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Working With Your Dreams

A DIFFERENT WORLD

In ancient times, dreams were thought to be sent by the gods. When we work with them, it is easy to understand why. Dreams are wondrous and mysterious. They offer messages and gifts. They take us into a different world, with different rules – a magical world that is likely to vanish like Cinderella’s finery if we so much as clean our teeth before writing down what we experienced there. In this chapter we will learn how to enter that world with awareness and bring its treasures back to use in the waking world.

It would be useful to start with a very brief introduction to the pioneering work in this field done by the Austrian psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, and his Swiss contemporary Carl Jung. Their work underpins all the methods and approaches I will be describing in this chapter.

Freud and dreams

Sigmund Freud had enormous respect for dreams, and considered his book The Interpretation of Dreams to be his most important work. The hundreds of dreams transcribed in it make it a rich resource for writers. Freud’s studies confirmed his view that nothing we have experienced is ever fully lost to us. Events which are inaccessible to conscious memory remain in a vast subconscious store which can be tapped through dreams and visualisation. Even the most trivial details are retrievable: ‘the wart on the forehead of a stranger’ as he puts it.

Such details are truly ‘gifts from the gods’ to a writer. That wart might be the very thing that wins the Booker Prize!

Jung and dreams

Carl Jung also placed great emphasis on dreams. In the second half of his book Dreams, he relates individual dream symbols to mythology and alchemy. Again, this is a rich resource for writers. Jung gave us the theory explored in Chapter 3, in relation to visualisation – that all elements of the dream represent aspects of the dreamer’s personality. We will be looking at a number of ways of working with this, later in the chapter.

In order to open himself fully to what a dream had to offer, Jung would start from the premise I have no idea what this means. To get to the heart of the image and extract its full meaning, Jung would say to his client ‘Suppose I knew nothing at all about a … Describe it to me in the greatest possible detail’. This open approach is yet another way in which we can surprise ourselves rather than limit our possibilities to what we ‘know’.

USING DREAM EXPERIENCES

Keeping a dream journal

Why record dreams?

The fact that dreams are so often forgotten on waking was one of the reasons Jung urged his clients to write them down straight away (an idea which seems obvious now, but was regarded as rather odd at the time). Another reason for recommending the regular recording of dreams was his interest in dream series. Keeping a journal helps us to recognise patterns and identify themes in our dreams – useful both for personal work and in using our dreams for story making. Particularly significant on both counts is Jung’s discovery that when we work with a series of dreams, later ones often correct mistakes we make in working on earlier ones. This is a dramatic illustration of the interactive process which occurs when we give dreams our full attention.

The very act of keeping a special book and recording our dreams thoughtfully in it lets the psyche know that we are serious, and the psyche responds accordingly.

How should dreams be recorded?

Most therapists who work with dreams ask that they be related in the present tense. This reconnects the dreamer with the energies of the experience, and makes the work far more powerful. The same principle applies when we use dreams in story-making. Recording them in the present tense puts us in touch with the energies and gives the work immediacy. Reading them aloud can also be helpful. Recording this reading and playing it back to yourself can be very powerful.

Some people claim they never dream. In fact everybody dreams at regular intervals throughout their sleep-time, but the dreams are not always remembered. We can change this by actively encouraging the process, as described further on in this chapter. American dreamwork therapist Strephon Kaplan-Williams recommends recording your thoughts on waking each day, whether you remember any dreams or not. Like timed writing, this maintains the momentum of the process. The way in which you choose to organise your dream journal is a personal matter. You might record in a linear way or in chunks, chronologically or under themes. You might draw pictures, include cuttings, use coloured pens, etc.

A method I have found particularly useful for identifying patterns and themes, is the use of an A4 page-a-day any-year diary. In this I record dreams and, very briefly, significant daily events. This takes at the most 15 lines. There are 52 lines to a page. At the end of the year I start again at 1 January, writing under the previous entry. By the third or fourth time round, patterns are very clear. The two-line days tend to be two-liners every year. The 15-liners may expand. Aggravation with the car tends to recur within a few days either side of the previous anniversary. The computer crashes on the same evening as it did two years ago – and the dreams with certain themes tend to have their special times of year to recur as well. It is a weird and enlightening experience.

Checklist

Dreams:

WORKING WITH DREAM IMAGES

Les Peto, author of The Dream Lover, compares dreams to the intensely real world of play in childhood. Like Jung, he recommends a wondering, childlike approach in working with them. He describes dreams as ‘feeling-pictures – almost entirely silent movies, which rely for their impact on striking visual images, larger than life, surreal and irrational situations.’

He suggests listing all the images, then taking each one and saying ‘This reminds me of …’, writing down everything that comes, even if it seems silly.

Working with one incident

Drawing what happened

Recall a specific incident from a dream. Who are all the people involved?

Where are they standing? Where are all the objects placed? What are the surroundings like?

Draw the incident, making the drawing as detailed as you can. It will be like a snapshot or a still from a film.

Showing what happened

As above, but this time the scene is acted out, either in person or using objects to represent all the elements of the dream.

