The Canary in the Mind: The Transformation of Dreams as an Endangered Species in the Post-Human Electronic Culture [Paper presented on June 15, 2002, at the Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group]
There are many ways that one comes to an interest in dreams. My own childhood nightmares led to extended periods of blocking out dreams. This antagonism to dreams was only relieved decades later through immersion in listening to dreams of my patients and in teaching a seminar on dreams at the William Alanson White Institute. Patients told their dreams because they believed an analytic therapist would be or should be interested. We partake not only in the tradition of the analyst - Freudian or Jungian--who interprets dreams, but also in the more ancient tradition and archetype of spiritual and psychological healer who has always used dreams in healing. Over time, I began to read psychoanalytic and anthropological texts, allowing myself to think beyond the stranglehold of the domination of the idea of correct interpretation, and I found myself more able to relax and to allow dreams their play time in the clinical setting in what is closer to dream conversation than dream interpretation. And then, I could begin to relax with my own. In addition, I come to the study of dreams through the
rich clinical Interpersonal tradition in New York City. But, also, as
a Post-doctoral Clinical Psychology Fellow, in the early 1960s, at the
Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, the spirit of David
Rapaport's Chapter Seven seminars still echoed. If you can imagine
putting these seemingly divergent influences together, you have an
approximation of two of the analytic roots of my thinking about
dreams. In the Interpersonal approach, i.e., at the William Alanson
White Institute, there never was a particular theory of dreams,
never a singular clinical approach to dream interpretation, and
certainly much divided opinion on the nature of the unconscious. This
led to an atmosphere of relative freedom in thinking about dreams. To
this diversity was joined the quality of the dream seminars of Erich
Fromm and later Edward Tauber and Maury Green, in which playfulness,
intuition, and an open-mindedness were seen as virtues. I learned to
find my own way with dreams within a general clinical approach that
was not doctrinaire, that was as attuned to the real world as to the
inner world, that allowed the therapist considerable individual
latitude, including the possibilities of direct engagement with the
patient, that was closer to patients' experience than to theory, and
that anticipated many of the recent changes in modern psychoanalysis.
On the one hand. On the other, there was Rapaport's Freud. For me, this
included an appreciation for mental architecture, for layered,
complexly interwoven psychological themes, in which drives, defenses,
day residues, and infantile experience, join together in carefully
constructed, yet remarkably fluid ways. It gave me a sense of the
universe within each dream image--including the distinct possibility
that it could all make sense, if one had the desire and the patience
to apply Rapaportian learning to Freudian creation (our secular
version of the relationship of Talmud to Torah, from which much of the
spirit of psychoanalysis arose). There is also an oppositional quality that stimulates
an interpersonalist to move to Freud. I am sure if I came from a
Freudian atmosphere, I would be Jungian, and vice versa. This
oppositionalism is helpful in working with dreams, because one is so
constructed as to look at the other side of things, and with dreams
there is nothing but other sides. 1. Clinical Work Let me begin with several observations. (a) While dreams and psychoanalysis were wedded to each
other in the early decades of psychoanalysis, they are no longer on
such intimate terms. There are relatively few papers on dreams, and
psychoanalytic conferences may include one or two presentations on
dreams out of hundreds. Psychoanalysis has turned to relational
concerns, to post-modern perspectives, to Lacan, to Bion and to
attachment theory. Dreams have been taken up by the New Age healing
community and by shaman imitators, by Jungian therapists, by the Association
for the Study of Dreams, by neuro- and cognitive scientists, by
those involved in the study of consciousness. That is, dreams and
psychoanalysis have gone their separate ways. (b) I believe dreams and psychoanalysis parted company
for many reasons - economic, philosophic, systemic, personal, etc. One
of these, I propose, is that psychoanalysis was not up to dreams and
may have lost heart in pursuing the realm of the unconscious. (i)
Dreams do not easily yield clarity; (ii) they are open to many
possibilities in the realm of meaning; (iii) we are too meaning
obsessed and have refrained from other ways of responding to dreams;
(iv) we used dreams to prove our theories - exploitation of natural
resources; (v) we became too concerned with “the correct
