Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Electric Dreams Volume 02 Issue 01
Title: Electric Dreams Volume 2 Number 1
File: Electric Dreams 2(1)
==========================================================
Electric Dreams back issues are available to the public and
listed individually.
For an index of Articles and dreams on Electric Dreams,
See the IIDCC Research Tools area.
================================================================
=========================================
Electric Dreams
Volume 2 Issue #1
20 January 1995
==========================================
---Back issue and the FAQ available via anonymous FTP at
sppc1952.uwsp.edu
--For mailing list info, subscriptions, dreams and comments
send to Cathy: cathy@cassandra.ucr.edu
--Send questions about dreams & dreaming to Matthew:
mettw@newt.phys.unsw.edu.au
--General comments, articles and ideas to Richard:
RCWilk@aol.com
=========================================
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Editor's Notes & Day Residue
Questions and Answers - by Matthew
Article: Dreams of the Blind by Richard C. Wilkerson
Dream: Dogs- by Jay
Comments: On _Dogs_ by Richard
Dream: Roman Ruins in the Cyclades - by Richard
Dream: An Exquisite Marble - by Corydon
Dream: The Valley, the Theatre and the Mistake - by Viking
Dream Resources
===============================
Tagesreste - Day Residue
===============================
We have a short but delightful issue this week. [Note
from Cathy: I think it's pretty long!] We received a
question from a teacher whose blind student said they had
seen him in a dream. Is this possible? Check out my short
article on dreams and the blind. Also, we are continuing
our dream resource section in hopes of getting you all to
respond with finds and discoveries on the net and
elsewhere. Matthew is still on vacation and we'll have to
wait for the second half of his Freud and Dreaming
article, but he did send us his collection of Questions
and Answers. And most importantly, we have dreams,
dreams dreams! -Richard
=================================
Questions and Answer
===============================
-Send your Questions and answers to
mettw@newt.phys.unsw.edu.au Please include a copy of the
question when you send in a reply
** In V.1 Iss.18 Richard asked:
Do you have [dream]symbols of vulnerability that occur
and re-occur during traumas or life transitions? (... A
range of them, from snake attacks, to airplanes crashing,
earthquakes ...) And if so, how does this repetition work
for you?
*Answer by Cathy
Tests as Dream Symbols of Vulnerability
I went to school for 23 years. Until I finally ending my
"career" as a student, I had re-occurring anxiety dreams
about taking tests. I would have these dreams whenever I
was worried about failing in any sort of situation--school
or personal life. Since I have stopped being a student, I
have been able to stop the cycle of dreams about tests that
I am never prepared for, don't even know what the subject
is, or show up for with only a crayon and scraps of really
small paper. After interrupting a few dreams, I seem to
have stopped having them. Interestingly, the test dreams
never corresponded to my actual academic life. Part of the
shock of the dreams was always that they tested the
completely unexpected.
Cathy
** Question from Matthew-
When I interpret my dreams I basically use a Freudian
free association method to find what lies hidden below. I'd
like to hear what other methods people use on their dreams
and how effective it has been for you. Also, since dreams
contain a lot of non-verbal language and the philosophy and
perception of reality of the dreamer, how much do you
consider the philosophical implications of your dreams?
*Answer by Cathy
Interpreting One's Own Dreams
When I wake up, I typically do a dream
interpretation of my dreams. If the dream stirred up
little emotion in me, I tend to dismiss it as simply the
product of my previous day or week and look for images or
topics that echo the incidents and discussions of my last
few days. If a dream evokes strong feelings--depression,
excitement, wonder, curiosity--I tend to think more deeply.
I generally consider the dream environment--often my dreams
re-occur in houses or schools or towns in which I have
previously lived. Other dream environments are more
symbolic--light/dark, closed in/open, above ground/below
ground, misty/sharply defined. Since my methods always
tend to fit the dreams I have, it is difficult to be more
specific. I typically take my dreams to be very personal
and do not consider them in terms of the human condition or
good or evil.
Cathy
=======================================================
Dreams of the Blind
By Richard Catlett Wilkerson
=======================================================
Though there has been little work done with dreams
and the visually impaired (Hunt, 1989, Rainville, 1994),
the general belief and little evidence seem to favor the
notion that people dream as they live in waking life and
represent situations to themselves and others in pretty
much the same way in both wake and sleep. What confuses
the issue is our habit or cognitive style of verbal
narratives that represent people and things in visual
metaphors. A quick look at the description of a dream by a
blind individual may reveal an elaborate array of visual
imagery, while a closer examination of the actual
sensations of that blind dreamer reveal little or no direct
visual imagery.
