The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams (13 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams
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father; freedom versus security; masculine traits versus feminine traits; culture versus animal nature; and life versus death. Hall believed that laypeople could interpret their own dreams and determine their central conflicts by keeping some basic premises in mind:
1. Your dreams reflect how you view yourself, your world, and the people in it. Rather than revealing an objective truth, he believed, dreams are subjective, revealing how we see the truth.
2. Dreamers tend not to accept responsibility for their dreams as they would for something they said or wrote during their waking lives. But as the dreamer, you must keep in mind that you created everything in the dream, no matter how embarrassing or inane.
3. Because you have many different feelings about any one thing, and these feelings can change over time, the elements in your dreams may shift in meaning. Dreams reflect how you feel at that particular stage of life.
At the same time that Hall was questioning the analytic approach to dreams, Frederick S. "Fritz" Perls originated the psychotherapeutic method called Gestalt therapy (from the German word meaning "whole"), a short-term group treatment dealing with the whole person. Perls, who died in 1970, is recognized as a pioneer in the field of humanistic psychology, a branch of mind study that promotes personal growth. Perls turned away from intellectualized dream interpretation to an experiential "reliving'' of dreams through reenactment of dramatization of them in waking life. Perls was a dynamic speaker and writer whose words were free of technical psychological terms and concepts and alive with the energy of ideas. Here is Perls's dream philosophy as out-
 
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lined in his book
Gestalt Therapy Verbatim:
"In Gestalt therapy we don't interpret dreams. We do something much more interesting with them. Instead of analyzing and further cutting up the dream, we want to bring it back to life. And the way to bring it back to life is to re-live the dream as if it were happening now. Instead of telling the dream as if it were a story of the past, act it out in the present, so that it becomes a part of yourself, so that you are really involved.
Expanding on Jung's theories, Perls suggested that every part of a dream, every detail, every character, is actually a part of the dreamer him- or herself. He described the sometimes warring factions within a dream as parts of the self that are in conflict, and suggested that dreamers use dream reenactment to learn to "own" these parts of themselves, integrating their personalities into a more comfortable whole. (Chapter 6 describes several techniques for acting out a dream.) "If you understand what you can do with dreams," he wrote, "you can do a tremendous lot for yourself on your own." For Perls, outside interpreters such as psychoanalysts who suggest or impose interpretations could not possibly be as accurate as the dreamers themselves.
Other Experiential and Alternative Theories
Over the years, interest in dream theory has grown, and there are now hundreds of groups of dreamworkers, both professional and amateur. As a result, there are many schools of thought regarding dreams, and many of these are quite unlike those of Freud. Some of these dreamworkers, such as Arnold Mindell, actually refuse to even define what a dream is, except to say that it is "an experience happening to a sleeping person." Whatever happens beyond that, he says, is a matter of opinion: "So I listen and look
 
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and feel,'' he writes, "in order to find to what the individual in front of me means by the word
dream.
"
Several contemporary philosophers and dreamworkers of various cultures also hold to this experiential or experience-based theory, drawing on the beliefs of ancients who saw the waking world and the dreamworld as merely two different ways of experiencing reality: The waking world, they would argue, is no more or less important than the dreamworld; what is true in waking life is no more or less true than what is true in dream life. Most of these theories are more concerned with experiencing dreams than analyzing what they mean.
Psychologist Stanley Keleman, for example, who has been developing what he calls somatic or body-centered psychology for more than twenty-five years, says that "the dream is not a symbolic or representational state, [but] a special somatic space . . . as much a somatic existence as is our so-called body." Like Mindell, Keleman believes that dreaming is a process that has no value in and of itself, but is a part of the maturing process that he says "deepens reality" and organizes and enriches experience. "To dream," Keleman says, ''is concerned with how we body ourselves as adults in different situations . . . [through] the somatic imagination." Keleman's method of working with a dream involves recounting it slowly, first forward, then backward, focusing on the bodily experience associated with key dream feelings and images, then intensifying and de-intensifying the experience, which be believes gives depth and integration to the dream experience.
Another body-centered dreamwork theorist is psychologist Eugene Gendlin, author of
Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams
. Expanding on a therapeutic technique he calls "focusing," Gendlin developed sixteen questions for the dreamer to ask about the dream. In answering these questions, many of which are related to the dreamer's feelings, the dreamer can zero in on the
 