interpretation” which inhibited creative, free, intuitive
approaches; (vi) Narcissus looks into dreams and sees his own face;
(vii) especially in Freudian and Jungian circles, dream interpretation
became repetitive, single-minded, too dedicated to the instructions of
the masters. Practitioners became constricted and closed up rather
than relaxed in listening to dreams. (c) In addition, the culture is not particularly
interested in dreams. The domination of materialist pursuits mitigates
against an interest in dreams. The American Dream is not much
interested in the nighttime variety. If anything, sleep and dreams,
shadow life, inner life, the realm of psyche are less and less of
importance in our culture. In this respect psychoanalysis and the
dominant culture go hand in hand, where once psychoanalysis was in
deep contrast, contradiction, opposition, to many of the central
aspects of the dominant culture. Today contemporary psychoanalysis -
particularly of the relational variety - moves in concert with many
aspects of the dominant culture. As a side aspect - there are manifest
and latent aspects to our culture’s engagement with dreams. On the
surface, in the dominant culture, there is little interest in dreams.
Under the surface, in the New Age community, in aspects of immigrant
culture, in various pockets throughout the culture, dreams continue to
be of interest and importance. Similarly in psychoanalysis, in the
official circles, dreams have disappeared. Yet in the quiet of our
offices, now with less domination by Freud or Jung, with less of an
all-embracing theory to read into dreams, clinicians are working with
dreams in personal, meaningful and interesting ways. Also, younger
therapists, for decades bathed in a culture of visual imagery (film,
TV, videos, computer), and also influenced here and there by their
experience of Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism) and with body
therapies (yoga, massage), take to dreams with an ease and naturalness
that has been missing in older therapists. Also, they are open to
sharing and learning from their own dreams, in this way--closer in
spirit to the founders of psychoanalysis than to the classical, ego,
self, interpersonal, relational and Jungian colleagues who rarely used
their own dreams in teaching or clinical writing, and who are inclined
to hide their own dreams because dreams have been thought to contain
shameful impulses, strivings, interests. Using one’s own dreams in
learning about work with dreams is the contribution originally of
Freud, Jung and their early students, more recently of Montague Ullman,
Gordon Lawrence (social dreaming) and others. (d) In this regard, I’d like to mention how innocent,
inexperienced, naïve, we are in the dream world. Psychological
healers have a tradition in relation to dreams. Not only were dream
incubation centers in ancient Egypt and Greece of significance, but
also in many pre-industrial and indigenous cultures, shamanic dream
healers used their own dreams in order to descend into the underworld
to do battle with unseen forces (ghosts, internalized others, curses,
etc.) that plagued their clients. Totem animals - often frightening,
often appearing in dreams - were the guides that assisted the healer
in the underworld. The use of one’s own dreams in this way (e.g., War
of the Witches by Timothy Knab) is a far cry from our careful
avoidance of our own dreams in modern psychological healing. It was
difficult to feel confident in work with dreams, in part, because we
had no system - other than Freud’s and Jung’s - for navigating
among the images of the underworld. And Freud and Jung, despite their
great ability, could hardly imbue their followers with confidence -
since the ancient relation between the realms of God, Nature and
community had long ceased to be coherent, stable and meaningful. We
were all on our own. (e) Over years, I developed ways of working with dreams
that involved (i) following and remaining with the dream’s images,
and (ii) the development of dream conversation (rather than
interpretation) which includes (iii) an interest in the effect of the
dream on dreamer and listener and (iv) respecting the patient’s
habitual ways with dreams. (v) The forgetting of dreams is thought of
as natural and is part of the ecology of mental functioning (“Apple
Tree Dreams”). The appreciation of creative aspects of dreams and
attention to the importance of the rehearsal for death and the
engagement with generations past and future, are all thought of as
important in working with dreams. 2. A Social psychology of dreams Once we travel outside the clinical situation, we
become involved with dreams in their more natural context. There is a
long and ancient tradition of experience with dreams and with dream
interpretation. First, distinctions must be made between (i) dreams
including their affects and effects, (ii) dream interpretation
including post-dream discussion of dreams, associations, elaborations,
amplifications, etc. (iii) and the uses to which dreams and their
