Posts Tagged ‘symbols’
Using symbols to change life problems
One of the major aspects of dreams is their representation in symbols and drama of inner conflicts and problems. Because some dreams resolve life long problems, we can assume the dreams that do not solve personal difficulties, may at least be attempts to do so.
The problem solving dreams present a life situation in the form of an external event in which we participate, usually with deep emotional and mental involvement. The transformation in ourselves occurs because we are led through the experience and events of the dream to the point where a shift occurs. The dreams that do not solve problems are those that simply replay the difficulty without moving on to a change in the events to bring a shift of feelings and realisation. Once we realise that this is a fundamental process our mind uses in problem solving, we can take it up consciously and make use of it, extending its efficiency far beyond the level occurring without conscious help.
To put this into plain language, supposing painful childhood events had left someone with the habit of building a powerful shield between themselves and others. Suppose this barrier was like a great metal shield they erected every time they felt slightly hurt, thus stopping them from prolonged intimacy with others. To attempt a change in this habit, one need not wait for a dream. If the situation has been seen, the first step is to create a pictorial representation of it just as a dream does. So in this case the person could be depicted as having powerful great doors which could be shut whenever anyone came close.
The next step is to act this out alone or with one or two other people who are sympathetic to the technique. It can even be done by imagining – fantasising – the action. The person could act out closing their powerful doors and excluding people.
So far this simply represents the negative habit the person has built into their life, but this is important because it makes it real for the person. The next step should be taken slowly, and with as much openness to emotions and delicate feeling responses as possible. This is to enact a shift from the problematical position. So the person might try opening their doors – but not automatically – with sensitivity to what fears, emotions they experience in doing so.
This should be repeated until it can be done with ease and without negative fears and hesitations.
An example of this is seen in the following: A little Kuwaiti boy survived the Iraqi invasion of his country and was living without his father, a prisoner of war. But a recurring nightmare, of Saddam Hussein stabbing his brother to death, was prolonging the boys trauma.
One night he had a different dream: This time he carried a knife, becoming a hero who kills his nemesis. The emotional weight he carried disappeared. Altering recurring nightmares may hold a key to recovery for many victims of trauma, says Dr. Deidre Barrett, a professor of behavioral medicine and hypnotherapy at Harvard Medical School. Barrett spent a month in Kuwait City after the Gulf War training other therapists to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. She says, “Just changing something in the dream gives people such a sense of mastery in controlling things.”
Another great example can be seen in Example 15 – Life Changes
See Opening to Life; Street Wisdom; Secrets of Power Dreaming – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams and – Habits
Dream Symbols – What Do They Mean
By John Hodgson
Readers sometimes ask why the Dream Dictionary gives so many possible meanings for the imagery we find in dreams, and why many of the meanings are tentative and depend on the context of the specific dream. Old-fashioned dream dictionaries often give each symbol an exact meaning, and it would be reassuring – but misleading – to suggest that this is the way dreams work. But dream signs and symbols operate in the same way as signs and symbols in waking life. Their meaning depends on the way they are put together by the dreamer. Each of us combines signs and symbols in our own way, and it is by understanding this that we can come to an understanding of a dream.
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was the first person to study systematically the way in which signs work. He called this new study semiotics, or the study of signs. He postulated that experiencing the world is a matter of interpreting a language, or code. It is easy to see this in terms of traffic lights, where we obviously have to learn the meaning of red and green. De Saussure, however, went further, and suggested that everything we experience is a series of signs that we learn to “read”. The expression on our partner’s face, the clothes our neighbour wears, the shape of the door on a building – all these are a language. De Saussure prophesised that, just as we have a grammar of spoken and written language, it would eventually be possible to construct a grammar of signs, of which conventional language would be only a sub-set.
This has not come to pass, and it seems unlikely that it will ever happen. This is because de Saussure assumed that each sign has one essential meaning: what is sometimes called its denotation. Thus we all know a barking domestic animal denotes a dog. Yet, as Roland Barthes pointed out, in many cases the most important meanings of a sign are its connotations – the cluster of meanings that any sign has. These meanings are partly socially constructed, partly personal. For example, an Asian Indian village child and a British child in a middle-class suburb are likely to have different associations when they see a dog in the road: the Indian is more likely to see it as a source of danger and disease.
De Saussure’s structuralist account, which hoped to systematise the whole world of experience into an enormous dictionary of signs, has been succeeded by a post-structuralist view, in which the meaning of any sign is shifting, contingent, and highly dependent on its context. Does this mean, then, that creating a dictionary of dream symbols is a hopeless task? The answer is no, for two reasons. One is that every human culture combines signs (denotations and connotations) into what Barthes called myths – “stories” (true or false) that are meaningful for that culture. So the image of a gunfighter has connotations, in western (particularly north American) culture, that bring up associations of the frontier and the conquest of the American west. Most members of a culture will share many of the associations of a sign, and so interpretation is possible. The second reason is Jung’s theory of archetypes. This suggests that humanity carries certain archetypes in its collective unconscious – a common repository of signs and meanings that may transcend culture. Thus every sign and symbol contains meaning for the individual and for humanity at large. De Saussure was right to point out the affinity of signs and language. Both are at the same time personal and social, and both can be interpreted in the same way – by understanding what an individual’s combination of words, signs or symbols has to say about that person’s life.
The following is quoted from David Lodge’s novel Nice Work – It can be found at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem07.html
A typical instance of this was the furious argument they had about the Silk Cut advertisement… Every few miles, it seemed, they passed the same huge poster on roadside hoardings, a photographic depiction of a rippling expanse of purple silk in which there was a single slit, as if the material had been slashed with a razor. There were no words in the advertisement, except for the Government Health Warning about smoking. This ubiquitous image, flashing past at regular intervals, both irritated and intrigued Robyn, and she began to do her semiotic stuff on the deep structure hidden beneath its bland surface.
It was in the first instance a kind of riddle. That is to say, in order to decode it, you had to know that there was a brand of cigarettes called Silk Cut. The poster was the iconic representation of a missing name, like a rebus. But the icon was also a metaphor. The shimmering silk, with its voluptuous curves and sensuous texture, obviously symbolized the female body, and the elliptical slit, foregrounded by a lighter colour showing through, was still more obviously a vagina. The advert thus appealed to both sensual and sadistic impulses, the desire to mutilate as well as penetrate the female body.
