Good Dream Food For Thought

... found this Carl Jung Action Figure at the Archie McPhee site ... what a hoot ...

So. Ever wonder what experts who have worked in the dreaming landscape after Freud and Jung have to say about dreaming?

Ernest Hartmann, M.D., at the Tufts School of Medicine, has offered a Contemporary Theory of Dreaming (2001, 2007, 2008), presented, in brief, below. It appears in the March 2008 issue of the APA journal Dreaming.

1. Dreaming is a form of mental functioning at one end of a continuum ranging from focused waking thought through looser thought to dreaming.

2. Dreaming connects disparate elements of mind (thoughts, sensations, memories) more readily than does waking thought.

3. Connections within dreaming are not random. In fact, certain regions in memory are avoided, including those involving serial processing, logical ("a-->b-->c") thinking, and overlearned activities (reading, writing, elementary arithmetic).

4. Connections in dreaming are guided by the dreamer's underlying emotion or emotional concern.

5. There is an adaptive function to the making of connections guided by emotion.

6. The function of dreaming occurs whether or not the dream is actually remembered. Remembering a dream increases the adaptive potential.

7. The entire waking to dreaming continuum has an adaptive function. Sometimes it's essential to think in a more focused, logical fashion, and sometimes it's essential to invoke more loose and broad connective thought.

Some of this, like (2) and (7) I fully buy into; for some of it I crave more evidence.

********************************

Enough about me ... what do you think about all of this? Do you have experiences with dreams that would support or refute Hartmann's model? Do you think anything is missing or unaccounted for?

When you are inclined to look more deeply into your own dreams rather than, or in addition to, entertaining theoretical insights about the origin and function of dreaming, do pay a visit http://www.dreamcurrent.com/.

I Feel Like Toasting ...

Copy of Picture 340, originally uploaded by suzbert2000.

Sunshine!

I see it outside the window behind my cube.

Here's to more of it!

Swimming Upstream and Liking It.

My financial advisor described what I was doing with http://www.dreamcurrent.com/ as "swimming upstream."

Clang-g-g-g-g.

*imagine the sound of a cartoon head vibrating, as if inside a struck bell*

Never thought about "current" that way … swimming against it.

... Swimming upstream! I wail to Paulette, To what end? To what goal?

... To reproduce? she suggests.

Aw man. I don't want to travel all that way just to lay some eggs.
AH HA! It hit me a few minutes later ...wherever I end up or whatever I end up doing there, I'd get the undeniable bonus of fanTAStically-exercised muscles.

*imagine several tiny Jessica Rabbits, sheathed in fabulous silver lame, perhaps with salmon-red shimmer effects, cha-cha-ing around a cartoon head*

The resonating g-g-g's of that initial Clang-g-g-g continued on the way home.

I heard on WBUR's On Point some guy speaking with Tom Ashbrook named Jim Hightower. I didn't know Jim Hightower from Adam … but I listened … he was pretty funny ... he told some story about Madison, Wisconsin, which piqued my interest a bit more.

The new book he was plugging?

"Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow."

HA! Awesome!

Better a fit salmon than a dead fish.

That Which Makes Your World Bigger Rather than Smaller

A couple years' back, okay, several years ... I was seeking the love of my life ...

I did a couple of rounds of online match searching, plus a local gathering club ostensibly for sharing common interests, but who's kidding whom?

In each of these domains, I filled out checklists of my own attributes, likes, and dislikes ... and my preferences in a partner.

I knew what I wanted ... isn't that what you're supposed to project to the Universe?

... a non-practicing Catholic, like me,

someone who was taller than I,

someone with a similar educational background (i.e., familiar with the suffering and angst that comes with an advanced degree) ...

I selected a list of meaningful, but not too risky "Desert Island discs" ... knowingly excluding the, to me, achingly beautiful Substance by Joy Division

My carefully curated lists of attributes yielded hits, flirts, nods of affirmation, and dates ... but no "clicks."

Somewhere along that line, I listened to one of Clarissa Pinkola Estes cassettes ... something that came out after her Women Who Run With the Wolves fame called, I think, How to Love a Woman. In that tape, I remember she was listing for her young daughters ten important aspects of a mate. I vaguely remember something in that list about not being an active alchoholic or drug abuser ... and there was something else that grabbed me by the throat: she wanted for her daughters a mate that made their worlds bigger rather than smaller.