interpretation are put. These are not the same, but the confusion
among these three different realms has been widespread. E.g.,
sometimes dreams are treated as though their interpretation is the
same as the dream, or as though the interpretation is the only way of
viewing a particular dream. This is true both in psychoanalytic
writing and in some ancient texts, e.g., Torah. (a) Dreams in ancient times before the destruction of
natural night by our involvement with artificial light. Dreams were
the only show in night town. The power and influence of the dream
interpreter. (b) Dreams as the model for art, story telling,
architecture, poetry, music, etc. (c) Dreams in the development of religion (Judaism,
Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, pre-industrial, native religions) as well as
in the secular religion - psychoanalysis. Dreams and life after death.
(d) Dreams as the model for film and virtual reality (Gamwell,
2000). The Lumiere Brothers in Paris in 1896. Hollywood as the great
Dream Factory (Spielberg’s DreamWorks). The external screen
and the internal screen. Technology has moved the locus from the inner
screen - where images are created out of individual and cultural
memory, daytime experience, history, wishes, need to solve problems,
self-consolidation, healing of trauma, etc. - to the external screen
where images are manufactured and sold to a hungry populace. (e) Film was only the beginning. The entire universe of
virtual experience begins with dreams and has now moved into the
culture as a whole. Computer, video, e-commerce, TV, palm pilots,
etc., are the toys of the global economy. The move is from the privacy
of the dream world to the disappearance of privacy in the exchange
from inner world imagination to the domination of imagination on the
external screen. (f) In this process, the natural world stood as one
pole with dream imagination at the other. Concepts such as primary
process and secondary process, pleasure principle and reality
principle, have meaning in a world in which dream imagination and
reality are in some balance with one another. As the natural world is
reduced and replaced by our own designs (e.g., in the cities, nothing
is larger than our own designs which dwarf trees, sky, clouds, hills,
etc.), we live more and more in a dream, less and less in a real
world. In the way we live, film, TV, videos, computers mediate our
experience of the “real world.” And the dream (illusion, image) of
life is more compelling than the real thing. Some felt we woke up on
9/11. Whatever is our view of this event, the mediation of the event
through the media is crucial. (g) Therefore, I am suggesting we open a discussion of
the relation between the psychology of dreams and the psychology of
waking life in the post-human era in which humans and machines are in
intimate interaction. Is it possible that Freud’s chapter 7
considerations reveal some aspects of life in the post-human, in the
electronic era? According to Hayles, (i) disembodiment and (ii) the
instantaneous exchange of information describe both dream experience
and contemporary electronic experience. In both, So now with this
introduction to some of the ideas in The Canary in the Mind or The
Transformation of Dreams as an Endangered Species in the Post-Human
Electronic World, let us begin. It is by now commonplace to consider that we are living
through, in this turn of the Century, a huge and fairly rapid
transformation in human culture from the modern and the post-modern
era to what Hayles and Fukuyama call the post-human in which
electronic technology, the growing interaction and integration of
human and machine, the continuing destruction of the natural world and
its replacement by our own designs, all along with the burgeoning
growth of the world market and its geo-politics - are leading to rapid
changes, along with confusion and dislocation in how we think and feel
about ourselves and our world. It is possible that the degree of
manifest anxiety about future terrorist activity in addition to being
realistic, may also represent in part, a displacement from
unacknowledged anxiety about the development of extremely rapid
changes in the human condition including increasing difficulties in
maintaining the quality of air, food and water - i.e., the ecological
crisis. What do dreams have to do with any of this? In my
opinion, dreams are a bell weather, a canary in the mind, of the
underlying condition of our species. My own choice is to study these changes through the
lens of the dream. I propose the dream is the basic model for much of
our fascination with virtual experience fashioned by a burgeoning
electronic technology. Further, I propose that the psychology of
dreams and their interpretation is increasingly relevant to the
psychology of everyday life in a time characterized by an emerging
human capacity to create a world of our very own designs. Despite the rapidity of modern change, dreams remain a
fascinating, extraordinary and continuously mysterious part of nature.