A fellow tutor Pete who was fascinated by dreamwork kindly brought a dream to one of my workshops for the group to act out. He related it as follows:

‘I am flying around a Norman tower, which turns into a highrise office-block. I stare in at the people working at their desks. I realise I am covered in gold. I am powerful. I am Mercury the Winged Messenger. The office workers run to the window, waving and cheering. I wave back. I zoom across the deep canyons between the buildings in New York, then suddenly I’m up in space, zooming around in blackness. I see a small black sphere with a bright blue aura pulsing around it and I land there. I see craters lit up by the blue light flashing intermittently overhead. Superman is there to meet me. He says ‘Welcome to Phobos’. I am not Mercury the Winged Messenger any more. I don’t know who I am. I’m confused and tongue-tied and shake Superman’s hand, my arm pumping up and down heartily, out of my control. I zoom off, back down to Earth. A voice in my ear says ‘A dangerous instrument!’ Somebody hands me a Barclaycard bill for 2 billion pounds – the cost of my trip. I tell them I can’t possibly pay – and suddenly I don’t care.’

We had a wonderful time with that one, Pete himself playing the confused Winged Mercury, others playing Superman, the black planet, the blue aura, various buildings, cheering office workers and planet Earth. I greatly enjoyed presenting the enormous Barclaycard bill instead of being on the receiving end. Everyone derived their own insights from the parts they played, as well as contributing to Pete’s interpretation of his dream experiences. A lot of pretty wild writing was also generated as a result.

Taking it on

After you have drawn or acted out your scene, draw, act or write the next scene.

Taking it back

Draw, act or write what was happening just before that scene.

Pete’s dream provided a lot of mileage for these two activities also. Perhaps you would like to contribute your thoughts as to how he came to be flying around a Norman tower in the first place. Perhaps you also have some ideas about what happened regarding the 2 billion pound Barclaycard bill.

What is missing?

Sometimes who or what is missing can give insight. ‘I am looking for my glasses.’ ‘It was mid-day and the postman had not come.’ So – what would you have been able to see if you had your glasses? What would the postman have brought? Or – what has happened to the postman on the way to your house?

Exploring the mood of a dream

Spend some time getting in touch with the dream again. What do you feel as you remember it? Do you have an image for that feeling? What shape is it? Does it have a colour? Where do you experience it in your body? Does it have a voice? What kind of voice? What does it say? Focus on the feeling again. What would the opposite of that feeling be? Work with the opposite feeling in the same way.

Working with the body language

Gestalt therapy pioneer Fritz Perls felt that the message of a dream was best discovered freshly from within the self, not from an external interpretation.

He would often work with the body language a person used as they related their dream. Some of the techniques he developed were:

What sort of dream is it?

The methods looked at so far will help you to get every last milligram of value from your dream images.

It is also helpful to know what kind of dream you are dealing with. In his book Elements of Dreamwork, Strephon Kaplan-Williams lists 24 major dream types. They include dreams which:

Checklist

To get the most from your dreamwork:

AWARE DREAMING

To encourage aware dreaming (and relieve insomnia) set up an internal dream sanctuary. Furnish it with things conducive to peaceful sleep: scented oils, soft lighting, music or silence according to your preference.

Imagine the softest of beds – perhaps a fluffy cloud which gently rocks. Spend some time imagining this sanctuary in every detail, so you can go straight there when you close your eyes. The process can be enhanced by music designed to slow the brainwaves – such as the Delta Sync Sleep System CDs from LifeTools.

Again, the intention to engage with your dreams is conveyed to the psyche because you have backed it up with appropriate action. The psyche will respond. Affirm your intention verbally, repeating a phrase such as ‘Tonight I will remember my dreams .

Strengthen this affirmation by writing it down. Place a hand on your chest or abdomen and experience its weight and warmth. This helps to anchor your affirmation further. Don’t be discouraged if results are not immediate. The most effective strategy is calm persistence. It will bring results eventually.

Once you are in touch with your dreams, the next step is to indicate what it is you would like to dream and remember. Answers to questions and solutions to problems can be sought, including questions about your writing. With practice you can dream about your characters. Sometimes the next chapter or story gets acted out more or less in total – an amazing experience.

There are hypnotic suggestion CDs designed to achieve this level of engagement with dreams. I recommend Dick Sutphen’s Dream Solutions and Paul Sheele’s Programming Your Dreams, available from New World Music and LifeTools respectively. However, to reiterate, the most effective technique by far is perseverance.

Lucid dreaming

Lucid, or conscious dreaming, takes the process a stage further by enabling those who practise it to know they are dreaming. The dream can be manipulated to suit specific purposes. For example, you could get the characters of your story or novel together and direct them in a specific scene. It takes dedicated practice to achieve this degree of facility. There are special exercises designed for the purpose. There are also devices, such as sleep masks which respond to the rapid movements made by the eyes when we are dreaming. A buzzer is activated which, eventually, is perceived by the dreaming mind and recognised as a signal that dreaming is taking place. Further information about this, and about lucid dreaming in general can be obtained from LifeTools, and World of Lucid Dreaming (see page 166).

Opinion is divided as to the merits of lucid dreaming. Some see it as a tool for inner discovery, others feel that conscious intervention interferes with the processes of the subconscious.

Checklist

We can learn to interact more fully with our dreams by: