method relaxes the vigilant ego and provides a safe and effective medium to discuss issues, often revealing the client’s deeper concerns and truth without engaging resistance. The metaphoric imagery creates a bridge for unconscious material and intuition to flow between client and therapist. On the other end of the spectrum, there seems to be an unconscious mastermind at play in the “random” selection of a specific deck and particular imagery. Like the genius of the dream, it appears more intentional than random to bring into consciousness information about our relationships, environment and ourselves that is vital to emotional, physical or spiritual growth.
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Eco Dreamwork: A Collective Perspective on Dreams
Lauren Z. Schneider, MA, MFT, is a psychotherapist who integrates family systems, dream therapy and her pioneering method, ‘Tarotpy’ in private practice. She supervises dream and ‘Tarotpy’ groups for laypersons and training therapists; lectures throughout So. California; she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from U. C., Berkeley; and is certified in ‘Advanced DreamTending’ from Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Abstract
We do not live in a vacuum. Nor do we dream in a vacuum. The practice of Eco Dreamwork is based on the understanding that there is a larger evolutionary consciousness to which we are intrinsically connected.
Dreams are an essential part of our individual development and our evolution as a culture and a species. As a dream therapist, I am listening to a collective and environmental consciousness speaking through personal and clients’ dreams. This is particularly instructive during such turbulent times. Characters, animals and symbols in dreams may appear and require expression for the individual’s evolution and wholeness. These archetypal dream images are also part of larger cultural, ecological and ideological realities upon which the wholeness of our species and planet may depend.
Human history is abundant with dream accounts that are attributed to the Gods as messages of wisdom, prophesy and divine intervention. In these accounts, the dreams are intended for the individual to be shared publicly to inspire and educate, or warn of some impending danger, and to secure a safe and meaningful future for the community. The messages of many dreams I have tended, with themes of the whale, Africa, animal companions, etc. are intended for sharing beyond the private sanctuary of a therapist’s office. This is the value of practicing Eco Dreamwork in a group or community setting.
I began a recent dream group with the suggestion that we might approach dream images such as the whale from a collective point of view. One of the group members exclaimed, “Oh my God, I had a whale dream last night. I forgot until you mentioned this.” Synchronicities are often present as an affirmation that we are dealing with the collective aspects of psyche. Her dream is as follows, “I am in a second story room which is all white and very clean, not a bit of clutter. I am speaking with my sister who is and has been very angry with me. I have great compassion, but realize that my understanding is not going to make any difference to assuage her anger. I am instructed to go downstairs to the basement. A white woman lets me in the door. The basement is cramped full of Maori warriors, mostly men and some women, in face paint and ritual costume. They are chanting. I know that I need to chant with them. We are chanting to call the whales. When asked what she would say is the reason for her sister’s anger, the dreamer replied that she thought her sister was very angry at their father and projecting it onto her.
Dreams that emerge from the Western psyche echo the same messages as prophecies and mythologies from indigenous cultures. Dream images such as the Great Whale cross cultural boundaries as well as cultural mediums. “Many myths speak of how all life upon the planet, especially human, sprang from the seas. Because of this…the whale is an ancient symbol for creation – be it of the body or our world.” (Ted Andrews, Animal-Speak, pg.321). For example, similar themes emerge from this client’s dream and from the film “Whale Rider”: the feminine is in conflict with the patriarchy and must go beyond intellectual or conscious understanding into the depths to connect with the “whales”, perhaps to re-call an essential interconnectedness to community, to the environment and to creation. Whether they are symbolic or embodied, I believe that the whales are calling us through dreams as messengers of a greater evolutionary intelligence. “…Perhaps our dreaming consciousness is primarily concerned with the survival of the species and only secondarily with the individual. Were there any truth to this speculation it would shed a radically different light on the importance of dreams. It would make them deserving of a higher priority in our culture than they are now assigned (Montague Ullman quoted in Our Dreaming Mind, R. Van De Castle..
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Bohm's Holistic Physics, Sacred Sites, Spiritual Emergence and Ecopsychology's Vision
Mark A. Schroll, PhD, USA, featured presenter at the 5th Psiberdreaming conference and IASD 2006; Non-Local Consciousness, Dreams, Psi and Religion, symposium organizer. Guest Editor Anthropology of Consciousness 16 (1), 2005. Currently finishing articles for Dreamtime, Dreaming, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspective, and several other journals.
Stanley Krippner, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School, served as the President of IASD and APA. A pioneer in the field of dream research, he was the Director at the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Research Laboratory, Brooklyn, NY. He is author, co-author or editor of numerous articles and books.
Curtiss Hoffman, PhD, is an archaeologist and consciousness researcher who has taught in the Anthropology Department at Bridgewater State College, USA since 1978. He is particularly interested in Jungian approaches to dreaming. He has an interest in Wagner’s work because of its archetypal symbolism. He was the host of the 2006 conference.
Abstract
Stanley Krippner's 5 to 10 minute introduction will be a summary of his article, "Prelimiarny Inquiry of Sacred Sites and Home Dream Reports." Krippner will discuss "sacred sites" and nonlocal energies that are claimed to influence prophetic dreaming and dreams that result in spiritual transformation. Specifically Krippner will talk about the experiment he and Paul Devereux did on Welsh and English sacred sites. Mark A. Schroll's 50 minute lecture provides a comprehensive overview of the historical, philosophical and conceptual aspects of David Bohm's holistic physics and Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields. This lecture builds on and clarifies Montague Ullman's New Abode for understanding dreaming” especially psi related dreaming and anomalous cognition associated with "sacred sites." Furthermore, this lecture discusses how psi dreaming and anomalous cognition, that have been historically associated with dissociative states, may be examples of David Lukoff's 1994 DSM classification of "religious and spiritual" problem (V62.61) and spiritual emergence.
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Probability Distributions of Characters in Dreams
Richard Schweickert, PhD, in Mathematical Psychology from University of Michigan, 1979. He is Professor in Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, USA.