The ancient mind, in its universal and nightly outpouring of images
and stories, filled with feeling and ambiguity, continues to play an
eternal peek-a-boo with memory and with daytime’s interests and
concerns. I feel we are extremely fortunate, in our clinical work, to
still be considered worthy receivers of our patient’s dreams. Primarily because of the work of Freud, we are regarded
as the heirs and descendents of the ancient dream interpreters from
every known culture in human history. Our patients continue to expect that their dreams will
provide clues for meaningful understanding and healing. This
relationship with dreams is, by itself, of deep and lasting value. But
outside the clinical setting, dreams have yet another contribution to
make. Through the study of dreams, their interpretations and their
uses, (1) in ancient times, (2) in other cultures, (3) at the origin
of psychoanalysis, (4) in contemporary psychoanalysis, and (5) in our
modern post-industrial electronic global culture, it is possible,
through the prism of dreams, to assess the extraordinary changes that
have taken place in the meaningfulness and status of inner life. Some of us still agree with Freud (1899 [1900]) that
dreams are the royal road to an understanding of unconscious mind.
And, further, some of us still believe that the innermost person, the
heart of psyche, inner life itself, is found in intimate connection
with dream life. The way in which dreams are viewed, I believe, is an
indication of the way in which the inner person, the psyche, is
regarded. A culture that disregards dreams, in my opinion, is a
culture that is ready to disavow inner life. This hypothesis has many
implications that will occupy us for the remainder of the paper. What
may be the advantages or disadvantages of a demotion of interior life
for a particular culture, and what is proposed in place of interior
life, are relevant questions, but for another time. Dreams, in ancient times, were the main attraction of
nightlife. Long before we lit up the night with neon, 250 TV channels
and 24 hour shopping marts, before we conquered night, before we
replaced nature itself with our own designs, for most all of human
existence, the dream, without competition, was of singular importance.
Those who wore the mantle of dream interpreter were in a most
privileged and powerful position. Every culture looked into the
private dream and, like Narcissus, saw reflected its own image. That
is, it saw in dreams what was essential for its survival, i.e., its
maintenance, continuity and coherence. The culture saw reflected in
dreams ways of planting and hunting, ways of praying and governing,
ways to interact with past and future generations, in short, ways to
live. Before science dispelled the magic, dreams instructed,
prophesized, warned, delighted and educated. The private dream,
examined by the culture through dream interpreters, revealed the
culture’s deepest nature. Thus, the relationship in ancient times
and in pre-industrial and pre-scientific societies between dream,
nature, gods and community was secure and coherent. As we entered the machine age, minds enlightened by
science turned from the mysteries accompanying dreams along with all
the other impenetrables of spiritual existence, e.g., age-old
preoccupations with the nature of life, death and the afterlife, and
instead, found itself in increasing preoccupation with the material
realm. In short, as Nietzsche had it, “God was dead.” At the
opening of the 20th Century, in deep Jewish oppositionalism, or more
correctly as compromise between science and ancient lore, Freud turned
to dreams for basic inspiration. Psychoanalysis was born on the wings
of dreams and dreams entered the 20th Century, in Western culture, on
the couches of psychoanalysts, allowing us royal access to the vast
unknown while holding the door open to the echoes and ghosts of
ancient preoccupations. In short, dreams and psychoanalysis were made
for each other. Our early pioneers were deeply committed to an
exploration of dreams, and they talked and wrote about them
incessantly. It was, after all, nature’s most direct chariot to the
unconscious. But too soon, psychoanalysis turned away from dreams to
pursue other interests - e.g., transference and countertransference,
attachment theory, Lacan, Bion, relationalism, gender studies, and so
on. In itself, an important question is raised: why did psychoanalysis