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core significance of the dream as an experience. Gendlin is more interested in the dreamer's physical sensations in response to the questions about the dream than in any particular interpretation. He sees these physical sensations as evidence of "something opening up" in the dreamer, indicating a new "growth direction" that is "expansive and forward moving,'' where previously the dreamer had been held back.
Humanistic psychologist and dreamworker Stanley Krippner developed a theory of dream interpretation based on the concept of personal myths. Myths, according to Krippner, are statements or stories about important human concerns that impact our decisions and behavior. Like cultural myths, personal myths give "meaning to the past, definition to the present, and direction for the future," Krippner writes. The function of dreams is to reconcile or "synthesize" people's personal myths with the experiences of their personal lives. If your personal mythology is out of sync with a particular experience, the role of the dream is to resolve the difference. In Krippner's words, "personal myths can resolve polarities and enable a healthy dialectic to occur, leading the dreamer to higher levels of synthesis." For example, a woman who has a personal myth that men are dangerous may face a monster in a dream and through dreamwork see new possibilities for relationships with men in her waking life.
"Emotion is the glue that holds the dream together."
Stanley Krippner, psychologist
Like other experiential dreamworkers, Krippner believes that feelings and bodily experience are keys to the dream's meaning. "Old myth dreams" feel hopeless and draining, "counter-myth dreams" usually feel hopeful and exhilarating, and "integration of synthesis dreams" tend to produce feelings of calm and self-assurance. Dreams may include one or more of
 
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what Krippner identifies as "power points" corresponding to the mythic elements of Native American Shamanism: nature, emotions, directions, past events, future events, impossibilities, and ancestors. Like Keleman, Krippner uses the integrative function of opposite feelings as the core of his technique for interpreting dreams. He proposes a three-step process that begins with going to the most emotional part of a dream and associating an early life experience with that emotion, then looking for the message or personal myth connected with that experience. The second step is identifying the opposite emotion of the original feeling and finding an early life experience associated with that emotion, then determining what message or myth comes out of that experience. The final step is taking both the original and opposite messages back to the dream story and using them to elucidate the meaning of the dream.
Another alternative theory of current interest derives from Eastern beliefs and practices. In recent years, the once secret dreamwork practices of the Tibetan Dzogchen school of thought have been made public, in an effort to prevent them from extinction. Dream Yoga, as it is sometimes called, is an ancient theory and practice of dreamwork that describes three aspects of all human experience: waking, sleeping, and dreaming, each of which is constantly changing. This school is concerned more with the spiritual context of dreamwork and dream awareness than with dream content or interpretation; it is more focused on experiencing or "being" than on "doing."
Dzogchen belief states that there are two types of dreams: karmic dreams, relating to the emotional traces of the day's events, and clarity dreams, appearing only when the body, energy, and mind are relaxed and in balance. Karmic dreams are primarily expressions of the tensions or "poisons" of the individual's body and mind. Specific karmic energies or "traces" are said
 
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to manifest themselves in dreams related to the six "chakras" or realms of the body, with particular dreams being characteristic of the destructive qualities connected with each chakra. Clarity dreams, similar to what some Western theorists call "high dreams," are often archetypal or teaching dreams that are characterized by lucidity, or the awareness of dreaming within the dream state. Dzogchen followers believe that this clarity has the power to liberate the dreamer from the restrictions of everyday life. Says Tibetan master and professor Namkhai Norbu in
Dream Yoga:
"In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like a big dream. If we examine them well, the big dream of life and the smaller dreams of one night are not very different. If we truly see the essential nature of both, we will see that there really is no difference between them. If we can finally liberate ourselves from the chains of emotions, attachments, and ego by this realization, we have the possibility of ultimately becoming enlightened.'' These Eastern beliefs are echoed in the writings of Western dream theorist Medard Boss, who states in his book
The Analysis of Dreams,
"There is no such thing as an independent dream on the one hand and a separate waking condition on the other. . . . We must recognize the dream as a form of human existence in its own right, just as we call the waking state a particular form of man's life." Boss encourages the dreamer to consider the dream on its face rather than viewing it as symbolic of something else.
People who claim to have experienced the breakdown of the barrier between the two worldswhether they are Tibetan Buddhists or Western dreamworkers such as Mindell, Keleman, and John Weirsay they feel a profound sense of joy, freedom, and exhilaration from their dreams. South American shaman Alberto Taczo calls this feeling "an immense joy that comes when the house of fear collapses and we realize the possibilities

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