Johanna Xi, BS, BA, Psychology and Economics, both from Peking University, 2006. She is a graduate student in Psychology at Purdue University, USA.
Abstract
Characters do not occur equally often in dreams. This is also true in waking life, raising the question of whether frequencies of characters have the same form during waking and dreaming. Coding of characters of a dreamer with plentiful characters shows the frequency distribution to be well approximated by a power law (sometimes called Zipf's Law). An alternative, a Poisson distribution, does not fit as well. It is known that characters do not appear independently; that is, the likelihood of, say, the dreamer's father appearing in a dream is greater if the dreamer's mother appears in the dream. Such conditional probability distributions also follow a power law. Again, a Poisson distribution does not fit as well. The conditional power laws suggest that the joint distribution of characters follows a multivariate Zipf distribution. It is argued that the distribution of characters in dreams takes its form from the dreamer's memory, which in turn, is representing the form of the distribution of characters in waking life.
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Dreaming of the Buddha
Fred Jeremy Seligson, JD, is Asia-Pacific VP for the IASD, South Korea; this year taught Travel Journal through the World's Religious Cultures at a Buddhist University. He is author of Oriental Birth Dreams.
Abstract
My presentation will be an analysis of the following dream. What is a spiritual dream? Where does it come from? What is its significance?
... I go on and eyes rolling up focusing strongly and steadily on my 3rd Eye I fly swiftly away into the sky. I fly to a mountain up steep cliffs and into a cave. I am in a cave with a door closed behind me. Perhaps this is part of a monastery, Before me on a raised platform is a display of Buddhist treasures. All sorts of small carvings of Buddha in gold and silver, mostly gold. They are neatly laid out in rows or 8 or so and about 10 rows going up. The carvings are about a centimeter thick and charmingly innocently done. I look at them for a while then decide to take one. Soon I have taken many of the finest ones and put them in my bag. Then to the right there is a raised pool rectangular of water. Perhaps under glass. In the middle is gold childlike carving of Buddha, harms and legs spread out and other objects around. While looking I am concerned someone might come and also I decide to put the objects I took back. I climb down and take them out of my bag and set them not so neatly tho I try back on the platform. Then I find I have a bag of sugar and other food bags in my bag and decide to donate them to the Buddhas. I pull out the sugar bag but a lot pours out on the floor. A small pouch with more little Buddha statues comes out that I had overlooked, so with one hand I am setting that back on the platform and with the other I am scooping up sugar. I am almost done but the flurry of both activities is enough to wake me up. In the dream there has been a transformation I can take back to waking life.
All of my dreams are much more involved than I am able to remember or often even comprehend. It is as if something in my un(sub)conscious is far more intelligent than my conscious or my conscious is less intelligent than my un(sub)conscious. But this is understandable, because it has access to all my experiences and possibly more, but my consciousness is only a light in time.
My Dream Maker has full use of my brain and body and is able to synthesize all of language and all other input received by the senses during the day with what has been gathered and synthesized over a lifetime and try to make sense of what is happening to the overall organism at the moment, of course, for the purpose of survival. It is not bound by the conventions of daily life and the ordinary view of reality. It is free to use and reintegrate all of the information, perhaps by way of association, freely, in any way it feels best. It is a movie director with endless resources, and each film can be entirely different from all the others. It is endlessly creative because it is not bound by ego and conventions in the way we are in waking life. It is honest in that it shows what we would hide from ourselves. It tells us what we are and where we are at any given moment, but is free to show us entirely different the next moment. It is an artist of infinite beauty. A master of mosaics, panoramas, dramatic scenes, humor and an indulger in the sublime. It reflects the quality of the dreamer’s waking thoughts and sensory responses, whether high or low. It is a resource for self-understanding, but also a friend and helper, advisor and healer if one is willing to listen and see.
My Dream Maker is spiritual in that it has access to all human experience from the grossly mundane to the spiritually sublime. This latter is the divine in humanity, and in Nature of which humanity is part. As I descended from Adam and Eve, from fish and water plant, gas and starlight, so did the Dream Maker. If there was a spiritual, divine force, a god or force that was is and will ever be, the Dream Maker is also part of it and has access to it. It can feel and grasp and display forms and inspirations from the Divine in a dream if so needed by the host organism for its survival. This is regardless of whether the host is living a spiritual or mundane life. It is because at the moment the host is even engaged in spiritual actions or activities or even thoughts, meditations or prayers, charity and altruism, or else it has fallen so low that unless it has a spiritual reminder that it will destroy itself. This is the reminder that we are all founded in starlight, children of the Great Bang and all that went before that, all that came after, and that we have access, to all that will come after this. For we are all endowed with the seed of life, the propulsion to extend, preserve, and improve the quality of human and all living existence. The spiritual dream reminds us of our purpose, reminds us that we are creatures of evolution, and that we have the duty to evolve for the sake of the whole universe of which we are part and which we somehow affect with each and every slight action of our waking and sleeping, dreaming and daydreaming lives.
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Recurring Dream Sharing Hike
Alan B. Siegel, PhD, is an avid hiker and naturalist and Past President of IASD, current education chair and Editor-Emeritus of IASD’s publication, DreamTime. He practices psychotherapy and assessment and is Assistant Clinical Professor, UC Berkeley and faculty at Alliant University’s CSPP. He is the author of Dream Wisdom: Uncovering Life’s Answers in Your Dreams. www.dreamwisdom.info
Abstract
This workshop/event is intended to have a recreational and social component to balance and de-stress from the continuous indoor presentations at the conference. A 1.5 to 2 hour long hike will include a short semi-structured discussion and dream sharing ritual focusing on one recurring dream from each participant that will occur midway through the walk. The dream sharing exercise will follow the format described by Montague Ullman. Due to the size of the group and time limit, dreams will not be interpreted or explored in depth but used as a stimulus for further understanding and exploration of recurring dreams. This awareness may be relevant to psychotherapists, and individuals interested in understanding recurring dreams. Patterns and universal themes in recurring dreams will be summarized and reinforced with a two page handout which will be provided to participants to illustrate common recurring dreams and journal writing and dream sharing strategies to deepen understanding of recurring dream patterns and interpretive approaches.
