DREAM WORK
The great thing about working with dreams is that we can do it at many different levels and in many different ways. Hence almost any approach to therapy or counselling can gain from working with dreams.
There are four main ways of working with dreams. One is to treat them as information about the past. They can be looked at for clues about internal conflicts stemming from childhood traumas or decisions. They can give a great deal of news about the unconscious mind and what is going on there. And obviously this will be helpful in analysing one's life and one's problems.
The second way is to treat them as information about the present. We can see a dream, as Perls used to say, as an existential message from you to you. One way of using this approach is to take up the role of each person and each thing in the dream, to find out what it is trying to say. This, too, can be productive and useful.
A third way is to treat them as information about the future. Not simply as precognition - though this can certainly happen - but more as information about where you need to go next. This kind of prospective approach, pioneered by Jung, is very popular in the transpersonal approaches.
And the fourth way is not to interpret the dream at all, but to let it be a guide to the inner world. This is the approach of James Hillman, a modern Jungian, who says that the dream world is a world of its own, needing to be understood on its own terms, and not needing to be tanslated. It is also the approach of Alvin Mahrer, in a different way.
All those approaches are possible because dreams are symbolic, and like all symbols can be taken in various ways. For example, a cross is a symbol which, in various contexts, can mean a crossroad, a kiss, a Christian emblem, an addition, a hospital or ambulance, a flag and so on. It is hopeless to say that a pistol always stand for this, or an oven for that, as old-fashioned dream books try to do.
Ken Wilber tells us that dreams can be interpreted on nine different levels, and that they very seldom have meaning on only one of these. Certainly when I have tried this in training groups, each dream has always had important meanings on at least two levels, and often three.
Most forms of therapy encourage people to remember and work with dreams, and it is worthwhile to keep a dream diary. To remember a dream, write it down in the same bodily position as you dreamed it, preferably without putting on the light. Then change position and see if more details come. Write down the specifics as much as possible, including any unusual words or phrases that seem to be remembered.
It is possible to set up informal dream-sharing groups, and this can be very interesting, even if you are not in any process of therapy or counselling. There is a saying that an unremembered dream is like an unopened letter. We owe it to ourselves to get access to the whole dream country in our minds.
BOOKLIST
Barrineau, Phil (1992) 'Person-centered dream work' Journal of Humanistic Psychology 32/1 90-105. Shows very clearly how the person-centred approach, which some people say cannot handle dreams, in fact does so.
Freud, Sigmund (1901) The interpretation of dreams Various editions over the years. A ground-breaking book exhibiting an extraordinary degreee of honesty and self-insight. Very readable.
Hillman, James (1979) The dream and the underworld Harper Colophon, New York. An extraordinary and disturbing book which says that all the theories of what dreams mean are wrong.
Mahrer, Alvin (1989) Dreamwork: in psychotherapy and self-change W W Norton, New York. An exciting new approach to dreams, which summarises much other work.
Shohet, Robin (1985) Dream sharing Turnstone Press, Wellingborough. Misleading title, because it is an excellent, very helpful book on all aspects of dream work. Ullman, Montague & Limmer, Claire (1989) The variety of dream experience Crucible, Wellingborough. Misleading title, because it is all about dream sharing in groups.
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