I locked onto that baby, hook, line, soul, and heart. That phrase "bigger rather than smaller" felt righter to me than the select attribute lists I'd been crafting. In fact, I remember that a retooled the introductory description in my profile to include my wanting to meet someone who would make my world bigger rather than smaller.

And lo. Several months later ... nothing works quickly in my world ... this Christopher fellow shows up in my inbox.

And lo. Three years after that ... voila! married!

Why do I bring this up now?

Because I've been struggling. With www.Dreamcurrent.com.

It demands so much of me.

What do I want of it?

The James Earl Jones Inner Voice of Truth clearly indicated that it's not about money.

Making my world bigger rather than smaller feels more fitting somehow.

I'm actually pleased to become reacquainted with the phrase that clicked for me so deeply before I finally met Christopher. I'm sorry it ever slipped my mind.

Suzanne's Popeye Moment: Ultimate Authority Lies with the Dreamer, Not the Interpreter: Get it Right, People!

Popeye the Sailor is a 1930s comic strip character who is still popular through home video productions of the television cartoon series ... or the 1980 film with foam-forearmed Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall.

"Popeye Moments" occur when Popeye has had all he can take - and, with reinforcement from a can of spinach (this is the pre-heirloom baby greens era, when cans were cool and effective storage vessels), he announces "I've had all I can stand! I can't stands no more!" He flexes his spinach-not-steroid-boosted biceps and proceeds to straighten things out.

Well, I came across another piece on dreaming and dream interpretation, again in the political bent ... this time on NPR's Day to Day, called Dreaming of Obama and Clinton. The way the piece was executed made me so sad! I expected better from NPR ... Here's the feedback I wrote in to the program:

You may laugh, but it's not the absence of McCain in the title that concerns me (I actually thought that was kind of funny ... ) ... it's the discussion of dream interpretation.

It was disheartening to hear how easy it was for the interpreter (here, Rabbi Gottlieb) to be given the power of declaring an interpretation, or several.

There has been a movement afoot for several years, spearheaded by the likes of Jeremy Taylor (Dreamwork, 1982), Montague Ullman (Working with Dreams, with Nan Zimmerman, 1989), and augmented by Robert Moss (Dreaming True 2000, Conscious Dreaming, 1996, DreamGates, 1998), such that the final authority on the "rightness" of the interpretation is understood to rest with the dreamer him/herself.

Rabbi Gottlieb was good about citing multiple possible interpretations for a necklace ... and referencing subjective experience of the dreamer ... but the way the story was spun out with Ms. Gurwitch, I still got the sense that the ultimate authority rested with him (which might have something to do with the fact that Rabbi Gottlieb is her psychoanalyst and her Rabbi).

Finally, it was also disheartening to hear Ms. Gurwitch say that "okay i think i need to go back into therapy" at the end, ostensibly as a result of the dream discussion veering into the overly symbolic? (or at least that's what I understood)

Sad.

Dreams and working with them can actually move a person through life more easily, within therapy, within a "coaching relationship", within creative endeavors, and so forth.

Truth be told, I'm a dreamworker - who much prefers to empower a dreamer…

Suzanne Carter, Ph.D.
www.dreamcurrent.com
www.dreamcurrent.blogspot.com

The Journey Toward Money Maturity ...

I have to talk to my financial adversary - er - adviser today.

The following quote describes exactly how I feel right now:

"I hate money. I hate dealing with it, thinking about it, managing it, planning for it, and accounting for it. On the other hand, I don't have too many problems spending it, which complicates matters considerably."

Caroline Knapp wrote that, in a piece called "I Hate Money," listed as appearing in the Boston Phoenix in October 1996, published also in The Merry Recluse.

There is an amusing little twist here, in that the financial advisor Caroline names in her piece, "the woman I love dearly except for the times we actually have to discuss my finances," has been dealing with me as well for the past ten years or so ... and unfortunately for both of us, today, the notion of assembling the mailings and odd-sized receipts collected over the last couple weeks into a nice hole-punchable folder-ready pile, and scribing out checks and recording them neatly in a registry, makes me want to hide in her closet.