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Dreams and Clinical Supervision: Clinical, Ethical and Theoretical Guidelines
Alan B. Siegel, PhD, is an avid hiker and naturalist and Past President of IASD, current education chair and Editor-Emeritus of IASD’s publication, DreamTime. He practices psychotherapy and assessment and is Assistant Clinical Professor, UC Berkeley and faculty at Alliant University’s CSPP. He is the author of Dream Wisdom: Uncovering Life’s Answers in Your Dreams. www.dreamwisdom.info
Abstract
Over 100 years after Freud, few psychotherapists receive coursework on working with dreams in graduate school and very few outside of analytic institutes receive clinical supervision from a supervisor trained in teaching dreamwork. Yet, personal psychotherapy and clinical supervision are the most influential modes of learning to work with dreams in therapy.
This clinical workshop outlines key issues, ethical concerns, transference and counter-transference dreams, common errors, and application of clinical supervision principles to using dreams in clinical supervision. Topics will include guiding supervisees and consultees on introducing dreams in psychotherapy, initial dreams and dream themes unique to the evolving stages of therapy including termination dreams, dreams and parallel process in supervision, techniques for exploring and formulating individual dreams and longer series or dreams.
Ethical considerations and guidelines in supervision will be covered, along with cross-cultural issues, awareness and sensitivity, boundaries between supervision and psychotherapy, styles of supervision and different learning styles in supervision, and theoretical differences in supervision between different schools of therapy. Theory, case vignettes, and role-playing practicum type exercises will be used to illustrate. If time allows, participants’ vignettes may be used.
Psychologists and master’s level clinicians who provide clinical supervision are required to take six or more hours of continuing education in clinical supervision during each two year cycle of license renewal. This is perhaps the first or one of the first course to address the supervision continuing education requirement by emphasizing the use of dreams in clinical supervision. It is hoped that this emphasis will attract clinicians to attend the conference so they can simultaneously learn about dreams and meet their biannual requirement for supervision training.
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Moderator Effects of Boundary Structure and Stress on the Relationship Between Presleep Stimuli and Dream Content
Thomas D. Smith is a recent graduate from California School of Professional Psychology: Alliant International University, San Diego Campus, USA.
Abstract
The present study provided partial validation for Hartmann’s (1991) boundary construct and its theorized relationship to dream content. Additionally, this study examined the complex relationship between presleep stimuli, stress, and boundary structure and what influence they have upon dream content. Participants were exposed to bizarre, affectively charged, and dramatic presleep video content for a period of 28 days; their dream reports were compared to a group of participants exposed to a set of control videos. The Boundary Questionnaire was used to measure boundary structure and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to measure stress. Composite dream content variables were measured by the Hall and Van de Castle System of Content Analysis. Subjective and objective dream report elements comprised the Emotions Composite and Dramatic Intensity Composite. These multi-method instruments were created by combining Hall and Van de Castle variables with global ratings scales to create two comprehensive dream measures. People with thinner boundaries reported increased levels of state-anxiety and increased levels of trait-anxiety. Interaction effects were observed between experimental condition, boundary thinness, and dream content. People who were experiencing increased levels of stress produced positive correlations between boundary thinness and dream negative emotions. Males reported more trait-anxiety than females. Females produced dream reports with more emotions and negative emotions than males. Results were examined within the context of continuity and compensatory dream theories. The adaptive functions of dreams were also considered.
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Therapist Dreams About Clients: An Exploration of Meaning and Use
Patricia Spangler is a doctoral student in the Counseling Psychology program at the University of Maryland, United States. Her research interests include process and outcome of dreamwork in therapy and interpersonal patterns of dream content.
Abstract
Little research has been conducted on therapists’ dreams about clients. The purpose of the present study was to learn more about this phenomenon, with a focus on three specific areas: (1) themes that occur in such dreams, (2) the meaning therapists make of the dreams, and (3) how therapists use and understand these dreams. One goal was to learn more about the client-dream phenomenon not only as a tool for signaling countertransference and difficulties in the therapeutic relationship but also other potential uses. Another goal was to learn more about what effect the therapist’s experience of the dream has on the course of therapy. Eight therapists who had more than 5 years of clinical experience and who had dreamed about a client participated in two semi-structured telephone interviews about the client-dream experience. The consensual qualitative research method was used to analyze the interview transcripts. Preliminary analysis indicates thematic content that includes particular emotional closeness with the client, concern about client welfare, concern about clinical judgment, and boundary issues. In addition, the meaning therapists made of these dreams included signals of unmanaged countertransference, precognition of client injury/death, and indications to make fundamental changes in the therapeutic relationship or in the therapist’s life. Processing and use of the dream experience included journaling and momentary contemplation to increase self-insight; disclosing dream to the client in order to deepen the therapeutic relationship; and culture-specific rituals of dream re-enactment in order to facilitate client and therapist growth and healing.
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Applying the Five Star Method of Dream Analysis in Counseling
G. Scott Sparrow is a therapist and Assistant Professor at the University of Texas-Pan American. He wrote Lucid Dreaming in 1976, and did his MA and doctoral research on lucid dreaming. He has authored several books on the phenomenology of religious experiences, and uses dreamwork extensively in his teaching and practice.
Abstract
Prior to the advent of modern lucid dream research, the dream was typically seen by psychodynamic therapists as an emanation or message from the unconscious – and the dreamer, by implication, a passive recipient. Whether the imagery was regarded as intentionally obscure as the Freudians contended, or the message itself as the Jungians believed, dream analysis traditionally focused on the meaning of the dream imagery without regard for the dreamer’s feelings, assumptions and responses during the dream. While the role of the expert in dream analysis has been undermined by Jung’s view of the personal unconscious, the rise of the existential/humanistic school of therapy, and the emergence of social constructivism and the postmodern therapies, the emphasis on analyzing the visual imagery of the dream still dominates most dream interpretive approaches, albeit from a less intrustive and more collaborative standpoint.