Jastrow's early but major study of dreams of the
blind (1900- Jastrow himself was blind) is well worth
reading and includes other studies of the time. His
research indicates that a majority of those who go blind
before 5 to 7 years old will *not* have visual dreams. But
though he attributes this to brain development, it is not
clear from his study if a lack of verbal development of
visual metaphors was considered.
In a special letter form Helen Keller, she relates what
dreaming was like before her teacher:
"My dreams have strangely changed during the past twelve
years. Before and after my teacher first came to me, they
were devoid of sound, of thought or emotion of
any kind, except fear, and only came in the form of
sensations. I would often dream that I ran into a still,
dark room, and that, while I stood there, I felt
something fall heavily without any noise, causing the floor
to shake up and down violently; and each time I woke up
with a jump. As I learned more and more about the objects
around me, this strange dream ceased to haunt me; but I was
in a high state of excitement and received impressions very
easily. It is not strange then that I dreamed at the time
of a wolf, which seemed to rush towards me and put his
cruel teeth deep into my body! I could not speak (the fact
was, I could only spell with my fingers), and I tried to
scream; but no sound escaped from my lips. It is very
likely that I had heard the story of Red Riding Hood, and
was deeply impressed by it.
This dream, however, passed away in time, and I
began to dream of objects outside myself" (p. 353).
Later she relates, "I obtain information in a very
curious manner, which it is difficult to describe. My mind
acts as a sort of mirror, in which faces and landscapes are
reflected, and thoughts, which throng unbidden in my brain,
describe the conversation and the events going on around
me. I remember a beautiful and striking illustration of
the peculiar mode of communication I have just mentioned.
One night I dreamed that I was in a lovely mansion, all
built of leaves and flowers, My thoughts declared the floor
was of green twigs, and the ceiling of pink and white
roses, The wall were of roses, pinks, hyacinths, and many
other flowers, loosely arranged so as to make the whole
structure wavy and graceful. Here and there I saw an
opening between the leaves, which admitted the purest air,
I learned that the flowers were imperishable, and with such
a wonderful discovery
thrilling my spirit I awoke." (p. 354).
And yet, after such a imagistic account, she goes on to
say, "I do not think I have seen or heard more than once in
my sleep. Then the sunlight flashed suddenly on my eyes,
and I was so dazzled I could not think or distinguish
anything, When I looked up some one spelled hastily to me,
'Why, you are looking back upon your babyhood!' ." (p.
354).
As Jastrow notices, "The dreams of seeing and hearing
probably reflect far more of conceptual interpretation and
imaginative inference than of true
sensation; yet they are in part built up upon a sensory
basis." (p. 359). Notice the phrases " my thoughts
declared," "my mind acts as a sort of mirror," and "I was
informed".
This notion that the narrative elaboration in dreams of
the sighted and blind remains constant even though specific
visual imagery may vary has been tested more recently in a
study (Kerr, 1982) designed to control for other cognitive
abilities. The congenitally blind subjects without a
history of form vision were able to represent spatial
relationships in dream experience without either visual
imagery or compensatory imagery in other modalities. The
congenitally blind subjects with minimal form vision saw in
their dreams only to the extent that they had been able to
see in waking life. In neither group did lack of visual
imagery adversely affect the richness or narrative
continuity of dreaming. I'm including here a sample
dream (about a cancer clinic) taken from a congenitally
blind subject in the Kerr study who has light perception
but no form detection abilities:
Subject(S): I was in a room that looked similar to my
instant banker at work, but it
was a big machine with lots of buttons, like a car machine.
Experimenter(E): Like an instant banker machine?
S: Right, at {the bank}. And I don't know why I was there,
but I guess there was a screen and there were other buttons
you could push, you could look in and see how different
cancer patients are doing.
E: Was this visual, could you see anything?
S: I couldn't, but I stood by the screen and I knew that
*others* could see what was going on through all the little
panels...I guess I imagined the board with the buttons.
Maybe because I imagined in my mind, it was not that I
could really see them with my eyes, but I know what that
board looks like, and the only reason I know what it looks
like is by touch, and I could remember where the buttons
were without touching them on the boards...
E: O.K. Where did the events in this experience seems to be
taking place? What were the settings?