Vic Wilcox spluttered with outraged derision as he expounded this interpretation. He smoked a different brand himself, but it was as if he felt his whole philosophy of life was threatened by Robyn’s analysis of the advert. ‘You must have a twisted mind to see all that in a perfectly harmless bit of cloth,’ he said.
‘What’s the point of it, then?’ Robyn challenged him. ‘Why use cloth to advertise cigarettes?’
‘Well, that’s the name of ’em, isn’t it? Silk Cut. It’s a picture of the name. Nothing more or less.’
‘Suppose they’d used a picture of a roll of silk cut in half – would that do just as well?’
‘I suppose so. Yes, why not?’
‘Because it would look like a penis cut in half, that’s why.’
He forced a laugh to cover his embarrassment. ‘Why can’t you people take things at their face value?’
‘What people are you referring to?’
‘Highbrows. Intellectuals. You’re always trying to find hidden meanings in things. Why? A cigarette is a cigarette. A piece of silk is a piece of silk. Why not leave it at that?
‘When they’re represented they acquire additional meanings,’ said Robyn. ‘Signs are never innocent. Semiotics teaches us that.’
‘Semi-what?’
‘Semiotics. The study of signs.’
‘It teaches us to have dirty minds, if you ask me.’
‘Why do you think the wretched cigarettes were called Silk Cut in the first place?’
‘I dunno. It’s just a name, as good as any other.’
“Cut” has something to do with the tobacco, doesn’t it? The way the tobacco leaf is cut. Like “Player’s Navy Cut” – my uncle Walter used to smoke them.’
‘Well, what if it does?’ Vic said warily.
‘But silk has nothing to do with tobacco. It’s a metaphor, a metaphor that means something like, “smooth as silk”. Somebody in an advertising agency dreamt up the name “Silk Cut” to suggest a cigarette that wouldn’t give you a sore throat or a hacking cough or lung cancer. But after a while the public got used to the name, the word “Silk” ceased to signify, so they decided to have an advertising campaign to give the brand a high profile again. Some bright spark in the agency came up with the idea of rippling silk with a cut in it. The original metaphor is now represented literally. Whether they consciously intended or not doesn’t really matter. It’s a good example of the perpetual sliding of the signified under a signifier, actually.’
Wilcox chewed on this for a while, then said, ‘Why do women smoke them, then, eh?’ his triumphant expression showed that he thought this was a knock-down argument. ‘If smoking Silk Cut is a form of aggravated rape, as you try to make out, how come women smoke ’em too?’
‘Many women are masochistic by temperament,’ said Robyn. ‘They’ve learnt what’s expected of them in a patriarchical society.’
‘Ha!’ Wilcox exclaimed, tossing back his head. ‘I might have known you’d have some daft answer.’
‘I don’t know why you’re so worked up,’ Said Robyn. ‘It’s not as if you smoke Silk Cut yourself.’
‘No, I smoke Marlboros. Funnily enough, I smoke them because I like the taste.’
‘They’re the ones that have the lone cowboy ads, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose that makes me a repressed homosexual, does it?’
‘No, it’s a very straightforward metonymic message.’
‘Metawhat?’
‘Metonymic. One of the fundamental tools of semiotics is the distinction between metaphor and metonymy. D’you want me to explain it to you?’
‘It’ll pass the time,’ he said.
‘Metaphor is a figure of speech based on similarity, whereas metonymy is based on contiguity. In metaphor you substitute something like the thing you mean for the thing itself, whereas in metonymy you substitute some attribute or cause or effect of the thing for the thing itself’.
‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’
‘Well, take one of your moulds. The bottom bit is called the drag because it’s dragged across the floor and the top bit is called the cope because it covers the bottom bit.’
‘I told you that.’
‘Yes, I know. What you didn’t tell me was that “drag” is a metonymy and “cope” is a metaphor.’
Vic grunted. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘It’s just a question of understanding how language works. I thought you were interested in how things work.’
‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with cigarettes.’
‘In the case of the Silk Cut poster, the picture signifies the female body metaphorically: the slit in the silk is like a vagina -‘
Vic flinched at the word. ‘So you say.’
‘All holes, hollow places, fissures and folds represent the female genitals.’
‘Prove it.’
‘Freud proved it, by his successful analysis of dreams,’ said Robyn. ‘But the Marlboro ads don’t use any metaphors. That’s probably why you smoke them, actually.’
‘What d’you mean?’ he said suspiciously.
‘You don’t have any sympathy with the metaphorical way of looking at things. A cigarette is a cigarette as far as you are concerned.’
‘Right.’
‘The Marlboro ad doesn’t disturb that naive faith in the stability of the signified. It establishes a metonymic connection – completely spurious of course, but realistically plausible – between smoking that particular brand and the healthy, heroic, outdoor life of the cowboy. Buy the cigarette and you buy the lifestyle, or the fantasy of living it.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Wilcox. ‘I hate the country and the open air. I’m scared to go into a field with a cow in it.’
‘Well then, maybe it’s the solitariness of the cowboy in the ads that appeals to you. Self-reliant, independent, very macho.’
‘I’ve never heard such a lot of balls in all my life,’ said Vic Wilcox, which was strong language coming from him.
‘Balls – now that’s an interesting expression…’ Robyn mused.
‘Oh no!’ he groaned.
‘When you say a man “has balls”, approvingly, it’s a metonymy, whereas if you say something is a “lot of balls”, or “a balls-up”, it’s a sort of metaphor. The metonymy attributes value to the testicles whereas the metaphor uses them to degrade something else.’
‘I can’t take any more of this,’ said Vic. ‘D’you mind if I smoke? Just a plain, ordinary cigarette?’
|
John Hodgson |
Coded Language of Dreams
The Dream Is A Code
It ha been said that the dream can be likened to a cartoon, which expresses or comments upon a situation by symbols. The dream can also be likened to a strange language, which we have to translate to arrive at its meaning. As Nietzsche suggested, it may be that the dream is our own archaic language, which at one time was the universal thinking process of man. To some extent we can easily see the possible truth of this by a simple experiment. The experiment also helps us in understanding the language of dreams, and thus begins the process of interpretation.
The experiment is simply this – try to think without the use of words! To be more specific, imagine that you wish to tell someone that: ‘What most people call prophecy, if looked at rationally, is usually an unconscious analysis of present events, and our projection of their consequences into the future.
