Reality of the dream

Working and Playing With The Dream As A Real Experience

Introduction to the Workshop I: Method

Introduction to the Workshop 2: Format

NOTES:

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ASD 2003 

Two presentations -- one a paper and the other a workshop -- will be presented at the ASD conference in Berkeley, CA June/July 2003.

You can click on a video interview in which David Jenkins gives a brief summary of the ideas behind these two presentations.

We cannot approach the dream without having an approach to the dream. The most common sense approach is that waking life is "real" and dream life is not.

What happens when, instead,  we start from the perspective that the dream is a real experience? This paper will argue that both dream-life and awake-life then make a different kind of sense than when we privilege waking life and treat the dream as a derivative, less-then-real, underprivileged experience.

There are strengths and weaknesses to both these points of view. It is suggested that good dreamwork requires that the dream worker has both perspectives available to him or her.

This paper will discuss the theoretical and practical aspects of treating the dream experience as equal to the waking experience.

It is proposed that three crucial differences occur when we treat the dream as a real experience:

1. The dream-ego rather than the awake-ego becomes the subject of dream work.
2. The experience of the dream itself is more relevant than the interpretation of the dream.
3. The continuity of dream life assumes a greater importance and the emphasis on each dream as an isolated event diminishes.

In this workshop we will explore dreams from the standpoint that the dream was a real event. Therefore the well being of the dream-ego is our major concern.

By means of gestalt, narrative and other techniques, we work to explore the tension in the dream and look for the meaning within the dream. By playing with the dream – changing the plot, events or by adding characters, we can plan a different/better response to the issues portrayed in the dream. We expect that, by working on this dream, the next dream about this subject will be changed.

Participants learn how to follow the dreamer's lead as the dream is told, retold and explored. We stick with the dream rather than moving to interpretations or associations to the dreamer's past. The dreamer's creativity is used to solve and re-solve the immediate problem posed by the dream. With that work, we expect that, when the dream recurs (as it is almost bound to) the dreamer will have access to more resources and hence the experience of the next dream will be different.

The workshop format will include formal exercises, working in small groups and working with the whole group.

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