S: It seemed to be a large room that was oblong in shape,
and there seemed to be an x-ray machine's work. I felt like
it was in an office building where I worked.
E: And you mentioned something before about the bank?
S: Un huh, it looked like the bank where I do my instant
banking (E: O.K.), except it was larger and more oblong.
E: And is that more like where you worked?
S: No, where I do work, the room is smaller, just large
enough for that little instant banker machine.
Kerr notes :
"This description of a novel setting illustrates that
visual imagery is not the only means by which spatial
knowledge can be represented in dreams. In fact, such
knowledge need not depend on imaginal representation in
*any* sensory-specific modality. The subject was aware of
the size and shape of the room she was in, although she did
not describe touching it or waling around in it. She was
aware of the observations panels and the buttons on the
machine without having to touch them. More generally, this
subject could create dream environments made up of elements
from settings familiar to her in waking life, but she was
able to do so without representation of specific sensations
of either vision or touch." (p. 292).
Rather than saying that visually impaired
individuals have limited dream imagery, it would be a more
useful and sophisticated position to say that imagery is
inspired and carried by visual components, but is not
particularly dependent upon visual elements. Rather,
imagery is a cognitive conveyance, a way of seeing rather
than something seen. When H. Robert Blank, in his article
( Dream analysis in the treatment of the blind, 1959)
states that the blind have no visual dreams and "This will
surprise only those who believe in a racial unconscious or
the hereditary transmission of memories..." (p. 190) he
misses the point that imagery is not a visual perception,
but an psychological apperception.
The post-Jungian , James Hillman, in _The Dream and
the Underworld_ (1973/1979) further unfolds how extensive
this visual bias is in what he feels is our societies
greatest cause of psychological illness, our inability to
be imaginal and metaphorical, our continual insistence on
literalness (for example, suicide is seen as the persons
confusing the imaginal need for drastic rebirth with the
literal act of self destruction.
Jung is now famous for his saying the same thing
about drinking - that the person mistakes the metaphorical
need for spiritual contact with 'the spirit in the
bottle'). It is interesting that one of the great
interpreters of dreams, the ancient Greek Tiresias, was
blind. Perhaps in our listening to the dreams of the
visually impaired, we may, like the those who encountered
Tiresias, come to see our own blindness.
Annotated Bibliography
Adelson, Edward T.(Ed.). (1963). Dream analysis in
the treatment of the blind. In _Dreams in Contemporary
Psychoanalysis_. ( pp. 188-211) New York: The Society of
Medical Psychoanalysts. (Symposium on
dreams, NY 1959). [Some important considerations for
clinical work and psychodynamic insights about the issues
that will arise around blindness as castration and the
identifications of the victim with the castrating father
and social majority that may lead to self persecution.]
Hillman, James (1979). _Dreams and the Underworld_.
New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.
--------. (1973). The dream and the underworld._
Eranos_, 42: 237-31. [Two versions of the same writing.
Many feel put off by the references, the obscurity, the
digressions, the hard questions put to dream
interpretation, psychology and society in general. It's my
favorite dream book.]
Hunt, Harry. (1989). _The Multiplicity of Dreams:
Memory, Imagination and Consciousness_. New Haven: Yale
University Press. [Simply the finest readable summary of
research into cognitive studies on dreaming.]
Kerr, Nancy H., Foulkes, D., & Schmidt, M. (1982).
The structure of laboratory dream reports in blind and
sighted subjects. _The Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease_, 170:(5?), 286-294. [ A good cognitive dream
research study. A quote from the abstract " Overall, the
results are consistent with the view that the dream is a
constructive cognitive process, rather than a reproductive
perceptual one, and with the view that the integrative
cognitive systems responsible for both the momentary and
the sequential organization of the dream do not depend on
the presence either of contemporaneous visual-perceptual
experience or of well developed visual cognitive codes." p.
287]
Jastrow, J. (1900). The dreams of the blind. In _
Fact and Fable in Psychology_. (pp. 337-370). Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co. [Worth reading just for Helen
Keller's report, but also good summary of research at the
time. Jastrow was himself blind.]
Rainville, Raymond E. (1994). The role of dreams in
the rehabilitation of the adventitiously blind.
_Dreaming_, 4:(3), 155-164. [Very interesting and useful
information for clinical work and the vital role that
dreams play in the life adjustment of the newly blind. Also
a great bibliography on dreams and the blind and an
interesting notation of which of
the listed authors were themselves blind.]
=======================
DREAMS AND COMMENTS
======================
=========
Dogs by Jay
=========
I'm wandering back and forth among several
neighbor's back yards. One yard has a small metal tube in
the bushes under the back steps. I debate whether it could
be used to fire a bullet. But it is empty. later, my kids
school principal, Mrs. Gill, is there. She shows me a
similar thing which is just a supporting rod from a
previous structure.
Then I am climbing over a chain link fence. There
is a blind man with his seeing eye dog near by. Then
another dog tries to jump over the fence, chasing me. He
cuts himself quite badly trying to get over. At first I
don't want to do anything about it because of the expected
trouble and expense, but the blind guy convinces me and/or
he does. We have the dog treated by a vet. Only $600. He
is telling me how the dog belongs to someone in Washington
state and just came from western Virginia, either on it's
own or with the man to where we are (Washington DC).
Then I am examining this old beat up approximately
4 by 4 post with this strange door knob and latch in it.
Then we are watching this tiny 5 inch skeleton of a
dog which is alive. We give it old shells or skulls or
carcasses with little bits of meat on them. The skeleton
dog eats the remaining meat off of them so fast it just
becomes a blur.
==================================
Comments on Jay's Dream _Dogs_ by Richard
==================================
If this were my dream I would first try to get a sense
of backyardness. The Backyard. The space behind which we
live. What happens when this dream is about the space
behind where I live? When I wander around in the
boundaries of my neighbor's back yards I imagine a space
that is collective and a not observed from in front. When I
used to have a back yard, it was a place to be more casual,
to hang out and play. There were boundaries, but they were
less formal. Here there is a chance to find and debate the
meaning of the abandoned tube.
If this were my dream I would take it as good sign
that I had the ability to contemplate the uses and
functions of an abandoned (hidden?) tube. Man the tool
maker! There is a hint that this tube was, at one time
(Kids school, principally) part of a larger structure that
was supportive. If this were my dream I might try an affect
bridge to that time in my life and see if I felt
about something then the same way I now feel about the tube.
Perhaps a discarded support structure that I abandoned at
the time, but now might be able to use as an adult. Or
perhaps the tube is the connection, since the debate is
resolved by the appearance of the principal and she suggests
the association to the past structure.
What happens when the associated to structure is
now the following scene? A dog tries to get at the dreamer,
a dog whose boundaries are not fences. The fence may be a
link, a chain of significations that circulate around
the social sphere, but the dog senses a different set of
territories that the dreamer has unknowingly trespassed.
What are dream dogs? I've been fascinated by this question
for several years and have tried several symbolic
formulations, but the dogs always seem to elude my
conscious representations of them.
Usually I just take the dog as the one who gets the
shaft, the part of myself that leads the dog's life and
gets treated like an animal. Most say that animals
represent our instincts, our animal sexual parts If so, I
guess that dogs would be our more tameable instincts. But
others have been unhappy with this kind of conscious
formulation.
Consider this quote from the Archetypal
psychotherapist James Hillman (1979_The Dream and the
Underworld_): "Since I prefer not to consider animal images
as instincts inside us, I do not use the hermeneutics of
vitality corresponding to their appearance in dreams. Here,
I am trying to move away from the view that animals bring us
life or show our power, ambition, sexual energy, endurance,
or any of the other _rajas_, the hungry demands and
compulsive sins and vices that have been put off upon
animals in our culture and continue to be projected there
in our dream interpretations, to look at them from an
underworld (psychological -editor) perspective means to
regard them as carriers of soul, perhaps totem carriers of
our own free-soul or death-soul, there to help us see in the
dark." (p. 148).
What Hillman seems to be getting at is that animals
can be our guide going down into psyche and indicators of
our relationship to that journey. We may be chased down or
barred from entering, we may ride down or flee up. His point
is that animals are not representations but the way we
represent, "...they are not images _of_ animals, but images
_as_ animals." (p. 150). And so, dogs are, in a way, all
seeing-eye dogs in dreams in that they lead us, they are our
guides in matters of psyche and image. This dog seems to be
leading us to its own wound from crossing backyard
boundaries. It takes a blind man to see the dog has to be
healed. The dog has made a long journey, all the way across
the country. The dream ends in with some image of a tiny,
hungry dog. Whoops, I'm running out of time. If this were
my dream I might watch the dog like way I image things, the
style of poetically dwelling that might correspond to the
dogs in this dream. When do I imagine like a seeing-eye
dog, like a guard dog, like a hungry little totem like
dog? Are these the supportive structures I once had that
now just hang out in the backyard, carriers of blindness,
wounded anger and hunger, or are they calling me to the
unknown, to watch them more carefully before turning them
into daytime concepts and carriers? Great dream.