The phenomenon of lucid dreaming represents an anomaly, as it is specifically defined by Kuhn, that can serve to revise and restructure our paradigm in regards to dream analysis in general. However, by focusing on lucidity per se as a discrete state of awareness, it is easy to overlook subtle but discernible evidence that the dreamer possesses the capacity for self reflecting awareness and interactivity in virtually all dreams. If every dream evidences some degree of these dreamer qualities, then all dreams can be analyzed from the standpoint of circular, or reciprocal dynamics – similar to systems oriented family therapy. Within this relational model, the dream report can be treated as one of many possible cocreated outcomes, some of which may be more desirable than others to the dreamer.
The Five Star Method has evolved over a 25-year period in which the author has engaged in personal and experimental lucid dream research, collaborated with other dream psychologists, and conducted extensive outpatient psychotherapy. The result is a process-oriented, competency-based approach to therapeutic dream analysis that engages the client in an exploration of how the dreamer’s responses give rise to particular cocreated outcomes, and may mirror typical waking life responses and relationship patterns, as well. The imagery is analyzed, as well – but only once the affective and interactive context of the dream has been explored. The dialogue that arises between the helper and the client supports a creative consideration of alternative responses to the dream and to life, thus fostering a sense of agency, an internal locus of control, and a robust developmental process.
This proposed two-hour workshop will include a presentation on the origins and evolution of the method, a large group demonstration, a small-group experience in which participants will learn to use the method, and a question and answer period.
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Applying the Concept of Reciprocity to the Analysis of Dream Imagery
G. Scott Sparrow is a therapist and Assistant Professor at the University of Texas-Pan American. He wrote Lucid Dreaming in 1976, and did his MA and doctoral research on lucid dreaming. He has authored several books on the phenomenology of religious experiences, and uses dreamwork extensively in his teaching and practice.
Abstract
Dream analysis often revolves around the interpretation of the dream imagery somewhat apart from the dreamer’s feelings, thoughts and actions, under the assumption that the imagery has meaning in and of itself. However, careful observation reveals that the dream imagery often changes in response to the dreamer’s own cognitive and emotional state changes, and vice versa. By drawing a dreamer’s attention to the reciprocal relationship between his or her responses and the changes in the observed imagery, a dreamworker can assist the dreamer in viewing the dream as a dynamic relationship rather than a set of images to be analyzed apart from the dreamer. Such an approach calls for a contextual analysis of the imagery that keeps in view the dreamer’s ongoing impact on the phenomenal field. This relational, or systems-level analysis serves to instill a greater sense of awareness, agency and responsibility in the dreamer, and translates naturally into an overall co-creative view of life. In addition to providing several examples of the reciprocal interplay between dreamer and dream imagery, I will suggest several questions that one may ask the dreamer in order to stimulate an awareness of the reciprocal dynamics evident in dreams.
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Dreams and Spiritual Autonomy
Bonnelle Lewis Strickling, PhD, RCC, is a Jungian psychotherapist and spiritual director in private practice. She is also Chair of the Department of Philosophy and a member of the Interdisciplinary
Department of Classical Studies at Langara College in Vancouver, BC. Her book Dreaming About the Divine, will be published in April, 2007.
Abstract
Many Jungians and others who value individual spiritual experience are highly suspicious of spiritual life lived in the context of a religious tradition. They feel, often with justification, that religious traditions present a dangerous temptation to live an inauthentic spiritual life, one that is not based on one’s own experience but rather one symbolism derived from the experiences of others, thus symbolism that is, from the point of view of one’s own spiritual growth, dead. There are, however, disadvantages to living one’s life entirely outside any religious tradition. One relinquishes the richness of tradition and community, the experience of liturgy that can help us experience the incarnation of the Divine, the struggle with those who disagree with us that provides needed humility, and the sense of connection provided by finding a spiritual home. In my book Dreaming about the Divine (SUNY, April, 2007) I argue that work with dreams as a regular part of spiritual life within a tradition is one way of strengthening individual spiritual experience and the sense of spiritual autonomy while still participating in a religious tradition. This is especially true when the dreamwork takes place in a religious setting and the dreams can be related to familiar religious contexts, giving them a new and individual meaning. Dreams can strengthen individual spiritual experience by generating new and individual experiences of the Divine, especially in crisis situations and in the context of a religious tradition, provide a situation in which these new experiences can be shared, expressed and lived out.
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Dreams, Existence and the Structure of Being
Bonnelle Lewis Strickling, PhD, RCC, is a Jungian psychotherapist and spiritual director in private practice. She is also Chair of the Department of Philosophy and a member of the Interdisciplinary
Department of Classical Studies at Langara College in Vancouver, BC. Her book Dreaming About the Divine, will be published in April, 2007.
Abstract
Dreams present us with a problem of existence. They don’t exist in the objective sense, yet they don’t yield to one traditional way of dealing problems of subject-object analysis, the phenomenological reduction. The phenomenological reduction can allow us to bypass certain metaphysical issues by bracketing certain traditional empirical problems and focussing on intentionality: the actual experience of the subject. However, the nature of dream experience is unique in that, while in many ways like ordinary waking experience, it occurs in what is usually called an “unconscious” state, thus is not like ordinary intentionality. The issues that surround the subject of ordinary intentionality are intensified in dream intentionality.In this paper, I want to explore the impact of this unusual form of intentionality on the place of the dream in the structure of being, which particular emphasis on their metaphysical status as occurrences only in the “unconscious” state. In this way it is significantly different from a similar event, the vision, to which it is often compared. While the content of the dream is symbolic in the same way that the vision is, the vision, though often occurring in a trance-like state, occurs in a waking state. Dreams, since they occur in an “unconscious” state, form a kind of bridge between the conscious and unconscious worlds, giving them a special place in the structure of being. The reluctance of many philosophers and psychologists to acknowledge their significance and even in some instances their existence may have to do with our discomfort with ambiguity, so eloquently pointed out by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness. I will argue that the dream represents a particular feature of being in a way that no other feature of human existence does, and that being in relation with our dreams unique enriches and brings us into relation with the sorts of beings that we are.
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The Montague Ullman Approach of Working with Dreams in a Group Setting
Gunnar Sundström, BA, is a psychologist and licensed psychotherapist of psychoanalytical orientation. He is Chair of the Board of the Swedish Dream Group Forum.
Abstract
A workshop will be presented where ca 10 persons can join and work with a dream in the way outlined by Montague Ullman. The Montague Ullman method of working with dreams in a group setting can be described as a four-step process in a group of people gathered to share dreams with themselves and the others.
The work goes as follows:
I One person, the dreamer, shares a dream with the group. The group listens to the dream as told and memorizes it.
II The group pretends it is their dream, and first identifies and connects to the emotions aroused in ’their’ dream. Then, the group members also search for metaphorical meanings of different parts, images, actions, etc, in the dream.
III A The dream is given back to the dreamer who is free to give as much or as little response as he/she wants to.
III B 1 If the dreamer would like to, the group starts a dialogue with the dreamer around the dream, with the purpose of further connecting the dream with the dreamers life situation. The group asks the dreamer of recent whereabouts, thoughts and feelings experienced in the evening before the night when the dream was dreamt, and/or the days before.
III B 2 The dream can be read to the dreamer, who has the opportunity to make further connections in the light of what has been discovered during the process so far.
III B 3 If the dreamer so wants the group members can share their conclusions of the meaning of the dream, or parts of it in a so called ’orchestrating projection’.
IV In a group which meets on a regular basis, a session starts with looking back on the session before, and the foregoing dreamer can share thoughts with the group that might have arisen since the last meeting.
Since this is a ’one-time-meeting’, the group will be given time for evaluation of the work and experiences around it.
Key concepts in the process will be presented and discussed:
· Non-intrusiveness – protection of the dreamer’s safety
· Safety-factor and curiosity-factor
· The dreamer should be in control of the process
· Projections in the process of experiencing and/or interpreting a dream
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Dreaming in the Indigenous Mind: Reconstituting Tribal Dreaming in a Multicultural and Modern Way
Atava Garcia Swiecicki, MA, is both a graduate and faculty member of the Indigenous Mind Program. She has explored in-depth the way ancestors and spirits communicate through dreams and has facilitated dream groups with this focus. She is also a clinical herbalist in Oakland. Her web site is: www.ancestralapothecary.com .
Apela Colorao, PhD, is founder of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network, is a member of the Oneida tribe and is a traditional cultural practitioner. She created the first accredited Doctoral Program in Traditional Knowledge at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She currently runs the Indigenous Mind Master’s Program at Wisdom University.
Kit Cooley, MA, graduated in 2003 with a Master’s degree in Indigenous Mind. She now teaches Indigenous Mind students on various topics, including dreamwork and Indigenous Science. She also continues her freelance work as an editor and writer, while working with her husband to create a small permaculture farm.
Teresa MacColl, MA, has conducted ancestral research in the Indigenous Mind program at Naropa University which included the Celtic Second Sight, dreams and prophecy. Using her science background, she helped to create the group’s ‘dream database’ and is conducting research to collectively look at student’s dreams.
Loren Hadassah Finkelstein, MA, received her Master’s degree from the Indigenous Mind concentration at Naropa University. Her interest in dreamwork led her to Thailand where she studied one on one with Diana Manilova, a Russian born healer initiated by a line of Mongolian Shamans of Lake Baikal.
Erin Langley, MA received her Master’s in Indigenous Mind from Naropa University. Her thesis, entitled Reinstating the Role of Community Dreaming Using Traditional Protocol and Open Source Technology, looks at ways to remember principles of tribal dreaming in a postmodern context. She is a professional painter who lives and works in Oakland.
Abstract
This panel is a presentation by graduates and faculty of the Indigenous Mind Master’s program.
Each student in the Indigenous Mind (IM) Master’s program, guided by indigenous elders, learns how to understand and interpret dream messages from the spiritual world. IM students are also trained in Indigenous Science, which provides a context to study and observe the way lunar, solar and planetary cycles influence dreams. Our panel has studied the patterns of dreams over the process of each student’s spiritual evolution within the IM program. Dreamwork has been a key part of the ancestral remembrance process.
The panel will first introduce the philosophy of the Indigenous Mind program, based on the work of Dr. Apela Colorado. Dr. Colorado will present the tenets of Indigenous Science, the foundation from which students base their individual dream research. The panel will present stories from graduates of the IM program to demonstrate how dreams have guided their ancestral remembrance work. Case studies will illustrate the spiritual guidance that comes in dreams and how the messages from dreams are applied to the process of recovering one’s indigenous mind.
The panel will present the technology they have utilized to deepen their understanding of the patterns of dreams within their Indigenous Mind community. The panel will explain the dream database that they created to collect and organize their dream data. They will discuss how they weave technology and spirit together to amplify their understanding of the community dream. The dream database reveals the complex patterns of spiritual messages common to everyone in the IM community
Finally, the panel will discuss the implications of engaging in this dreamwork cross-culturally. Today, many western people do not come from intact tribal cultures or have traditional elders to guide their spiritual path. This panel will discuss what they have discovered by sharing dreams together within a culturally diverse group that is supported by indigenous elders. The IM cohort has been sharing their spiritual dreams over the past five years. In this way, they are engaged in a process that is reconstituting a modern, multicultural form of tribal dreaming.
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Indigenous Wisdom and Modern Dreams
Michael Tappan, MA, has apprenticed to shamans in the Ecuadorian Andes, in the Amazonian Rain forest and in Tuva, Siberia. He has led and participated in dream groups for over fifteen years. He has directed and acted in improvisational theater and currently facilitates Dream Portrayal workshops.