I have purposely given a rather difficult idea to use in the experiment, and it should be done now before reading on. Then one finds, that without words, one is thrown back upon the use of images, symbols, dramatisation and depiction of various emotions. It would be interesting to know exactly how the reader has been able, if at all, to express the given idea about prophecy. But here is how a dream has done it.
‘I was looking into a crystal ball, when suddenly I could see a whole file of men walking along some railway lines. I called John (the dreamer’s husband), and said “Look, there is a picture in the crystal!” He looked, but then pointed behind me, and I could see that what I saw in the crystal was only a reflection of what was actually going on in the street behind me.’
This experiment of expressing ourselves without words, is very important. It demonstrates a number of things necessary in dream interpretation. Firstly, it shows that the dream may be our heritage from the past. It could be the method of thought used prior to hamanity’s use of words. If so, it suggests that human consciousness is stratified, and our present type of consciousness is built over and developed from the older level. It also clearly shows how we link up ideas such as ‘prophecy’ with an object such as a ‘crystal’. The complex idea of the future being a reflection of the present is dealt with by the clever positioning of several images in the dream. The difference between speculative and logical thinking is also expressed by the man and woman.
If we explore this idea a little further, we will quickly be able to see how a dream might be able to use common objects and events in our everyday life. Just as we have seen how a crystal expresses the idea of the future, or prophecy, our favourite armchair could express comfort or our sense of relaxation. To understand such things we have to be careful to investigate just exactly what we do feel or think about such things. For instance, our car is something we use to get from one place to another. It is a vehicle. In a sense, a school is also a vehicle, it transports us from ignorance to knowledge. But if we always feel ashamed when in our car, because it is shabby; then the car used in the dream represents our shame, our desire for better things.
Therefore we have to carefully note what our relationship with the dream symbols is. Our dream may not use our car, but just a car; when it becomes just a means of transport, about which we have no feelings. Similarly, if friends or acquaintances are pictured in dreams, then they are used because of the ideas and emotions we associate with them. Therefore, a friend who is always miserable and unsure of himself, represents our own feelings of uncertainty and misery. The warm emotional friend likewise is a symbol of our own feelings.
Sometimes dreams play on words and symbols together. Thus, if we dream of finding an old leather bag which did not belong to us, unlocking it with a key. only to find rotten and evil smelling food inside, this would be a very caustic comment on our sexual relationships. In effect it is saying, I picked up an ‘old bag’, had sexual intercourse with her, but found it unsatisfying and in the end, distasteful.
Although we have said that the dream may be a pre-language thinking, now that words have been added to our experience, the dream will naturally use them. In fact the dream uses any available material quite without our conscious sense of appropriateness Thus, colours, words, images and feelings will all be collected to express the dream. In most cases, however, we can arrive at the meaning of the symbols through our own associations with them. Of course, many symbols, like the crystal, would be almost universal, but they are only universal because enormous numbers of people have the same, or very similar, associated ideas concerning them. If one’s mother had used a crystal ball to hit one on the head as a child, it would no longer associate with prophecy, but punishment. A look at advertisements shows us how often such symbols are used to quickly convey a message without words. Thus a doctor or nurse expresses healing or sickness – a lightning flash is energy, speed and power – a policeman, law, protection or conscience a shapely girl, sexual or emotional pleasures – and so on.
Very often, the dream picks up a theme from the day’s experiences, and uses it to illustrate some inner condition. The following dream is an example of this. ‘I was looking everywhere for some green stuff to eat. I saw a field of cabbages, but, as they were not mine, could not eat the leaves.’ A couple of days before, the dreamer had prepared a salad for dinner, as it was winter, and the family were getting few ‘living’ foods. So we see that the conscious concern over ‘living’ foods has been used as a symbol in the dream. Thus the search for green leaves represents a search for something of her own that is living. The woman had been wondering what her own personal capabilities in life were. As the dream shows, she will not be satisfied or feel happy by simply taking or copying what others have done, or eating the rewards of their labours.
One last thing about the use of symbols and our attempts to interpret. Some symbols may be used a number of times in different dreams. In such cases, or in analysis generally, we have to realise that a symbol is influenced by the symbols it is grouped with, and the way it is used. To understand this, if we realise that words are symbols of thoughts in daily life, we will see clearly what is meant. As a demonstration of how one symbol (word) can alter its meaning due to context, I do not think I can better the efforts of Leslie Weatherhead when he wrote:
“For instance, in Mesopotamia you might have an officer who had blue blood in his veins and who at Oxford had been a blue. Rarely would he be a blue after dark when the whiskey went round, unless of course he went out on the blue on some stunt or other. Then he might be in a blue funk, and the air would be blue with his language. But in time he would recover from his fit of the blues, get his leave and pay, and blue the whole of the latter in a single day of the former, and he wouldn’t spend it on blue stockings either.”
So when interpreting, although we have to understand each individual symbol, we also have to see that symbol in context with the rest of the dream. Only in this way can we understand it properly.
Listing Of Symbols
If we are working on our own dreams, we cannot simply lie on a couch and let somebody else ask us all the searching questions. We have to be the one asking the right questions, and the one on the couch finding the answers. In other words, we have to know what questions to ask ourselves, and also be able to relax and let spontaneous associations and replies come up. Now that something has been said about dreams in the earlier chapters, and the idea behind association of ideas dealt with, we can actually get down to the dream analysis.
So, we have had our dream, remembered it, and written it out fully. Our next step is to start the interpretation. To begin with, one of the best ways to do this is by listing the symbols. I will use a dream to demonstrate this that is fairly simple. Here is the dream: ‘I was lying in the bed that I slept in whilst on holiday. There were a lot of people round me and I had had a baby. Everybody seemed to be certain that I was going to die, and the child or children I had given birth to had been taken away. I thought that I would die (if I was going to die) when I expelled the afterbirth, but I didn’t seem to mind.’ The dreamer added the comment, ‘I had this dream during a fit of depression.’
‘Holiday bed’ is our first symbol. When this is written down, one must now ask oneself what this idea suggests. Some of the ideas that arose around this symbol are that one talks of ‘making one’s bed, and lying on it’. So a bed can stand for some condition that has been created, that we now have to face, This is suggested by the dream showing that it is the ‘holiday’ bed, pointing to some condition that occurred on holiday. This brought up the fact that just before going on holiday, the woman had received a letter from a friend she was deeply attached to. Part of the letter had so hurt her feelings that she had felt depressed all during the holiday. Here we have the ‘bed’ that was slept in on holiday. The dream is, in fact, pointing to the ‘fit of depression’.
