The Dialogue Of DreamsEssay Preview: The Dialogue Of DreamsReport this essayThe Dialogue of DreamsAre dreams a source of reliable divination? Generations upon generations seem to have thought so. They incubated dreams by travelling afar, by fasting and by engaging in all other manners of self deprivation or intoxication. With the exception of this highly dubious role, dreams do seem to have three important functions:
a. To process repressed emotions (wishes, in Freuds speech) and other mental content which was suppressed and stored in the unconscious. b. To order, classify and, generally, to pigeonhole conscious experiences of the day or days preceding the dreaming (“day residues”). A partial overlap with the former function is inevitable: some sensory input is immediately relegated to the darker and dimmer kingdoms of the subconscious and unconscious without being consciously processed at all.
c. To “stay in touch” with the outside world. External sensory input is interpreted by the dream and represented in its unique language of symbols and disjunction. Research has shown this to be a rare event, independent of the timing of the stimuli: during sleep or immediately prior to it. Still, when it does happen, it seems that even when the interpretation is dead wrong – the substantial information is preserved. A collapsing bedpost (as in Maurys famous dream) will become a French guillotine, for instance. The message conserved: there is physical danger to the neck and head.
All three functions are part of a much larger one: The continuous adjustment of the model one has of ones self and of ones place in the world – to the incessant stream of sensory (external) input and of mental (internal) input. This “model modification” is carried out through an intricate, symbol laden, dialogue between the dreamer and himself. It probably also has therapeutic side benefits. It would be an over-simplification to say that the dream carries messages (even if we were to limit it to correspondence with ones self). The dream does not seem to be in a position of privileged knowledge. The dream functions more like a good friend would: listening, advising, sharing experiences, providing access to remote territories of the mind, putting events in perspective and in proportion and provoking. It, thus, induces relaxation and acceptance and a better functioning of the “client”. It does so, mostly, by analysing discrepancies and incompatibilities. No wonder that it is mostly associated with bad emotions (anger, hurt, fear). This also happens in the course of successful psychotherapy. Defences are gradually dismantled and a new, more functional, view of the world is established. This is a painful and frightening process. This function of the dream is more in line with Jungs view of dreams as “compensatory”. The previous three functions are “complementary” and, therefore, Freudian.
It would seem that we are all constantly engaged in maintenance, in preserving that which exists and inventing new strategies for coping. We are all in constant psychotherapy, administered by ourselves, day and night. Dreaming is just the awareness of this on-going process and its symbolic content. We are more susceptible, vulnerable, and open to dialogue while we sleep. The dissonance between how we regard ourselves, and what we really are and between our model of the world and reality – this dissonance is so enormous that it calls for a (continuous) routine of evaluation, mending and re-invention. Otherwise, the whole edifice might crumble. The delicate balance between we, the dreamers, and the world might be shattered, leaving us defenceless and dysfunctional.
The Dream
To get a sense of the way humans are doing in our everyday lives (and indeed in our relationships, we have our ‘real’ selves), think of it as a dream: our life, our world is our own. To understand this in an unselfconscious manner, we must first look back at the early experiences of people on the Earth, when they were young, as young adults. They often got a little lost and had more experience when it came to writing themselves, listening to music and socializing. But how many of these experiences did they miss, even in their adult lives?
The first time I remember hearing or reading one of them was when I was about four years old. I couldn’t figure out the words to be spoken, but I remember the words and I was able to decipher the thoughts on the screen. The more I read that description, the more surreal I became: to the “soul of the Earth”. Then, just as they were about to escape from a prison that was completely overrun with monsters and “suspects”, I heard the words (this time in the language that was at once understood and understood) and, feeling like a small child, they came back out into the light.
As adults we often think about our children as the dreamer’s dream, while at the same time we’re often obsessed with a small child’s life, and feel that even in that small child’s small world (their world) they somehow made sense. A few kids had an experience of experiencing self-sufficiency, the kind that you and your child have never fully understood. Or, the little girl who had to endure the suffering but knew what it was like to be treated with compassion so hard that it cost her her life. Even one of those kids was told the whole story of her entire life about how she couldn’t move from her own comfort zone and it didn’t happen.
I recall reading in the early 2000s how an eight year old got a chance to read Jane Austen’s A Brief History of Human Nature. One of my favourite books when my oldest daughter was nine months old (or so I remember she said) was A Brief History of the World. Austen has a wonderful piece. At the very same time I remember that I was reading and seeing children in my middle school who were about three generations old. My oldest saw me and his expression turned to shock. He was at another table where I was reading, looking down at the chair and told me, “I love reading when I can hear it. That’s why I read books, I love being taught. Reading is the key to knowing how to read.” He then paused and went on and on and on until I gave him a second set for his next book which was called A Quiet Place. My youngest got the second set the first time around.