turn away from dreams? I attempt to approach this question in other
writing (Lippmann, 2000). Suffice to say, there are many and complex
reasons for this disengagement - economic, philosophical, systemic,
personal, cultural, and practical. In
passing, one reason stands out. Dreams are inherently ambiguous and
open to many interpretations. They are, in their nature, a prime
example of unwilled, creative, subjective experience that cannot be
contained in any single particular theoretical structure. While
blindingly brilliant, both Freud’s and Jung’s overarching theories
unfortunately required dreams to be forced into theoretical
straitjackets that included interpreting dreams according,
respectively, to prescribed sexual and archetypal meanings. Work with
dreams, as a result, became an exercise in domination and inevitably,
lost a necessary liveliness. Akin to the domination and exploitation
of natural resources in the industrial era, dreams were exploited to
enhance the theoretical power of various analytic systems. In
today’s psychoanalysis, most every dream is looked into to reveal
not its sexual, not its archetypal, but instead, aspects of the
therapist-patient interaction. In such activity, there are always
discoveries to be made, but the dream, itself, is rudely mistreated,
with interpretation sometimes directed against feelings of confusion
and doubt in the therapist, i.e., against being and seeming unknowing.
The emphasis on interpretation, on being right, on proving oneself, on
nailing the dream, could not help but lead to growing disinterest in
work with dreams. Simply put, in my opinion, psychoanalysis was not up to
the dream’s openness, puzzling variety, creativity, and zaniness.
That is, psychoanalysis shied away from a genuine encounter with
dreams, instead shaping dreams to fit its version of the unconscious.
While psychoanalysis was being challenged from many quarters, we
became too insecure to work with the inherent ambiguity of dreams.
Despite holding on to Freud and Jung for support and guidance, for a
while, psychoanalysts as full participants in Western culture and as
modern dream healers were too alienated and disoriented in relation to
nature, god, community and the unconscious to dive into dreams with
the verve, respect, appreciation and playfulness required for good
dream conversation. And so, we turned away from dreams, pretending
they were ordinary mental events not worthy of our attention. And dreams for their part, also turned elsewhere,
joining other lovers and finding a home with New Age healers and
shaman imitators, within neuroscience, with those interested in the
problems of consciousness, with science fiction writers, with Jungian
followers, in growing numbers of dream discussion groups, and within
rapidly expanding groups of internet dream sharers. Thus, psychoanalysis, at first, in opposition to the
materialism of the dominant culture, but now in concert with the
dominant culture, has turned away from a central engagement with
dreams. This parallel between psychoanalysis and the dominant culture,
from the point of view of dreams, is in my opinion a central
observation and merits further discussion. I should add that, while
dreams have been disappearing from our official life in papers, books
and conferences, yet in the quiet privacy of many therapists’
offices, dreams are still being discussed although now freer from
theoretical dominance. Also, younger therapists, following upon their
life-long immersion in the imagery of film, video, TV and computer,
and together with the influence of New Age thinking and a smattering
of Hindu, Yogic and Buddhist conceptions, take to dreams and dream
discussion like fishes to water. Within psychoanalysis, thus, there are two different
reactions to dreams. In the official version, dreams once considered
central, are now relegated to second-class status, replaced in
importance by relational and other concerns. Meanwhile, in the
increasingly dominant American and Western industrial culture, dreams
may have once been thought to contain some importance in
pre-scientific days, are of little value in the contemporary
marketplace. That is, the American dream has little use for the
universal nighttime variety. Night dreams do not affect the bottom
line, and in our materialist vision, dreams pale by comparison with
the dollar. (Should the system find a way to market dreams, they will
gain in official value.) Yet, under the surface, dreams continue to influence.
In the New Age healing community, among those influenced by Jung and
by Asian, Muslim and Native American religions and cosmologies, in
many immigrant populations, in some interested in trauma, in the
Association for the Study of Dreams, and in the ordinary lives of
regular people, dreams continue to serve as inspiration and
connection. So, just as in psychoanalysis, dreams are of little
interest on the official plane, but remain of importance in the
unofficial world. In addition to the observation of a devaluing of dreams
in contemporary life and in psychoanalysis, there is yet another side
to the exploration of the fate of dreams. While disappearing from
serious consideration in official life, dreams, in my opinion, have
been undergoing a metamorphosis through modern technology and have
reappeared in transformed ways. This transformation can be seen along
two fronts. (1) Dreams serve as the model and the inspiration for
aspects of the information revolution and for the burgeoning world of
virtual reality displayed on the external screen. And (2) dreams have
been morphed into the very products of the external screen (e.g.,
film, TV, video). (1) Dreams as model for virtual reality. Dreams are the
original virtual reality. As we all know, dreamers regularly find
themselves deeply situated and embedded in their dreams, believing the
experience real, feeling and reacting as though the events of the
dream are actually taking place. In this respect, the mind is equipped
for life-long repeated experience of believing, within dreams, in the
reality of one’s sleep imagination, believing in the reality of
one’s own REM hallucinations--virtual sex, virtual murder, virtual
danger, virtual love, virtual people, virtual life. Now commercial
technology brings us manufactured simulation and the possibilities of
virtual living all well-practiced in dream life - in this sense are
dreams the model. It is not entirely new for dreams to serve as model for
some of life’s most significant activities. It is thought that
dreams served as the original model for theater, for fiction, for
dance, for other expressive art forms, and for basic aspects of
religious and spiritual belief and practice. Most every religion finds
its beginnings in dream experience. In the sophisticated complexities
of Hindu cosmology and tradition - all life is a dream, and one wakens
from a dream into the illusory nature of waking life. For Muslims, the
Koran is believed to have been dictated by Allah to his messenger and
prophet, Mohammed, entirely in a dream. In the foundational myth of
Buddhism, Maya, the Buddha’s mother, dreams of being impregnated by
the tusk of a white elephant leading to the birth of Buddha. In S.
Young’s brilliant text: “Dreaming in the Lotus” (1999), the
power of dreams in the development of religion in Asian cultures is
fully documented. In the Torah and in Talmud, particularly in the
volume of Talmud called “Berekhoth” or “Blessings,” the
significance of dreams in Jewish history and religion is clear. From
Joseph to Freud, there is a direct lineage. In the origins of
Christianity, dreams play a significant part. Later, as Christianity became an official religion, the
spiritual meaningfulness of dreams was questioned. In African Ashanti
and other nature religions, dreams are prominent. In American Indian,
aboriginal, and pre-industrial civilizations around the globe, dreams
and their interpretations play a prominent role in origination myths
and in spiritual practice. Our very own secular religion,
psychoanalysis, also begins in dreams, and the specimen dream helps
establish Freud as a great dream knower, although as we have learned,
the Irma dream revealed much more than Freud realized - it confessed
aspects of the guilty, bloody, misogynous origins of psychoanalysis.
It has also been suggested (E. Hartmann, 1995) that dreams serve as
the basic and original model for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in
the sense that in both drams and therapy, far-ranging connections are
made in the mind within safe boundaries. Others (e.g., Lewin, 1954)
suggest that there is a direct parallel between sleep and dreams, on
the one hand, and analytic couch and free association, on the other. In most cultures, the relationship between sleep and
death, and between dreams and life after death, is an important one.