Turning to the next symbol, we can call it ‘a lot of people’. This is associated with two things. It is all the parts of the dreamer’s life that are implicated in her depression. Also, all of those about her, who are likewise influenced. Other parts of one’s life are obviously involved in depression. One might usually he active and creative, writing letters to people, cooking extra treats for the family, etc., all of which are left undone during such feelings of unhappiness. Or at least, not done with the same spirit.
Then we come to ‘the baby’. In real life a baby is a blending of mother and father, and all they represent. A baby is a new thing that has been ‘born’ out of us and the circumstances we are involved in. The dreamer said that due to the pain caused by the letter, a new attitude had arisen to the person who had written it. We can definitely associate this with the baby. It had likewise been ‘born’ out of her present self, and her relationship with her friend. In fact, mystics have always spoken of their pupils as ‘spiritual children’. This usually referred to the relationship between the teacher and pupil. But we can see that the dream suggests a much deeper inter-relationship. When we enter the receptive or sensitive part of another human being, we often leave a seed there that develops into a new baby. a new attitude, an offspring of the relationship between us.
‘Death’ or ‘Dying’ is the next symbol. and in the light of what has already been said is not hard to understand. For with the birth of the ‘new attitude’ to her friend, she certainly begins to feel that her old feelings for the friend are dying. As she still associates herself strongly with these feelings, it is as if she is dying. If on the other hand, she could see that the old feelings are not worth holding on to because they were so susceptible to being hurt, her dream might have shown them as the death of an old friend.
The dream ends with the symbol of ‘the afterbirth’. The placenta is that which links our established body to the new growth. The new always develops out of the old – always builds itself out of the elements, nourishment, provided by the old. In this sense, the afterbirth can be seen as the in-between condition within the woman. She could not have given birth to a new attitude unless she was near to reaching those conclusions. It also suggests those parts of the affair that ‘hang on’ within one, even when the affair is over. Not until these have dropped away will the old die, and the new, more vigorous attitude come into its own.
Therefore, our list of symbols will look something like this:
HOLIDAY BED – when one makes one’s bed, one lies in it. The bed is my depression I felt on holiday. The dream is saying this is my bed. In other words, maybe I made this depression and had to experience it because of my own attitudes.
A LOT OF PEOPLE – All the parts of my nature involved through my feelings of depression, and the Outer consequences of this.
THE BABY – The new attitude that has sprung from my pain.
THE AFTERBIRTH – All the feelings that are still hanging on concerning my hurt.
DEATH – The disappearance or death of my old attitude.
From all that, we emerge with a very comprehensive message and analysis of the situation. Although not a long and complex dream, nevertheless, an enormous amount can be gathered from it. If we think of it as a letter to ourselves from our Self, we might write it out thus:
“The letter from P. hurt a great deal. But I could not have felt that hurt if I had not entertained the feelings about him I did. In a sense, I made ‘my own bed’ by thinking about him in that way. It followed that as soon as he did something that did not fit those feelings, they would be hurt.
Yet the hurt has been a positive thing, as it has ‘given birth’ to a new attitude that may help me see P. as he is, instead of as I wanted him to be. Obviously I am still hanging on to the old attitude, but there seems the promise that it will drop away from me. Then all the old attitude, along with its possibility of being so badly hurt, will die.”
Not all dreams are as straightforward to interpret as that one. Some dreams will be only half understood. Others always remain a mystery. The next dream is an example of a more difficult type. Where so many events and objects come into the dream instead of remaining closely bound in the one scene like the bedroom dream, it usually signifies a more complex dream.
In the dream,
‘A girl had been captured by a dwarf – she’d been in hospital previous to this. He was painting and made her help him, but took all her clothes. He made her help him climb on to a big platform. While he was painting someone came up through a trap door almost underneath her, and was shocked to find her there naked and frightened. He took her away, and he and his wife gave her some clothes – bundled her into them. They kept telling her the best way to get to London; but she didn’t really want to go there and kept protesting. They didn’t listen, thinking they were doing the right thing. They took her to the bus terminus and left her there, having told her several routes to London and suggested she either got a bus or a lift. She wandered around hoping no one would recognise her. All the buses seemed to be going to Black-heath. She went to a refreshment stand; the girl in front of her in the queue had orange squash, and asked “Would chips be very expensive?” She had orange squash and it cost 10d. A shop beside the stall was headed, “Christmas cards not decorations”. She went to a cafe – they were selling peas and Brussels sprouts or rolls.’
It should be explained that the dreamer had not been appearing in her dreams. Therefore we see it all occurring to ‘a girl’. The dreamer also made only these comments on the dream: ‘I suppose the girl represents me, or more likely some part or aspect of me. The dwarf seems to stand for ugliness, cruelty – the outside world? But I am obliged to help it. Rescue comes from below – my rescuer finds this part of me helpless and vulnerable – clothes it, but in the wrong things; helps it, but in the wrong way. From this I conclude that help for this part of me will not come from below. The rescuer offers ways but none of these is the right (acceptable?) way, and this part of me is not even sure it wanted to go on a journey – it only wants to keep itself hidden. I have no direct associations with “Blackheath” – except that it reminds me of Shakespeare’s “blasted heath” and just sounds a rather unpleasant place to go.
With its lack of outer associations, and length, the dream looks like a formidable problem to unravel, although this should not put one off attempting it. Even if only part of it is revealed, it is worth the effort.
Let us start with THE GIRL. In dealing with a dream like this, lacking associations, we have to let the dream itself do much of the explaining. For instance, if one saw a man’s hand holding a beautiful bunch of red roses, with a note attached saying, ‘With love’, would it need associations? In the dream ‘the girl’ is not the dreamer. She has also recently been in hospital. So immediately the images tell us that the dreamer has submitted to a healing regime recently, and also that she does not like to see herself mixed up with the things of her dream. For one usually only disguises oneself or appears incognito, if one does not wish to be ‘associated’ with the situation. In outer life the dreamer had just become really interested in her dreams, and we might tentatively associate this with the hospital or healing.
THE DWARF can also be dealt with by looking at it as it appears in the dream. The dreamer’s associations are not satisfactory because they do not explain the dwarf in this dream context. That is stunted growth – painting – undressing the girl – making her help him to a high(er) platform. Taking the image as it is, it becomes self explanatory. It is a part of her that is faced as soon as she submits to the healing regime. It is stunted growth of creative masculine abilities that need her help to lift it to a higher level of expression. In contacting it, however, it unveils her helplessness; it strips away the clothing of pretence and delusion she had swathed herself in. and makes her see how she relates to it – in fear and trembling.
