One Way to Do Dreamwork
Interest in dreams and their interpretation has a long and fascinating history, too long, though, for it to be included here (cf. Van de Castle, 1994). It can also be said that this interest can be found in just about every culture and, in some cases, concern with dreams and their meaning is more advanced, especially in some indigenous peoples, than here in the West (there are historical reasons for why we are so far behind, but that would also take us too far afield). 1
Dream “languages”
In classical dream interpretation, attempts were made to arrive at dream meanings with all sorts of means (for this a plethora of dream books are available -- just have a look at the appropriate shelf in your local bookstore) and almost just as many approaches and methods. And they have met with a certain amount of success: there are dreams, for example, that are clearly Freudian and there are also those where the Jungian "amplification approach" is just the right thing (e.g., so-called "big" dreams from the collective unconscious with their impressive and often unforgettable symbols and situations).
There are, though, problems:
- Depending on the person, most of their dreams come from their personal unconscious and are not especially or obviously symbolic.
- Each dreamer has his or her very own dream "language." A cow for me as a city dweller has a very different meaning than it does for someone making cheese on an alp!
- Dreams often have several meanings/interpretations: depending on the point of view, one discovers or sees something else. 2 This means that if one assigns a dream a particular meaning, it is then finished and "dead", so to speak, and this sort of dream "murder" should be avoided.
What, then, can be done?
Discovering a dream’s meanings carefully
Over the years, a fairly simple and easy to remember scheme for working with dreams has evolved (and is being taught and used in the dreamwork seminar at the C. G. Jung Institute [Küsnacht, Switzerland] each semester). This approach (which can also be used with friends and family members) utilizes four main "tools" (which should always be used) and a few auxiliary ones (to be used when appropriate). Among the auxiliary tools are methods such as painting and/or modeling dream scenes and/or characters, acting dream scenes (as in psychodrama or gestalt therapy), Jung's techniques of amplification and active imagination, and so on. Here I wish to present the dreamwork scheme that has crystallized out over the years which consists of four phases and restricts itself to only using the four main tools.
The four phases are:
1.Quieting
2. Clarification
3. Utilizing the tools and
4. Feedback to the dreamer
1. Quieting
In order to be truly present to the dreamer, and to fully take in what the dreamer tells, one has to be quiet inside. Far too often, when approaching a dreamwork session, all sorts of thoughts and feelings occupy the mind, some associated with what one may know about the dreamer, and many more that have to do with the own life situation in its many facets. Quieting then consists in a conscious effort to still the mind and open oneself to what will be said and shown as the dream is told. Deep breathing and other meditation and mindfulness techniques can here be very useful in order to achieve the balance and inner quiet that is needed.
2. Clarification
When someone has told his or her dream one should make sure that everything said has been clearly understood. In many cases, it isn't necessary but it is always good to take time to reflect on what was said and thereby make sure the dream is clear. It often helps for the dreamer to tell the dream again and, sometimes, he or she remembers more from the dream the second time they tell it.
3. Utilizing the four main tools
The four main tools are:
a) Asking for information
b) Inquiring about feelings and emotions
c) Learning the life situation in which the dream arose and
d) Paying attention to one’s own reactions to the dream and answers to the questions that are asked the dreamer
a) Asking meticulously about each particular
One needs to ask all sorts of questions in order to obtain the greatest amount of information about the dream figures (persons, animals), places, objects, colors, weather, time of year and day, etc. When one hears a dream, one automatically makes pictures/images of what has been said and may well have feeling reactions to it. These, though, are not the same as what the dreamer saw and experienced. Thus, one important reason for this step is in order to correct the own inner image and impressions using these questions. Here it is very important that the questions are open and honest ones (i.e., not attempts to lead the dreamer to some truth that the listener has arrived at). It is also important to ask very concrete questions and stay as close to the dream as possible. For instance, should the dream contain a ring, one asks what was the ring made of, did it have a stone, how big was it, and so on. The hope is that the dreamer will answer the questions from his or her memory of the dream and not from some theoretical ideas and notions.