I never actually met Caroline (who passed in 2002, at 42), but I feel we just missed each other, and we might track similar paths ... not only because of the money thing and the financial advisor in common, but also because we seem to have a similar view of certain canine companions (See Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs).

There are differences, though.

For instance, if I had the gumption to write a whole piece about money, I would title it differently, I think. Something that would nicely encapsulate the feeling of never having enough, that it's an ever-present, sinister, lurking concern. Something pithy representing the feeling of me as a perpetually stooped basement-dweller, sooty-faced, shoveling coal (a.k.a. money) into a furnace to be burned brightly and quickly.

Hm, at this point I feel as if I've reached a depth from which I am unable to extricate myself at the moment. Not a good place to leave readers :) especially just before a weekend!

So ... Think, think, think.




Ah!

This past week I learned that the Kinder Institute, founded by George Kinder of Seven Stages of Money Maturity and Susan Galvan, is located in Littleton, Massachusetts, one town away from where I live.

I read Seven Stages when I was in the middle of navigating some yucky financial terrain and really liked it ... he brings soul to money in a gentle, real way.

Perhaps something is nudging me toward looking into one of their workshops. Something that views money as more than fossil fuel?

... hm, metaphor alert ... could money, to me at this time, be something of a fuel for a consuming, brief, but bright flame, made up of fossilized beliefs? ... It sure would be nicer to think of money as something sustained and guiding.

that's worthy of a good ponder...

have a good weekend everyone!

You Must Read This!

The latest edition of the NPR series by that name features Mireille Guiliano, the author of several books, including French Women Don't Get Fat. She is also listed as President and CEO of Clicquot Inc.

To risk another exclamation: Do give it a listen!

Ms. Guiliano has an exquisite French voice and describes for us why Edith Wharton's House of Mirth is meaningful to her and a must-read for us.

"Lily wants happiness like all young adults starting out in life... " Guiliano reads, "She also wants a lot of money. So, she rejects some viable options, takes advice from the wrong people, and does not listen to her heart.

Wants a lot of money.

Does not listen to her heart.

Wow. This is coming from a CEO. A CEO of an ultra-premium champagne company. A CEO who knows and grows luxury.

Methinks this is something to pay attention to.

Both what she says

and your heart.

**Dream Survey!!! Dream Survey!!! **

Hi!

I feel a little bit like the town crier here - but I am wildly interested in how you experience dreams and dream work.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=CZeo1KAmQ5IqA1Cf2ID2wg_3d_3d

Please do participate!

It is my hope to discover trends amid the responses to be able to give back to you readers and contributors as well as to the knowledge base of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Also - if you have any feedback on the survey itself, please let me know that too.

Many thanks to all of you for your help and readership.

Dream On On Dreams

The New Yorker Talk of the Town piece "Dream On" is pretty interesting, pertaining to dreaming of candidates Clinton and Obama.

I gotta tell you, though, the introductory statement to me was kind of a bummer:

"The interpretation of dreams, according to Freud, ... "

Oh boy, Freud again .. he may have erected the signage on the royal road to the unconscious, but he's not the end all and be all on dreams.

The other big gun, Jung, with his collective unconscious - who, by the way was also referenced in the article - isn't either.

*gasp*

Audacious of me?

... Claiming that dreams might be bigger than what these luminaries have said?

Well ... actually ... Gayle Delaney offered a pivotal piece of evidence that was pretty convincing.

One of her dreamers spoke of dreaming of a cat.

A cat could represent a wish, anxiety, a collective image of femininity, an animal totem guide, and more.

None of these explanations, however, generated an a-ha for the dreamer (the outcome of dreamwork that signals you hit paydirt - that you got one of the core messages of the dream)

The a-ha came when the dreamer remarked - oh! that's my boyfriend - Like the cat in my dream, he is sleek, beautiful and comes and goes as he pleases.

The dreamer got the message, and that message was unique to the dreamer.

That is what, to me, is beautiful about dreams.

Like Crocuses, Dream Articles are Popping Up All Over

The March 10 issue of The New Yorker carries "Dream On" in its Talk of the Town.

The March/April edition of Spirituality & Health features "Dream Games: Even Your Nightmares Can Heal," was written by one of the big cheeses in dreamwork today, Robert Moss.