Put in words of a more understandable nature; each of us, man or woman, has something of the opposite sex in us. The logical, cool, constructive male, underneath has a world of emotions, irrational hopes, intuitions and softness usually only associated with women. On the other hand, an emotional, motherly, illogical woman, yet has within her constructive, logical, creative male characteristics. Joan of Arc is an extreme example of the strength and masculine power a woman can wield when her male qualities blend with her female self. While perhaps Schweitzer, with his gentleness, long suffering, and lovingness, is an example of the male female union. In the dreamer, however, this male creative part of her is stunted in growth. (In psychology this male aspect of a woman is called her animus. The female aspect of a man, anima.) This part of her seeks expression in art, in creativity, but has to force her co-operation by stripping off ideas, hopes, etc. This taking away of her orthodox attitudes frightens her; just as it might any person who, settled in a career that offers regular pay and security, suddenly feels a powerful urge to leave all this and take up some less ‘sensible’ job. Most people are ‘rescued’ from this frightening situation by similar means to the dreamer. Their ‘common sense saves them.
Moving on to the MAN AND WOMAN, we see that they fit this role of common sense, mum and dad, figures. They seem to be the easily shocked parents who try to do their inadequate best for the child. They represent orthodoxy, possibly gained from her parents.
But such orthodoxy ill suits her. The clothing fits poorly; the directions are not aligned with the dreamer’s inner desires. That such help arises from below, further suggests that these are orthodox habits of relationship acquired in childhood from home and school. Habits are notably motivated from the unconscious – we do such things unconsciously – without thinking.
LONDON offers a more difficult symbol. It is, in the dream, recommended by the man and woman, so we can gain a little insight by aligning it with their possible attitudes. The orthodox usually prefer the accepted. the safe, known way of doing things. Therefore, if we think of London as a symbol of the centre of commerce, of worldly pleasure; the direction in which most people go when they wish to ‘make a name’ for themselves. Thus the dream begins to resolve into a representation of an inner conflict between two urges in the dreamer’s life. One is her own creative urge which frightens her because it tends to be unorthodox. This she has held back in growth due to her fear. The other urge is that of the orthodox desire to seek a more ‘sensible’ commercial career or at least, to be more concerned with outer life. As can be seen, this is a difficult decision to make due to the inner circumstances surrounding her own creative or inner nature. We can also see that the dream is concerned with very real problems in life, and with practical affairs. For if the dreamer chooses wrongly, she may remain unsatisfied for a very long time. As the dreamer says, ‘This part of me is not even sure it wanted to go on a journey – it only wants to keep itself hidden.’ This shows how we may prefer not to know about our real inner feelings because of the torment of decision they will require.
That the BUSES going to BLACKHEATH follow this, Is very explanatory of what the dreamer senses the consequence will be. All the buses are going to Blackheath, or ‘blasted heath’. This could be taken two ways, one being that any move to commerce or acceptance of outer instead of inner values would be a journey to a very black situation, or that consciousness of the decision cannot help but lead to a period of black despair. Possibly they are both true.
In regard to the last part of the dream, she says she ‘can make no sense’. I must admit I find this difficult also, made worse by not having been able to talk it over in length with the dreamer. Generally speaking, however, any search for food is a search for nourishment. Food and drink ‘sustain’ us, ‘feed’ us. Thus arose the saying, ‘Feed my lambs’, which in its religious setting means to sustain, to keep strong. the spiritual life of the flock. However, our dream does not have a religious setting. The episode of the refreshment stand follows upon the image of Blackheath and the dreamer’s ‘wandering around’. The feelings that arise from such images, if we place ourselves in them, is that of being lost, not knowing what to do, hopelessness. Certainly in such circumstances we would need sustaining, strengthening. If we ask ourselves how we sustain ourselves in such situations we see that some people use an effort of will, some reason about the situation, some pray, some visit a friend who cheers them up, some withdraw or hide the feelings by entertainment or outer activity. Without the dreamer’s comments on this, we do not know what she did, but the dream suggests that she feels the price may be too high, and buys only the least expensive of sustenance.
The next image in the dream is CHRISTMAS CARDS not DECORATIONS. Again we can only speculate on this due to the lack of associations. The fact that it follows the concern over the cost, may help; for Christmas cards are things we give and receive, unlike decorations which simply belong to us as adornment. So the dream image seems to suggest that if we are to receive help we must not count the cost. It is a matter of giving and receiving, of being willing to part with things, that life and events will bring its own reward. We send a Christmas card because we wish a friend to know we remember him. It is a self expression, not a concern over personal adornment, a making of our house, our self, more decorative. Then the decorations, of other people’s cards come naturally. So in applying this to the conflict, it says that in expressing what is in us, instead of simply worrying about seeing we are ‘decorated’ with security, things naturally come to us.
PEAS – SPROUTS AND ROLLS seem even more bizarre until we see that they all have something in common. They are all round objects. Quite simply, a round thing suggests completeness, the full circle, the whole horizon, an ‘all round’ person. So through give and take we arrive at the condition where we can partake of a more complete, whole sustenance, which will, because of its completeness, help us through the decision. This interpretation may seem far fetched until we see, from analysis of many dreams, that a spherical shape often refers to completeness, integration or wholeness.
However, the interpretation of the dream is far less satisfying than the previous dream. This is because it lacks the comments of the dreamer in saying whether or not these interpretations really apply. It also lacks details about the dreamer’s life that would confirm or deny the conclusions. Nevertheless, it is a good example of how we can get at the possible meaning of the dream symbols if we fail to find helpful associations.
Analysis of Dreams
A great preoccupation of humans has always been ‘What intention does the world have in regard to ME?’ And also, ‘What do I want in regard to the world?’ If we understand that the sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’ includes all one holds dear, such as family, ‘tribe’, reproduction, hunting or business and general survival, then we have in a nutshell the essence of many dreams. We seek to deal in our dreams with the things that threaten these interests, whether they emerge from within us as urges or emotions, or from an external source. Dreams allow us to explore these difficulties of meeting our inner and outer worlds, and perhaps to find courage, resources or wisdom in facing them. The fact that the dreams of many ancient peoples included confronting gods or demons need not seem strange to us considering our present day dreams – see examples below. Whether the wisdom comes out of the mouth of a god or computer in our dream, the result is much the same. Whether fear arises out of the image of a ghost or an alien, it is still our own emotion we are meeting. See dream yoga.