Abstract
The notion that our dreams illuminate deeper truths has a noble and long-lived heritage. Long before Freud called dreams the “royal road to the unconscious,” these enigmatic night-time dramas compelled psychic exploration and a compulsion to find their relevance in waking life. To the indigenous, dreams touch our most profound inspirations and religious intuitions. Dreams are believed to contain the vision of the forces that animate us and those forces with which we are engaged.
To the indigenous priest, or the shaman, working to understand the content of our dreams is the process that will carry us into the adventure of becoming who we most genuinely are. The nighttime dream, just as the daytime vision, is believed to identify for the individual the comprehension of personal meaning. Dreams portray the challenges to selfhood, the forms of help needed to find our destiny, and the emotional makeup required to accomplish the task.
This presentation will discuss some of the notions of human ancestral reality and how those beliefs inform the understanding of contemporary dreams. Most relevant are ideas concerning these principles:
The Dreamer as Warrior. By their very nature, in ways both subtle and alarming, dreams ask us nightly to confront the strange, the hated, the loved and the enigmatic. In that confrontation is the heroic journey and the path of the warrior.
Allies: or “Help is on the Way.” Allies are the projected attributes of the dreamer. Allies can represent the wise you, the ecstatic you and the brave you. Because these characteristics tend to be unrecognized or denied by the dreamer, they often first appear as shadow characters: the perverted you, the mad you, the rebel you. In all manifestations, the ally holds a necessary truth and power.
All Dream Images Represent Psychic Reality. Every character, every object, every setting, and every emotional perception within our dreaming comprehension is significant to our understanding of life, our place in that life, and the creative response necessary to express that life.
Imagination is Meaning. Our dreams take the stuff of our material world and turn it into psychic depth. The images that our psyche produces – our imaginings – propel us immediately into the subterranean world of sacred myth and story where we can find everything we need to creatively sustain and nurture the individual we are meant to be.
Dream Images Are a Call to Action. The content of our dream life can be better understood as a drama rather than a dictionary. Dreams crave expression.
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Projective Dreamwork – A Foundational Practice for Exploring the Deeper Meanings in Dreams
Rev. Dr. Jeremy Taylor is an artist, teacher, Unitarian Universalist minister, community organizer, and dreamworker. He is one of the original four founders of IASD. He is the author of three well-known books on dreams and dreamwork. He is the founder of the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork.
Abstract
All dreams reveal multiple levels of meaning and significance. These symbolic implications range from the purely and uniquely personal to the demonstrably collective, archetypal, and transpersonal. Group discussion, based consciously on each participant’s imagined version of the dream, and emphasizing the projective nature of all interpretive commentary, can lead to a startlingly wide range of insights and productive ideas. The benefits and problems of using the “...if it were my dream...” technique will be discussed and demonstrated through group exploration of dream narratives volunteered by workshop participants.
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Patterns of Dream Recall as Archetypal Clues to the Evolution of Consciousness
Rev. Dr. Jeremy Taylor is an artist, teacher, Unitarian Universalist minister, community organizer, and dreamworker. He is one of the original four founders of IASD. He is the author of three well-known books on dreams and dreamwork. He is the founder of the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork.
Abstract
The repeating patterns of dream recall, as separate from the specific details recalled, provide a fascinating and evocative symbolic picture of the direction(s) and process(es) of the evolution of consciousness and self-awareness itself, at both an individual and collective level.
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Dream Bloggers Invent the University
Jason Tougaw is Assistant Professor of English at Queens College / CUNY, where he teaches an interdisciplinary seminar on dreams. He is the author of Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel (2006) and editor, with Nancy K. Miller, of Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community (2002).
Abstract
"Dream Bloggers Invent the University" is an essay about the course weblogs my students have kept in interdisciplinary courses on dreams I’ve taught at Queens College and Princeton University. In these courses, the weblogs have created a forum where the personal and the theoretical are integrated almost by default. The blogs, as an alternative to dream journals, help make students conscious of writing for an audience, with two primary effects: greater attention to collective inquiry among students and a great deal of opportunity to experiment with and practice developing a confident and effective voice. Admittedly, the public nature of blogs creates some problems with regard to the sensitivity of so much dream material, and this must be addressed explicitly with students. However, I will risk utopianism and argue that blogs, if they are carefully designed in relation to course goals, can help students synthesize a diverse range of interdisciplinary course materials as well as encourage them to consider personal experience within intellectual frameworks and test theoretical concepts against the evidence of experience. Blogging makes students acutely aware of audience, a collective audience engaged in classroom inquiry. It encourages them – compels them even – to experiment with voice in the act of inquiry and gives them ongoing opportunities to reflect on and practice techniques for taking ownership of language and ideas. My current group of students has granted permission for their blogs to be publicly available. To see them, go to: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/ . *
In the Language of Dream: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled
Jason Tougaw is Assistant Professor of English at Queens College / CUNY, where he teaches an interdisciplinary seminar on dreams. He is the author of Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel (2006) and editor, with Nancy K. Miller, of Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community (2002).
Abstract
In a 2005 interview, Kazuo Ishiguro explains that he wrote his 1995 novel The Unconsoled as a formal experiment with using “the language of dream” as the basis of fiction. The novel, about a pianist who arrives in a small European city whose inhabitants are sure he can solve their social, historical, and personal problems through an unexplained aesthetic intervention, reads as though it is, in Ishiguro’s words, “just slightly outside reality.” The Unconsoled borrows from what Freud called the dream’s “representational resources” to create a world in which the mundane and the bizarre are threaded through each other as they so often are in a dream (as Bert States has suggested): characters are composite figures; identities are malleable; movement and action are impeded; space and time expand and contract. Reviewers of Ishiguro’s novel have continually expressed an admiring perplexity at the riveting but frustrating reading experience that results. The novel tests the assumption that dreams are peripheral and waking reality central. Its implied message is that dreams remind us that our waking grasp on reality is vulnerable and that what we think we know about ourselves is a fiction subject to change. I want to suggest that some understanding of classic and contemporary dream theory and research – including Freud, Jung, Hartmann, and Hobson – can help explain how Ishiguro borrows from the “language of dream” to show that the insight dreams offer waking selves lies in a humble recognition of the limits of knowledge about the self and the nature of reality.