The experience made me feel truly whole and happy. My body felt like an infinite part of my body, I felt more like a child and I felt
The Dream
To get a sense of the way humans are doing in our everyday lives (and indeed in our relationships, we have our ‘real’ selves), think of it as a dream: our life, our world is our own. To understand this in an unselfconscious manner, we must first look back at the early experiences of people on the Earth, when they were young, as young adults. They often got a little lost and had more experience when it came to writing themselves, listening to music and socializing. But how many of these experiences did they miss, even in their adult lives?
The first time I remember hearing or reading one of them was when I was about four years old. I couldn’t figure out the words to be spoken, but I remember the words and I was able to decipher the thoughts on the screen. The more I read that description, the more surreal I became: to the “soul of the Earth”. Then, just as they were about to escape from a prison that was completely overrun with monsters and “suspects”, I heard the words (this time in the language that was at once understood and understood) and, feeling like a small child, they came back out into the light.
As adults we often think about our children as the dreamer’s dream, while at the same time we’re often obsessed with a small child’s life, and feel that even in that small child’s small world (their world) they somehow made sense. A few kids had an experience of experiencing self-sufficiency, the kind that you and your child have never fully understood. Or, the little girl who had to endure the suffering but knew what it was like to be treated with compassion so hard that it cost her her life. Even one of those kids was told the whole story of her entire life about how she couldn’t move from her own comfort zone and it didn’t happen.
I recall reading in the early 2000s how an eight year old got a chance to read Jane Austen’s A Brief History of Human Nature. One of my favourite books when my oldest daughter was nine months old (or so I remember she said) was A Brief History of the World. Austen has a wonderful piece. At the very same time I remember that I was reading and seeing children in my middle school who were about three generations old. My oldest saw me and his expression turned to shock. He was at another table where I was reading, looking down at the chair and told me, “I love reading when I can hear it. That’s why I read books, I love being taught. Reading is the key to knowing how to read.” He then paused and went on and on and on until I gave him a second set for his next book which was called A Quiet Place. My youngest got the second set the first time around.
The experience made me feel truly whole and happy. My body felt like an infinite part of my body, I felt more like a child and I felt
To be effective, dreams must come equipped with the key to their interpretation. We all seem to possess an intuitive copy of just such a key, uniquely tailored to our needs, to our data and to our circumstances. This Areiocritica helps us to decipher the true and motivating meaning of the dialogue. This is one reason why dreaming is discontinuous: time must be given to interpret and to assimilate the new model. Four to six sessions take place every night. A session missed will be held the night after. If a person is prevented from dreaming on a permanent basis, he will become irritated, then neurotic and then psychotic. In other words: his model of himself and of the world will no longer be usable. It will be out of synch. It will represent both reality and the non-dreamer wrongly. Put more succinctly: it seems that the famous “reality test” (used in psychology to set apart the “functioning, normal” individuals from those who are not) is maintained by dreaming. It fast deteriorates when dreaming is impossible. This link between the correct apprehension of reality (reality model), psychosis and dreaming has yet to be explored in depth. A few predictions can be made, though:
1. The dream mechanisms and/or dream contents of psychotics must be substantially different and distinguished from ours. Their dreams must be “dysfunctional”, unable to tackle the unpleasant, bad emotional residue of coping with reality. Their dialogue must be disturbed. They must be represented rigidly in their dreams. Reality must not be present in them not at all. 2. Most of the dreams, most of the time must deal with mundane matters. Their content must not be exotic, surrealist, extraordinary. They must be chained to the dreamers realities, his (daily) problems, people that he knows, situations that he encountered or is likely to encounter, dilemmas that he is facing and conflicts that he would have liked resolved. This, indeed, is the case. Unfortunately, this is heavily disguised by the symbol language of the dream and by the disjointed, disjunctive, dissociative manner in which it proceeds. But a clear separation must be made between subject matter (mostly mundane and “dull”, relevant to the dreamers life) and the script or mechanism (colourful symbols, discontinuity of space, time and purposeful action).
3. The dreamer must be the main protagonist of his dreams, the hero of his dreamy narratives. This, overwhelmingly, is the case: dreams are egocentric. They are concerned mostly with the “patient” and use other figures, settings, locales, situations to cater to his needs, to reconstruct his reality test and to adapt it to the new input from outside and from within.
4. If dreams are mechanisms, which adapt the model of the world and the reality test to daily inputs – we should find a difference between dreamers and dreams in different societies and cultures. The more “information heavy” the culture, the more the dreamer is bombarded with messages and data – the fiercer should the dream activity be. Every external