All analysis of dreams rests upon concepts of what a dream is, what the events or images in the dream represent, and what we feel about them. Analysing dreams has a very long history, and this history shows the various concepts different cultures had about dreams and dreaming. But the analysis of a dream must not be confused with exploring a dream or using something like active imagination or the amplification method. Analysis is largely an intellectual approach while the other methods tend to encourage the dreamer toward direct personal experience, or allow unconscious content to emerge. See: Greece (ancient) dream beliefs; history of dream beliefs; religion and dreams; spiritual life in dreams; peer dream work.
Most societies, ancient and modern, have had professional dream interpreters. India had its Brahmin oneirocritics; in Japan the om myoshi; the Hasidic rabbis in Europe fulfilled this role; in ancient Egypt the pa-hery-tep; ancient Greece had the priesthood within the Asclepian temples given to dreams; among the Aztecs, dream interpretation and divination were the prerogative of the priestly class teopexqui, the Masters of Secret Things; in today’s world the Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysts fulfil this role – the author has worked as resident analyst for television’s channel four Teletext in the UK, New Zealand Teletext, London Broadcasting Company, as well as a major national newspaper.
Some of the most ancient written documents are about dream interpretation and are direct expressions of the attempt to understand or interpret dreams. The Chester Beatty papyrus on dreams for instance, dates from 1250 BC, from Egypt. This contains records of 200 dreams and their interpretations according to the priests of Horus.
Most social roles that survive for such long periods of time fulfil some useful purpose. The most fundamental purpose of dream analysis is probably that of reducing tension and anxiety in the dreamer. In skillful use of dream interpretation there may also be a powerful shift in the dreamer towards greater understanding of their life situation, or their internal process. With such understanding they find themselves in greater accord with themselves and their social and general environment. As with any role however, there is also the aspect of manipulation and control of ideas and behaviour that can occur when a lay person seeks the advice of priest or professional. Some such analysis of dreams, in the past and today, have most likely been ways of influencing the individual to fit present social or political norms or expectations, or to serve in some measure to maintain the role of the interpreter socially and economically.
Different cultures and ages approached dream interpretation in different ways. But one of the fundamental early ideas concerning what a dream meant has become folk philosophy. It has influenced thinking in regard to the mind and spirit to this day. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is that because many dreams place the dreamer in surroundings different to those in which they sleep, early thinkers were convinced this meant the human awareness or spirit left the body during sleep and travelled to far regions, or perhaps even to other worlds of the spirit. The idea of the personal awareness being able to leave the body gave rise to much speculation about the nature of human life. It became a fundamental belief that the mind or consciousness and the body were quite separate, but during life joined together in some way, perhaps like a letter in an envelope, or water within a tree. This view dominated the way personal awareness or consciousness was thought about for millennia, and was undoubtedly influenced by observation of such phenomena as out of body or near death experiences. In many people’s mind this duality is still a prime way of thinking about such phenomena of the mind as out of OBE’s and NDE’s. In fact, even with a much wider base of cultural viewpoints and philosophical and scientific debate and experiment with which to approach such phenomena, they are still not easily explained. There are however, completely different standpoints to approach the phenomena from. See: out of body experience; consciousness – the body mind split.
The Kalapalo Indians of central Brazil are a Carib-speaking community of fewer than 200 people. To the Kalapalo, dreaming represents an experience of life that frees the imagination and memory, and dreams must be interpreted with reference to the future of the dreamer.
The interpretation of dreams requires special linguistic resources that might be different from those appropriate for speaking about the ordinary waking life. Dreaming is believed to occur when, during sleep, an individual’s “interactive self” awakens and wanders until it achieves an experience. The dream experience begins when the interactive self stops wandering and starts to participate actively in some event.
According to the Kalapalo, the process of remembering is responsible for the experience of particular images, which can be associated with the memory of recent events. Dreaming is claimed to be a means of communication with powerful beings who visit the sleeper and are drawn to the interactive self when it detaches itself from a person’s physical body and begins to wander about. The appearance of powerful beings in their dreams allows the Kalapalo to acquire direct knowledge about them and about their properties, which can be subsequently used in waking life (in the event that the vision is not fatal). A person who experiences frequent and successful contacts with a powerful being becomes a shaman, after a period of apprenticeship. Quoted from Dream Enclopedia by R. Lewis James and Evelyne Dorothy Oliver.
The mental and spiritual world the ancients lived in can fairly easily be understood by our own present day dreams. This is because some of our dreams emerge from the primordial in us, such as ancient psychological and cultural patterns laid down over millennia. Therefore in our dreams we may meet with a rock, a tree or an animal that can speak to us. We face and have to deal with evil or benign spirits. We talk with our dead parents. We have warning or problem solving dreams. We are told by wise beings what will be the outcome of a situation. We experience landscapes or events that are awful or wonderful. All that has changed over the ages is the explanations given to such dreams, and the personal feelings involved.
We learn from this that we have an innate tendency in our dreams to portray the world around us, even if it is a rock, as having consciousness and intention. Other ways of putting it are that we project meaning onto the world around us, or that we have powerful emotional and thought associations with all that we experience. Of immense importance also is that we create an image of things we sense ‘out of the corner of our eye’ but cannot or do not have a clear concept of. In our dreams these obscure perceptions appear as definite images or beings with which or with whom we have a relationship. Therefore such things as social pressure, the collective or cultural character, are given form, as we find in cartoon characters such as John Bull representing the British, and Uncle Sam representing the Americans collectively.
A great preoccupation of humans has always been ‘What intention does the world have in regard to ME?’ And also, ‘What do I want in regard to the world?’ If we understand that the sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’ includes all one holds dear, such as family, ‘tribe’, reproduction, hunting or business and general survival, then we have in a nutshell the essence of many dreams. We seek to deal in our dreams with the things that threaten these interests, whether they emerge from within us as urges or emotions, or from an external source. Dreams allow us to explore these difficulties of meeting our inner and outer worlds, and perhaps to find courage, resources or wisdom in facing them. The fact that the dreams of many ancient peoples included confronting gods or demons need not seem strange to us considering our present day dreams – see examples below. Whether the wisdom comes out of the mouth of a god or computer in our dream, the result is much the same. Whether fear arises out of the image of a ghost or an alien, it is still our own emotion we are meeting. See dream yoga.