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Healing Dreams: Sleeping and Waking
Bob Trowbridge, MDiv, USA, has been active in dreamwork for over 30 years. A former officer in the Bay Area Dreamworkers Group, he was editor of the Dream Network Bulletin. He has published dozens of articles and authored The Hidden Meaning of Illness: Disease as a Symbol & Metaphor.
Abstract
I believe that all dreams have a healing intent. That intent, however, is not simply for the healing of the body. Our dreams have an intent to heal the self, to bring health and wholeness (holiness) to one’s being. I also believe that our waking life experiences have the same intent. I call this the universal feedback system.
Our dreams are redundant. They send the same messages over and over until we get them. I have found that dreams will send the same message more than once in a single dream and will repeat the message throughout the night. Our waking experiences repeat the same messages throughout the day. We have many opportunities to receive and try to understand these messages.
The message, whether dreaming or waking, whether dealing with physical, relational, financial, or other problems, is always aimed at spiritual healing. When one understands the spiritual message and acts on it, physical or other healing is a natural byproduct.
All dreams have a healing intent, including so-called “bad” dreams or nightmares. All waking experiences have a healing intent, including crises and disasters. When I look at physical illnesses from this perspective, I come to the conclusion that our illnesses come to us in the service of healing. Our diseases are not the problem; they are symbols that point to a deeper issue, a spiritual issue.
In this workshop we will not simply look at the possibility of using dreams for physical healing (or the healing of any other life issue). We will look at both dreams and waking life experiences to try to discover underlying spiritual blocks, blocks to our most authentic self, blocks to our greatest potential.
Using dreamwork techniques that ask counterintuitive questions as well as guided (and un-guided) visualizations, we will seek to uncover the spiritual meaning in our dreams and waking experiences. We will also work with our own powerful healing images, images we may be ignoring, images I call Light Shadows or Golden Shadows. It is my contention that we are all more beautiful, powerful, and divine than we allow ourselves to acknowledge. Our “bad” dreams and negative waking life experiences are not meant to defeat us or block us. They are meant to help us overcome our doubts and fears and come out of the spiritual closet to become our true selves.
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Exploring Inner Space: Adventures in Lucid Dreaming
Robert Waggoner graduated from Drake University with a BA (summa cum laude) in psychology. An IASD member since 1995, he has been published in DreamTime, Dream Network Journal, and The Lucid Dream Exchange (which he co-edits). A lucid dreamer since 1975, he writes and speaks on lucid dreaming.
E. W. Kellogg III, PhD, is a proficient lucid dreamer, and his long-standing interest in the phenomenology of dreaming led to the presentation of numerous papers and workshops on such topics as the lucidity continuum, lucid dream healing, and mutual dreaming. From 2002-2005, Ed organized and hosted IASD’s online PsiberDreaming Conference.
Beverly D’Urso, PhD, an ‘extraordinary’ lucid dreamer all her life, originally worked with Dr. Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University. Using her practical philosophy called ‘lucid living,’ she has taught her own workshops and groups, presented at conferences for decades, and has over fifty publications, many included on her website: http://beverly.durso.org
Suzanne Wiltink is a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the Radboud University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. A lucid dreamer since 1994, she looks at the questions of conscious awareness in the dream state.
Abstract
This panel discussion, “Exploring Inner Space: Adventures in Lucid Dreaming,” consists of long time lucid dreamers, who average more than 25 years experience in this unique aspect of conscious dreaming. Their intent is to share some of their most profound and compelling lucid dreams in an attempt to distill “lessons” that lucid dreaming has taught them – lessons, not only of their own subjective awareness, but rather, lessons that may illuminate aspects of the inner state of dreaming, awareness and knowledge. Many of these lessons are a direct result of the profound curiosity and questioning that their lucid dreams inspired.
The panel will discuss the value of lucid dreaming for inner explorations. Since the lucid dreamer has some conscious awareness in the dream as it happens, he or she can direct the focus of that awareness to various tasks. A lucid dreamer, therefore, can experiment, explore, investigate and discover within the confines of that psychological space. For the science of dreaming, this provides an experimental tool for valid, consensual reports of inner processes and structures within the lucid dream, and by inference, dreaming itself. In a broader perspective, the lucid dreamer may be able to provide “front-row” reporting on the functioning of the dreaming mind, which may have deep implications for psychology.
In our experience, critical analysis of these types of profound lucid dreams naturally lead one to question the nature of dreaming and lucid dreaming. In the panel’s view, an advanced lucid dreamer can increase the likelihood of their own “lucid” exploratory experiences by their lucid dreams, and seeking to answer fundamental questions raised by the experience. By learning from this panel’s explorations in lucid dreaming, future dreamers will be much better prepared for their own explorations into the psyche.
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Ethical Practices in Dealing with Trauma Dreams: Healing Dreams
Carol Warner, MA, MSW, is a clinician in private practice. She has served IASD on the Board and as chair of the Ethics Committee. Her writing and presentations reflect her dual background in clinical work and religious studies. She is especially interested in the use of dreams in trauma treatment.
Johanna King, PhD, is Past President of IASD and current member of the IASD Ethics Committee. Now retired, she was a licensed psychologist in three states, taught courses on dreams, and supervised clinical graduates. She has written and presented workshops on the use of dreams in treatment of sexual abuse.
Abstract: As the victim of trauma, including sexual abuse, struggles to reconcile and put the experience into perspective, different kinds of dreams may emerge. These dreams may reflect the healing process, and give the victim and the clinician information about the progress of therapy. This workshop will focus on these “progress” dreams, and on ethical issues that may arise as the clinician helps the victim learn to deal with them. A couple of models of treatment progress will be presented.
At all stages of treatment, trauma dreams can be very distressing for the therapist as well as the victim. Additionally, the victim may have very ambivalent, mixed, or extreme feelings about anyone in the helping role. Therefore the important issues of transference and counter-transference as they come up in the dreams will be explored, especially as they impinge on ethical considerations. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage in discussion and role playing, and will be encouraged to discuss their own issues in working with trauma dreams.
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Relationship Dreams
Craig Sim Webb, past IASD board member and Director of the DREAMS Foundation ( http://www.dreams.ca ) for over a decade, has participated in research at Stanford University and at Montreal’s Sacré-Coeur Dream and Nightmare Lab. Craig is also a physicist and bio-medical design engineer, an outdoor adventure quest guide, and a performing/recording artist.
Abstract
Dreams have a great potential to help guide us in our choices about potential and new intimate relationships. Furthermore, such relationships often draw a lot of our attention and trigger a wide variety of emotional responses, so our dreams naturally respond with insights that use intimate relationships as our teacher. Such relationships and the dreams that come with them hold the possibility to help heal deep emotional challenges from our upbringing and genealogical history. Furthermore, they offer opportunities for us to both master our life lessons and express our creativity in the dance of partnership.
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Winsor McCay: An American Artist in Slumberland
Bernard Welt, Professor of Academic Studies at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., is the author of Mythomania: Fantasies, Fables, and Sheer Lies in American Popular Art, and a member of the board of IASD.
Abstract
Winsor McCay (1867-1934) created not one but two of the most influential of all instances of dream art: Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran concurrently in American newspapers from approximately 1903 to 1914. Their astonishing and often radically anti-authoritarian celebration of the bizarre and grotesque, barely masking violent and sexual material beneath the surface, reflects the same cultural concerns we see in the contemporary rise of psychoanalysis and rapid growth of cinema as a popular art form. In this presentation, participants will analyze and discuss selected McCay strips to isolate the key stylistic features and psychological concerns characteristic of McCay’s cartoons and thus of his distinctive stance as an under-recognized American artist. For this purpose, we’ll focus on Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: each strip economically represents a single nightmare, so a dominant metaphor, anxiety, or theme may be identified in each one. On the basis of our analysis of these two influential strips, we’ll consider McCay’s early contributions to the American animated cartoon tradition, arguing one significant thesis: the comic cartoon tradition built on inspiration from McCay’s early work in taking mutability as its defining convention and metamorphosis as its outstanding trope. Although mutability of image seems an inherently available feature of animated drawing, the realist tradition rejected it, while cartoonists like Max Fleischer (Betty Boop) and Chuck Jones (Bugs Bunny) took up the example of McCay’s authentic dream aesthetic.
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Individual Difference Predictors of Counterfactual Thought in Dreams
Gregory White, PhD, is a clinical and social psychologist currently directing an MFT training program and practicing as a Jungian psychotherapist. Research interests include dream cognition, dream incubation and problem-solving, and mindfulness.
Abstract
Counterfactual thought (in language or imagery) is a well-studied aspect of problem-solving and involves simulations of alternative outcomes for past events, taking into account possible changes in behavior by various actors. Drawing on this literature and the theoretical perspective of dreaming as a problem-solving process, McNamara (2002, 2002) suggested that dream cognition and imagery may represent counterfactual operations which function to improve waking problem-solving. These operations may be more symbolic than the more literal operations of waking counterfactual thought, but none the less lead to simulations of current problems. The current study sought to confirm and extend his results. His original content analysis scheme was substantially refined and expanded and used to analyze single dreams from 71 participants. Thirty-two analytic categories were used to assess the presence or absence of features of dream actions and outcomes, of the ego actor, and of any observed non-ego focal actor. These categories include violation of expectation, presence of distress, setting changes, mutation of actors, changes in direct or indirect causes of distressing dream elements, appearance of new information or resources, and the outcomes of dream actors’ changed behaviors. It was predicted that a number of individual difference variables might correlate with various categories; some of these variables were assessed by McNamara and others were not. These variables are associated with level of distress, processing of distress, or with general problem-solving processes and include right orbitofrontal processing dominance, sensory processing sensitivity, the Big Five traits, chronic worry, attitudes towards dreams (as having meaning), daytime negative mood, level of distress over actual current life problems, perceived life stress, and optimism-pessimism. In addition, degree of waking counterfactual thought was assessed
as a possible control variable. Dream vividness, intensity, and moods were also rated by the participants. Inter-rater agreement for content categories was ≥ 95%. Category frequencies were adjusted for dream length. Discriminant function analyses were conducted on category prevalence for two sets of predictors: those associated with level of waking distress and those associated with information processing. Results generally replicate and extend McNamara and are consistent with a problem-solving function of dreaming.
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Dream Coding and Psychopathology
Marco Zanasi, MD, is a medical doctor, neurologist, psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. He is Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Tor Vergata University, Rome. He has published 170 scientific papers and two books on Group Psychotherapy. For many years he has been studying oneiric activity in normal and pathological minds.
Abstract
This work aims to prove that textual analysis techniques can be used in studying oneiric material. Moving from the Jungian idea of the dream as symbolic matter, authors came to consider the dream as a form of text, and analysable as such. Beside validating this analytical criteria, this work is aimed to research significant aspects that could be used together with other diagnostic criteria. So far, analyses of dream reports have focused mainly on actants, settings, and descriptors of emotional condition during the oneiric activity. Dream reports of a group of patients at Tor Vergata University Psychiatric Department in Rome are being studied with computer-aided text analysis in order to define a set of linguistic features that can be significantly correlated to the type of psychopathology on a statistical basis.
To achieve these goals, a group of patients have been selected accordingly to DSM IV TR. Their dream reports have been analyzed in confront to control group. Preliminary findings show specific modifications of the above features that are still under evaluation.*