Both in form and content, dreams have been thought of as crucial
nightly rehearsal for the experience of death in which the body asleep
is separated from the mind in dreams - like soul freed in death from
its material shell. Also, in dreams one finds direct evidence of life
after death in the virtual reality of the appearance of dead persons.
For many, dream connections with the dead are among life’s most
memorable and informative experiences. In addition to serving as model for significant forms
of living, dreams, in content, often prepare for, anticipate, show the
way to the future. We flew in dreams long before the invention of
airplanes. We swam with fish in dreams long before technology
developed submarines. This broadly prophetic function of dreams - its
capacity to anticipate what is ahead--far exceeds the narrowly
predictive function often debated and usually debunked. Thus, there is a long tradition preparing us for the
idea that dreams are a model for the electronic revolution, and
further that the psychology of dreams is directly relevant to an
understanding of this era. Perhaps the vast expansion of dreams from
the internal screen into the electronic universe displayed on the
external screen is only the most recent example of the human ability
to expand its own capacities. Our visual capacity was expanded through
telescopes and microscopes so that we can “see” upward into the
heavens and inward into our own cellular makeup. We have expanded our
ears through sonar, our voices through microphones, our legs through
automobiles, our muscles through powerful earth movers, our memory
through print and now computers, and now our dreams are expanded into
life on the screen. And this is nowhere more apparent than in the
burgeoning of the world of film, TV and video. (2) Dreams reappear transformed into film, TV and
video. At the same time that Freud was creating The Interpretation
of Dreams, the Lumiere Brothers, August and Louis, in Paris,
advanced the technology of film considerably, and at the same time,
they began to create short films that imitated, portrayed, and
depicted dreams. Shown in a darkened room in order to parallel sleep
and charging admission, the Lumieres consciously and deliberately were
expanding the private dream into a shared and social experience. It is
no accident that we have traveled from the Lumieres to Spielberg’s
DreamWorks and to Hollywood as the “dream factory.” Film was born
in direct imitation of dreams and modeled itself closely on the ways
of dreams. Early in psychoanalysis, there was considerable interest in
the relation between dreams and film, but interest has waned, just as
film and TV have moved to a position of enormous influence and power
in the culture. Whereas dreams once informed, educated, explored,
entertained, delighted, frightened, solved problems, looked into the
future, reworked the past, provided access to forbidden experience,
excited, played, provided release, expressed emotion - now film and TV
perform these functions. During the day or anytime at all, people can
partake of dream-like experience. They can lose themselves in a
somewhat disembodied state, for a while, for a price, from the cares
of waking life, and be transformed by the world of images. One crucial
difference between the two, of course, is that dreams are constructed
and experienced by one’s own creative and imaginative capacity, from
within. Film and TV, on the other hand, is externally and commercially
constructed and taken in by a consumer. Thus while dreams seem to lose their ancient
significance in modern life, they reappear, stretched, transformed,
enlarged, commercialized, on TVs in everyone’s home, or on huge
screens, in a mega-cineplex, hyped by millions of dollars in ads,
supported by fame hungry fans, entertainment magazines, award
ceremonies, a pantheon of stars and starlets, a billion dollar
industry, an eternal circus, a feast of images and stories to delight,
to distract, to control. From dreams, transformed through technology, into the
enormous TV and film industry, we are in the midst of a remarkable
metamorphosis from the product of the private imagining mind locked in
night’s sleep, to one of the driving forces of the global market.