Example: My toddler was on the landing and he had red silk shorts on with plastic pants half pulled up over the shorts. I ask him how he got like that as he is too small to do it himself. Then behind him my husband just appeared and said he had dressed him, but I knew my husband was out and this must be an apparition or something really evil. I was extremely frightened and ran into our bedroom and saw my husband floating over the bed head. Then I woke. Mrs. H. C.
Example: There were a few strangers in a chemistry laboratory, with myself – one at each table all waiting for something. Suddenly we all looked at a large house spider on the wall. At the same time one of us, it seemed to be me, turned into some sort of evil monster-man. We all ran away terrified, while he rampaged round the building. Mrs. K.L.S.
Example: I was in an ancient room. It had the feeling of it being an old church. Then my wife and I were in bed in the room. A middle aged woman was in the room. She was a ghost. I felt afraid of her, but to confront the fear I reached out my hand to her. I was crying out in my sleep from fear. As she took my hand I was amazed and shocked to feel it as physically real. I cried out ‘I can feel you – I can feel you!’ She was also surprised. I had the impression this level or dimension was recognised by ‘them’. She said to companions ‘I do not understand, ‘He is from the fourth level.’ I then said I wanted to understand. A.T.
Example: I was with a young boy and went to his house. I believe his mother was there and a cat. The vivid part was that the cat spoke to me. It spoke in a rather female voice, very clearly. As it spoke I felt great amazement. I had lots of thoughts about how it had learned language – that it could speak because of human language – what did language do to its mind – and so on. I didn’t reach any conclusions. I noticed as it spoke that it had tiny lips, but they were perfectly formed like a woman’s. They had lipstick on – or at least were red and attractive. I cannot remember what the cat said, but this didn’t seem to be important. It was the fact it spoke that was so wonderful. I left the house and was asking people whether they had ever heard a cat talking – still full of wonder. A.T.
The major difference between the way ancient people interpreted their dreams and the way we generally approach them today is that ancient people were certain the dream was real, whereas we have a certainty of its illusionary quality. This enormous difference meant that ancient peoples generally approached their dreams with a conviction they could find help, healing or information from them. See what we need to remember about dreams.
In many cases in the past, dreams were looked to for signs of prophecy about important issues such as ones health, long life, fertility, wealth or victory in a battle. For instance an ancient Babylonian prayer reads: ‘Either let me see it in a dream, or let it be discovered by divination, or let a divinely inspired man declare it, or let all the priests find out by incubation whatever I demand of them.’
In the oldest known book, the story of Gilgamesh, it is told how Enkidu, the king’s great friend, dreamt an awful prediction of his own death. ‘There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away forever; rulers and princes, all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old. And there was Ereshkigal the Queen of the Underworld; and Belit-Sheri squatted in front of her, she who is recorder of the gods and keeps the book of death. She held a tablet from which she read. She raised her head, she saw me and spoke: ‘Who has brought this one here?’ Then I awoke like a man drained of blood who wanders alone in a waste of rushes; like one whom the bailiff has seized and his heart pounds with terror.’
Enkidu goes on to say – ‘The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of life is sorrow.’ Following the dream Enkidu became increasingly ill and died twelve days later.
The dreams that have come down to us in such written form are of course greatly memorable. The following is another example of this – The night before (the parents of Alexander the Great) lay in wedded bed, the bride dreamed that lightning fell into her belly, and that withal, there was a great light fire that dispersed itself all about into divers flames. King Philip her husband also, shortly after he was married, dreamed that he did seal his wife’s belly, and that the seal wherewith he sealed, left behind the print of a lion. Certain wizards and soothsayers, told Philip that this dream gave him warning to look straightly to his wife. But Aristander Telmesian answered again, that it signified his wife was conceived with child, for that they do not seal a vessel that hath nothing in it: and that she was with child with a boy, which should have a lion’s heart. From Plutarch’s ‘The Life of Alexander the Great’, AD 100.
A dream such as this is also reported by the mother of Buddha prior to his birth. (See Buddhism and dreams.) It is also much the same as Mary’s vision prior to her conception of Jesus. In fact in the Jewish and Moslem traditions regarding dreams, an encounter with God in a dream was regarded of very great importance, and was not seen as different to a vision or waking encounter with God or an angel. For more everyday dreams however, we must read those collected by anthropologists from present day tribal people. See: Native American dream beliefs; Babylonian dream beliefs; Hebrew dream beliefs; Iroquoian dream cult; Islamic dream traditions; Chinese Dream Beliefs; Mesopotamian Dream Beliefs; Australian Aborigine Dream Beliefs.
We can generalise and say that Babylonian dream interpreters tended to see dreams as being either good or bad. The good were sent by supportive gods, and the bad by demons. The Babylonians had a goddess of dreams named Mamu. The function of the priests of Mamu was to prevent bad dreams.
The Assyrians believed dreams to be mostly omens of good or ill luck. Like the Babylonians they tried to deal with the possible fate following from bad dreams. In fact this sense of an ill fate being presaged by bad dreams was common to most ancient cultures. But this was gradually extended in Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture. This development of what people expected to find in their dreams probably arose from folk wisdom arising from observation of actual events. Diodorus for instance said that ‘in Egypt, dreams are regarded with religious reverence, especially as means of indicating remedies in illnesses’; and that ‘the prayers of worshipers are often rewarded by the indication of a remedy in a dream.’ An Egyptian prayer to this effect reads ‘Turn thy face to-wards me. Tis thou who dost accomplish miracles and art benevolent in all thy doings; ‘tis thou who givest children to him that hath none. Tis thou who hast created magic, and established the heavens and the earth and the lower world; ‘tis thou who canst – grant me the means of saving all.’
This idea of dreams being a source of information that can help heal a physical illness, or as a source of inspiration in making difficult decisions is widespread in ancient cultures. The Egyptian story of Satni tells of Mahituukhit going to the temple of Imuthes in ancient Memphis, praying to the god, then falling asleep in the temple. She then received a dream from the god showing a cure for her infertility. The god said to her ‘When tomorrow morning breaks, go thou to the fountain of Satni, thy husband; there thou shalt find growing a plant of colocasia; pull it up, leaves and all, and with it make a potion which thou shalt give to thy husband: then shalt thou sleep with him, and that very night shalt thou conceive.’ It was common in seeking such dreams as the above to prepare by ritual fasting and bathing as a means of purification and then to sleep in the temple.