One of the advantages of working with dreams in this way is that it often happens that more of the dream is remembered while it is being worked on. It also often happens that the dreamer discovers new aspects of the dream that they didn't pay attention to on their own. Telling a dream and working on it in this way also helps the dreamer get some distance from it and see it more objectively. It may seem tedious to go into such detail but actually such questioning and the answers that emerge are endlessly fascinating.
b) Asking about the emotions and feelings experienced within the dream
Another very important line of questioning has to do with the feelings and emotions that the dreamer felt as he or she was experiencing the dream. Here, it is not the reaction to the dream that is being asked for, but rather the feelings that were experienced as the dream unfolded, at each step along the way, so to speak. In my experience, it is often the case that the main message of the dream has to do with the feelings and not so much with the outer, physical level of meaning.
c) Asking about the life context at the time when the dream occurred
Dreams arise and are related to life situations or contexts. Very often, they seem to function as a sort of "digestion" process in which the issues of the previous day are worked through. As the dream is reflected on and worked on, the dreamer may see that it points out issues, especially emotional ones, which the dreamer hadn't noticed or was not consciously aware of in the previous day's activities and events. 3
On the other hand, dreams can also serve to prepare us for what lies ahead. I think we've all encountered such dreams, possibly the most famous one being that of coming to the train station and seeing the train one wished to catch pulling away. The anguish of missing the train in a dream is usually enough to insure that we get to the train station on time or even with time to spare the next time we have to travel somewhere. 4 In the same way, dreams often help prepare us for life tasks and upcoming encounters. 5
For these reasons and for better dream understanding, when keeping a dream diary (something highly recommended), it is a good idea to note down what was happening during the preceding day and possibly what was coming up the following day in addition to the text of the dream. That way, one can return to the dream months or years later and have a much better chance of seeing what the dream was getting at and trying to say.
(When working on a dream in this way, these lines of questioning are not necessarily "applied" in any particular order. The order I've presented them in is not a bad one but there is no reason for them to be pursued sequentially.)
d) Paying attention to one’s own reactions to the dream and answers to the questions that are asked the dreamer
When working on a dream it is inevitable that the dreamworker will have her or his own associations and reactions to what is asked and to what the dreamer relates. It is vitally necessary that the dreamworker keeps tabs on them because, otherwise, in giving feedback to the dreamer (in the next phase) she or he will assume things about the dreamer that are not necessarily true. This mechanism is called “projection”, the most glaring example of it being are our prejudices and stereotypes.
4. Giving feedback to the dreamer
At the end of this dream work, the final step is the one of offering the dreamer the ideas and impressions that you, the dreamworker, have had while listening to the dream and all the answers. This is done, though, in a special way (an approach developed by Montague Ullman MD [1985] and Rev. Jeremy Taylor [1983]). The person giving feedback prefaces his or her remarks by saying "If I were you and this was my dream, it might mean ..." or "My fantasy about what your dream might be saying is ...". The reason for this is very simple: it gives the dreamer the space in which he or she is free to disagree with what is said and it also helps avoid "killing" the dream (for the reason given above).
I often refer to this approach as "client-centred, non-violent dreamwork" and I have been teaching it at the C. G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht since 1989. I have never encountered a bad session or situation with it. It also forms the basis for the dream work I do in my practice as a psychotherapist as well as when leading a dream group as I do where I live in Bern. And this is not the only one. There is a growing number of such groups, most of them in the US but in many other countries as well.