And yet it seems only a short step from Joseph, Pharaoh and the
important political and economic use of the interpretation of the
dream of fat and thin cattle, to the contemporary way in which TV and
film, as the modern embodiment of ancient dream life, “wags the
dog” of public policy. For example, the Gulf War seen on TV,
produced for the consumption of a wary audience, was probably quite
different from the Gulf War itself. Even though dreams serve as model for the electronic
revolution and even though dreams resurface as TV and film in the
modern world, dreams as dreams have lost their importance in the
industrialized societies. One could think of dreams as “the canary
in the mind” of modern life. You are no doubt familiar with the
phrase “canary in the mine.” In coal mines in Europe and in
America during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, canaries were used
as harbingers of dangerous air quality and potential explosion. Proper
mine shaft ventilation was too costly for mine owners. Therefore,
canaries (these were the failed singers) with more delicate breathing
systems than found in humans, were carried in cages into mines by
miners trying to protect themselves. When canaries keeled over, miners
knew it was time to get out. In modern culture, dreams are keeling over. That is,
the culture’s regard for dreams is declining and dreams find
themselves valued only in some elements of the under-culture or as
transformed into commodified commercial forms. I have suggested that
no less than the culture’s regard for inner life is at stake. As
inner life is ignored, marginalized, digitalized, or commodified, are
we witnessing one aspect of the dark side of the victory of world
capitalism? If the bottom line is the measure of all things, where
is there a place for the mystery of dreams? If there is no place for
dreams, can there be a place for the enormous variety and diversity of
human psychological experience? In short, is the atmosphere for inner
life poisoned in modern living? Dreams are “the canary in the
mind” to the extent that their diminishment reflects aspects in
contemporary culture that are not friendly to inner life and that
reduce dreams to the fragile status of an endangered species. It is not coincidence that I use some of the terms and
metaphors familiar to those involved with environmental and ecological
concerns. The continuing human destruction of the natural world as
part of our increasing demand for natural resources has changed our
relation to what was once considered “the real world.” As we
dominate, control and destroy nature, we replace it with an
electronic, a manufactured, a digitalized, a constructed, a virtual
environment. Nothing is beyond our reach or our capacities. There is
less of an “out there ” out there. There is more of “us” out
there, i.e., our designs replace nature’s designs. Biotechnology
enables us to alter our own genes, to create ourselves. In this
cultural atmosphere, the dream of nighttime is dwarfed by our capacity
to live in a dream world uninterrupted by what we once thought of as
reality. That is, the balance to dreaming was a real world, separate
from the ways of dreaming, a reality principle different from a
pleasure principle. Now, we wake into a world of our own creation, often
modeled after or otherwise similar to the ways of dreaming. Modern
technology has carried us back to the ancient Hindu understanding that
life is an illusion. What are the psychological implications of this
change? There are many more questions raised than answered by these
considerations. For the present, I encourage my colleagues to engage in the life of dreams, to allow them time in our increasingly busy lives, to allow them in all their mystery and ambiguity to lead the way in our therapeutic work, to follow the images, the stories, and the associations and amplifications with playfulness and confidence that the unknown can still teach us what we need to learn. That is, I urge an attitude both rebellious and oppositional to the mainstream both in our culture and in psychoanalysis. I urge that we reconnect with the world of dreams, both for its own sake, and because the dream, in my opinion, stands at the threshold of a new era. There is no reason for us to leave dreams to the New Agers, to the followers of Jung, and to neuroscience. The door opened by Freud is only now, one hundred years later, showing a culture in dreamland. His ideas about the ways of dreams have great relevance to the changes now in our midst. It is time to return to our origins. References Freud
S. (1899 [1900]). The
Interpretation of Dreams. S.E., 4 & 5. Gamwell
L., editor (2000). Dreams 1900-2000. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press. Hartmann
E. (1995). Making connections in a safe place: Is dreaming
psychotherapy? Dreaming, 5: 213-228. Knab
T. (1995). A War of Witches. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lewin
B. (1954). Sleep, narcissistic neurosis and the analytic situation. Psychoanal.
Quart., 23: 487-510. Lippmann P. (2000). Nocturnes: On Listening to dreams. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Young
S. (1999). Dreaming in the Lotus. Boston, MA: Wisdom.
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