These early forms of dream analysis arose then out of a quite limited set of values. A dream was either good or bad. A dream either prognosticated good or ill fortune. It illuminated the way to death or to regained health. Lastly the dream may be a message from a god showing a wise decision in life, battle or politics. Therefore early analysis was limited to such views, as is show in the account of Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat kine and the seven thin kine who ate the fat cattle. The dream and its interpretation, showing the future of the nation’s fortune, was both a dream about a dire fate, and about a political or state decision.
The Huron and Seneca Indians of America had a view of the dreams which stands in the balance between the ancient world and the modern psychological concept of dreams. They saw dreams as expressing psychological tension and unexpressed desires. This was a definite forerunner of modern understanding. Nevertheless the main sources of modern dream interpretation lie in the ancient dream interpreters such as Artemidorus who wrote the Oneirocriticus – Interpretation of Dreams – in AD 200; in the commentaries on dreams of Aristotle which so influenced Western thinking; and in the early criticisms such as we find in Cicero, in which he says – ‘Even if true interpretations of dreams could exist, it is certainly not in the possession of those who profess it, for these people are the lowest and most ignorant of the people.’ He reached this view by observing that dreams were infinitely variable, and one could observe that different people having the same dream did not experience the same results. One could not therefore base any conclusive conclusion upon them. He ended by saying ‘Let us reject, therefore, this divination of dreams, as well as all other kinds. For, to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all nations, and has oppressed the intellectual energies of all men, and has betrayed them into endless imbecilities.’ However it is apparent in what Cicero says that he is talking about the interpretation of dreams which sees them all as divinatory.
Aristotle moved beyond this viewpoint and was perhaps the first to leave a record of careful and analytical thought about dreams and sleep that link with today’s approach in which information is gathered and sifted. His suggestions in regard to how one might analyse dreams are summed up in three short essays: On Sleep and Dreams, On Sleep, and On Divination Through Sleep. See: Aristotle on dreams.
Strangely, European history appears to have been a slide into the deeps of superstitious imaginations regarding dreams and dreaming. It was a state of mind which appears to have had no links with the clarity of past cultures, or observations of collective experience. During this period all manner of fantastic explanations of dreams arose. The ancient dream dictionaries, the first of which was written by Artemidorus, and was published in the second century BC – were slowly degraded into statements of good luck or bad luck unconnected with cultural symbolism such as was found in Artemidorus original work. The influence of these European dream dictionaries are still found on sale in book shops today. Raphael’s Dictionary of Dreams, and the like are still purchased and read, and are modern expressions of this dark period of European psychological learning regarding dreams.
During this time dreams were also linked with numerology. In 1654 The Palace of the Curious was published in France. It explained how algebra and the laws of chance are means by which we can interpret the most puzzling of dreams. This became a tradition and many dream dictionaries published today still explain dreams in this way. Alongside these there were many claiming to explain dreams according to ancient Egyptian wisdom. As Norman Mackenzie says in his excellent review of these books in his Dreams and Dreaming, these ‘modern dream books represent the most degenerate form of what was once regarded as a divine art; they lack any real religious or magical sanction, and are simply an expression of popular superstition, like the belief in lucky numbers, lucky colours or birthstones. Whatever meaning may once have lain behind the symbols and the interpretation has long been lost.’
There were however lights within this gloom. Amidst the darkness created by a repression of any attempt to explore fresh understanding, there were still groups and individuals who attempted to discover and protect what was good of ancient thought, and what might be uncovered by personal observation. An illustration is this quote of Paracelsus rediscovered by Jung. ‘That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in the man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it; for we ought to know that God has given us our own wisdom and knowledge, reason, and the power to perceive the past and the future; but we do not know it, because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourselves.’
Although Sigmund Freud is popularly thought of as the founder of modern therapeutic analysis of dreams, many other people set the scene for him by careful observation and experiment. Freud encouraged clients to relax on a couch and allow free association of ideas arise in connection with aspects of their dream. In this way he helped the person move from the surface images – manifest content – of the dream, to the underlying emotions, fantasies and wishes – latent content – often connected with early childhood. Because dreams use condensation – a mass of different ideas or experiences all represented by one dream image or event – Freud stated that the manifest content was ‘meagre’ compared with the ‘richness and variety’ of latent content. If one succeeds in touching the feelings and memories usually connected with a dream image, this becomes apparent because of the depth of insight and experience that arise. Although ideally the Freudian analyst helps the client discover their own experience of their dream, it can occur that the analyst puts to the client ready made views of the dream. Out of this has occurred the idea of someone else ‘analysing’ or telling us about our dream. See: Freud, Sigmund; latent content; manifest content.
Carl Jung used a different approach. He applied amplification, helped the client explore their associations, used active imagination, and stuck to the structure of the dream. Because what arises for the dreamer is frequently still shaped and presented according to the information and experience of the therapist, again the dream work might still be largely verbal and intellectual, rather than experiential. See: amplification; active imagination; association of ideas with dream; Jung, Carl.
In the approach of Fritz Perls Gestalt Therapy and Moreno’s Psychodrama the approach to dream analysis is almost entirely experiential. The person exploring the dream acts out or verbalises each role or aspect of the dream. If one dreamt of a house, in using the Gestalt approach, one might start by saying, ‘I am a house’ and then go on to describe oneself just as one is as the particular house in the dream. It is important, even if the house were one existing externally, not to attempt a description of the external house, but to stay with the house as it was in the dream. This is like amplification, except the client gives all the information. This can be a very dramatic and emotional because we begin to consciously reveal the immense realms of experience usually hidden behind the image. When successful this leads to personal insights into behaviour and creativity. So this is experiential rather than analytical. See: gestalt dream work.
Modern dream analysis, if not limited to the approach of one clinical school such as Freudian or Jungian, is a very rich technique. It spans the best of the ancient cultures such as the use of dreams for help in decision making or healing of physical health. It incorporates techniques that enable dreams to be accessed by any intelligent person in order to be enriched by them. Many tools are available in this modern eclectic approach, tools that enable one to mine the various treasures from ones inner life of dreams. But foremost among the additions to the jewels of understanding garnered in the past, is that of insight into ones personal psychological history and personal traumas. This I believe is unique to our times, and not fully appreciated generally. From this new skill a way is being developed to integrate the many aspects of ones own multifaceted being. See: amplification; gestalt dream work; processing dreams; psychodrama and dreams.