Dreamwork in palliative care
My hope is that one day, this way of working with dreams can be taught to nurses and orderlies, especially those working with long-term patients and/or those in palliative wards. While washing patients, for example, they can ask about dreams, thereby giving the patients the feeling that someone is interested in them and that they still have something to contribute in this world. It seems just the mere fact that someone has listened to a dream and taken it seriously is already therapeutic for many people. At the 2013 conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams ( www . asdreams . org ), Canadian nurse Monique Séguin presented a paper about her work with hospice patients and told how her work with the dreams of dying patients has been so beneficial (see Gratton & Séguin, 2013). In this connection, the papers by Iordache & MacLeod (2011) and Levy et al. (2020) represent significant steps in this direction. The books by M. L. von Franz (1998) and Bulkeley and Bulkley (2005) may also be helpful. A recent search at Pubmed for “End-of-Life Dreams” turned up 17 studies that have taken place in the last few years and I find that very encouraging.
There was once a small exhibit about dreams in the Bern Museum of Natural History. There it was said that "Träume sind Schäume" (dreams are fluff), but I beg to differ. I am often asked if there are not dreams that one can ignore as irrelevant or meaningless. 6 I reply that there may well be such dreams, but I have yet to meet up with one when, if worked on, doesn't yield some new insight or impulse.
Postscript
The method I’ve laid out in the foregoing is not fundamentally new. Basically it was already described in book four of the
Oneirocritica
, which consists of instructions
Artemidorus of Daldis
(2nd century A.D.) wrote to his son on the art of dream interpretation. Although it is not so well known,
C. G. Jung
(1916/1972, 1935/1977) actually employed this approach when working with dreams from the personal unconscious. During my psychotherapy training at the C. G. Jung Institute, we were taught this way of working with dreams by
Dr. Arnold Mindell
who organized weekend workshops where we could practice it with each other. My contribution has simply been to augment and systematize it.
C. G. Jung Institute, Küsnacht, Switzerland
Footnotes
1. Those wishing to learn more are invited to have a look at http :// funkhouser . dreamunit . net / Dream - notes /
2. It is said that a rabbi once took his dream to 26 different dream interpreters and he received 26 different interpretations. It is said that, with time, he realized that all 26 interpretations were correct.
3. That dreams often depend on the dreamer's life situation became clear in a review we made of the literature concerning dreams of the elderly (Funkhouser et al., 1999).
4. Dreams of missing a train can also have symbolic meanings and this might well be the case if one was not planning to catch a train the following day.
5. Dreams can have meaning both in terms of objective, outer reality and also in our subjective, inner world. A person we meet in a dream, for example, may represent the real, actual person, but can just as well represent an inner attitude, tendency or way of life. For most people, the latter possibility is often the more likely one.
6. In the Talmud, it is said that an unexamined dream is like an unopened letter.
References
Bulkeley K, Bulkley P, (2005) Dreaming Beyond Death: A Guide to Pre-Death Dreams and Visions. Boston: Beacon Press.
Funkhouser A, Hirsbrunner H-P, Cornu C, Bahro M (1999) Dreams and dreaming among the elderly: an overview. Ageing and Mental Health 3(1): 10 - 20.
Gratton N & Séguin M Dreams and Death (available as an ebook on Amazon).
Iordache SM, MacLeod RD (2011) Do sleep dreams of palliative patients mean anything? Home Healthcare Nurse 29(5):291-7 (ISSN: 1539-0713)
Jung CG (1916/1972) General Aspects of Dream Psychology in: The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 8, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, par. 444.
Jung CG (1935/1977) Lecture IV of the Tavistock Lectures in: The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 18, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, par. 248.
Levy K et al. End-of-Life Dreams and Visions and Posttraumatic Growth: A Comparison Study (2020) Journal of Palliative Medicine 23(3):319-324. doi: 10.1089/jpm.2019.0269.
Taylor J (1983) Dream Work. New York: Paulist Press.
Ullman M, Zimmerman N (1985) Working with Dreams. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher.
Van de Castle R (1994) Our Dreaming Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Von Franz M.-L (1998) On Dreams & Death: A Jungian Interpretation. Peru, Ill: Carus Publishing.
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