In October 28, 2007, "Waking Up To Our Dreams" was published by Robert Moss in Parade Magazine. Parade Magazine!? Even my dream-phobic mom leafs through Parade Magazine. And apparently, according to a message added later, the response to the article and its request for dreams was pretty huge.

I always thought of dreamwork as kind of sidebar off-center kind of thing ... what do you suppose is happening? is it uncertainty? is it a new openness? I'll have to think on this a bit - I'd certainly love to hear your thoughts.

Dreams and Visions

“A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.”

-Rosabeth Moss Kanter,
Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.

Did you ever notice that the concepts of "vision" and "visionary" is celebrated in business leadership (House and Podsakoff, 1994)

while "dream" and "dreamer" ...

... aren't.

Professor Kanter herself writes: "A vision remains just a dream unless it can inspire others."

It's funny ... "vision" seems galvanizing and future-oriented.

Ever hear of "Vision Statements"?

...while "dream" seems solitary and mysterious, almost cloud-covered.

But is this dichotomy real?

In the Hebrew language, there is no clear-cut distinction made between dreams and visions.

What's the harm in deriving wisdom or insight from those mysterious night experiences and parlaying same into waking life ... at least the ones that, per Nanus (1992),

-energize,
-create meaning,
-bridge the present to the future, and
-transcend the status quo.

How about it?

Much Ado About Much Thinking

The survival strategy known as the Inner Censor (or critic) is said to derive from child rearing and likely also includes elements from the early experiences (Alice Miller, Prisoners of Childhood). At this point, I feel like I should go into an explanation of how genes and environment both influence development (Scarr & McCartney, 1983) but I'll hold those horses for the moment.

It occurred to me today to take a fresh-eyed adult look at some books I remember tearing through as a kid to see whether any a-ha on the birth of my own inner censor might emerge. Thanks to the Internet, I can check out some of this stuff at my desk.

The Great Brain yielded that a-ha.

I soo wanted to be the Great Brain, with a silver tongue and a gift for problem solving.

I did not want his money-loving heart, though, as it seemed to get him into heaps of trouble.

But I soo wanted to be super-smart. In my house, smart was admired and encouraged. Being smart was being good.

I never made it to the Great Brain level of smart ... but I still put a lot of stock into knowing stuff and thinking things through rationally, logically. And deep down I still have this weird belief that being smart means being good.

But I've also noticed a couple of things:

1. Thinking to excess can render something really interesting, creative, artful into something useless or flat (a la, overworking dough),

2. Thinking, explaining, diagnosing, analyzing can obscure a truth that needs to be heard.

3. Putting an emphasis on analysis over other things like sensing (what the body knows) and feeling (emotion) can further obscure truths.

And this brings us back to the Inner Censor ... which was developed, according to Alice Miller, in the service of protecting the child.

In adulthood, it is worth trying to uncover those senses and feelings that are usually censored. Attending to one's dreams and engaging in dreamwork is one way of venturing closer.

Let me know what you think about all of this ... do you have an Inner Critic, Censor, Witness, or Whatnot? Are you finding it an impediment, a help, a protection, or all of the above, or something else entirely? How do you work with, manage, get beyond your Inner Critic, Censor, Witness, or Whatnot? I would love to hear your experiences and opinions!

Dreams Without Borders

eeeeeeeeeeeeee! The paper I submitted on my fav-or-ite topic, resistance and ways of working with it, got accepted into the Techniques for Dream Group Leaders panel at the International Association of Dreams 2008 Conference!

eeeeeeeeee!

I can't wait to share the final version of the preso with you all - and all the new learning I'm going to soak up in Montreal this summer.

The only bummer is, my gifted dream-mentor Linda Schiller, is so far doing her workshop on Dreamwork to Heal Traumatic Memory at the same time as the panel I'm on. Sigh. Guess I can't sit in her audience cheering and egging her on ... with one of those big foam #1 fingers, maybe. Probably for the best, as I would think a workshop devoted to healing traumatic memory should be a bit more settled or subdued ... Happily, the sessions are recorded for future listening.

To anyone who would like, do tell me what all I should visit in Montreal when I'm not soaking and sharing knowledge. I was there a couple times about ten years ago, back when things were much more favorable to the US dollar, and I'm sure these days there's lots more to see.

One more ee! for the road ...