==============================
Roman Ruins in the Cyclades - by Richard
==============================
I'm on a ship in the Cyclades. Its some kind of
tour boat that goes through the islands. We go through a
series of locks and have to wait for the water to be
equalized. It's very exciting, and the boat is at
vertiginous heights, hundreds of yards above each of the
next sections. My wife and I exchange looks. I feel she
wants to be in on the excitement but may be too afraid of
the heights. I feel in the look we exchanged that I
acknowledged how hard this might be for her.
Soon everyone on the boat is oohing and aahhing at
some ancient ruins on an island hill beside the ship. I
think they are nice, but I say "These are *Roman* not
*Greek.*" I feel immediately uncomfortable and unsure of
myself. I wait tensely for a moment, but someone else
confirms what I say and I feel vindicated, as if I had
exposed some kind of hoax.
We leave the ship and go up to the ruins. There is
an old Art Deco plaster white building. It's a tourist shop
at the top of the hill. I go in with a group but wander off
on my own. There are several scenes in the shop (forgotten
now--tourist issues) and eventually we go outside and down
to a terrace to look at the ruins.
=======================================
"The Valley, the Theatre and the Mistake" by Viking
=======================================
The dream started with me and someone (I am not
sure who) driving into a beautiful mountain valley with a
large lake. I thought this is the most beautiful place I
have seen and it is where I want to live. As I drove on
through the valley, there was a lot of industry, but I
still thought it was where I want to live.
The dream then jumps to me in some sort of high
school, in the control booth of the theatre, and [I felt]
that I belonged there. Then the dream jumped again, and I
was on the floor of the theatre thinking that although it
was sort of beat up and the seating was simply concrete
levels, the space was workable and could be made to
function quite well.
Along with this was a dreamline about a young woman
who just happened to be Christina Applegate (the daughter
on the t.v.show "Married with Children"). She was being
accused of stealing a boom box, and I was trying to explain
to whoever was accusing her that it was all a mistake.
Whether the dreams were intertwined or separate I
don't know, but they seem to be one dream.
=================================================
Dream Resources
=================================================
About Dream Resources: I've had several personal requests
for information on the wider world of dreaming and so we
have three projects we are adding this issue to the D-R
section. The first is a joint effort with the _Dream
Network Journal_ to add subscribers to both and increase
cross awareness. The second project includes the posting
of national and international resources, conferences and
meetings.(see issue 1-19) Lets hold off for now on local and
regional meeting announcements - though reviews
of these are fine.
I do hope that there will be an internet site for local
meetings soon. And finally the addition of (coming soon)
bibliographic resources and book reviews on dreams and
dreaming. If you have something to post or run across
something related to dreaming on the net, send that to my
address. RCWilk@aol.com
--Richard
==============================================
WWW Dream Site:
Jay Vinton found this URL site and Chris Beattie has sent
us some info from there. If you have access to the
World-Wide Web (Mosaic, Netscape, Lynx, etc.), lots of
dream related material can be found at
http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo/Science/Psychology
/Dreams/
Here is a sample from the page (cut and paste from
Netscape)...
Science: Psychology: Dreams
* bianca's Dream Book
* dreamMosaic - a forum for dreamsharing and
cataloging, a place todiscover worldwide group dreaming.
* Dreams
* DreamX: Dream Audio - DreamX is a dream-audio
exchange project.
Trades only. Spout your dreams, hear other people's
dreams. Face the undermind.
* On Dreams - by Aristotle
* Sunshine Inc. - a team of international experts in
the fields of psychology, neuro-anatomy, and the spiritual
sciences dedicated in helping you with dream guidance,
counseling, and spiritual growth.
* FAQ - Dreams
* Usenet - alt.dreams - What do they mean?
* Usenet - alt.dreams.lucid - What do they _really_
mean?
[ Yahoo | Up | Search | Mail | Add | Help ]
yahoo@akebono.stanford.edu
Copyright c 1994, 1995 David Filo and Jerry Yang
====================================================
================================================
Electric Dreams is an independent electronic
publication not affiliated with any other organization.
The views of our commentators are personal views and not
intended a professional advise or psychotherapy.
================================================
