Dreamwork and Self-Healing

Unfolding the Symbols of the Unconscious

Greg Bogart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781855757585
• eBook ISBN: 9780429912993
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

There have been many previous books on the physiology of dreaming, the history of dream interpretation, and the meaning of specific dream symbols. But there have been relatively few books exploring the moment-by-moment process of interpreting dreams. This book guides you through this interpretive process, and illustrates how dreamwork promotes emotional, relational, and spiritual transformation. It explores how working with dreams enhances our emotional life, deepens our capacity for relationship, and helps us gracefully navigate change and transitions. The author shows that dreamwork is a natural antidepressant, is effective in transforming anger, bereavement, couples conflicts and impasses, and aids the process of individuation. The book explores archetypal themes and complexes, synchronistic experiences and spiritual awakening in dreams, and representations of the body in dreams. The final chapter, "Taming Wild Horses", explores animal dream symbolism and its importance for enhancing our human sexuality. The book also describes the Dream Mandala, a method of self-transformation through the union of opposites - the charged polarities of the personality.

Part I
Therapeutic Dreamwork

Chapter Two
Dreamwork and Psychotherapy

Dreams are a potent force for change when we explore them in the context of psychotherapy—or when we explore our own dreams with a therapeutic attitude, seeking healing and emotional truth. Approached in a sacred manner, with an open mind and heart, our dreams begin to guide us, one step at a time, through the labyrinth of change. Dreams illuminate developmental tasks and stir up rich, juicy material for deep exploration. Dreams pinpoint what we need to revisit from the past, what we are feeling right now, and what new directions and possibilities are emerging. They move our lives forward with a powerfully healing influence.

The Dream of the Cactus Plant

Bob, a man in his mid-forties beginning a course of psychotherapy, had this dream:

I’m six years old. I’m with my mother and we’re cleaning out the closets.

As Bob’s therapist, I was immediately drawn to the emotional significance of events in the client’s sixth year and the need to sort through whatever had been hidden in the closet. Many family secrets came out of hiding in subsequent therapy sessions. I learned about the domestic violence and alcoholism that were closely kept family secrets. Bob was currently in a deep depression after the break-up of a relationship. As he began to examine his anger, his tendency to act abusively toward women, his sadness, and his need to accept his solitude, he dreamed:

I’m on my hands and knees in front of my bed potting a cactus plant.

The cactus plant represented Bob’s prickly personality. When I asked what the further significance of a cactus might be, he said, “A cactus can live in a desert for a long time with very little water, and it finds its juice within its own body.” The cactus was a symbol of his need to find juice or aliveness in the desert of his solitude, rather than looking to women and relationships for excitement. Bob was learning to live with himself, to care for himself. Being on his hands and knees suggested the emergence of humility. The dream of planting the cactus illustrates that each dream image, even the smallest fragment, is significant and meaningful, revealing a cross-section of the unconscious.

The Dream of the Missing Money

A simple dream often carries deep emotional meaning. A woman named Jill reported:

I dreamed that I’m in the store where I work, counting a stack of money. A bunch of money is missing.

Jill offered this interpretation: “Being robbed in the dream reminds me of how I was robbed of my childhood. I never got a chance to be a kid, to be cared for and pampered. I was short-changed.” Jill recounted to me the ways she’d been parentified, forced to function as a little adult in her family from the age of six. She began to understand how much grief and anger she still carried from her lost childhood. But the dream had another meaning: Money is missing. Jill was grappling with serious money issues. She was not earning much, and her self-esteem was very low. When I asked for her associations to “money is missing,” she said, “I feel like I’m not worth anything.” Each dream image is a hologram of the inner world, full of condensed meanings.

The Dream of the Wildcat

A woman named Wendy, with an extensive history of childhood abuse, had trouble expressing anger and standing up for herself, and was frequently victimized by others. She dreamed:

Some friends take me to an animal rescue place with wildcats, bobcats. They show us around, demonstrating how they talk to the animals and handle them. A big lioness or wildcat jumps me and puts her claws into my leg. I talk to her and try to stay calm.

When I asked for her associations to the wildcat, Wendy said, “It’s powerful, untamed. Anger and aggression are hard for me. The lioness is a creature that knows how to show its claws.” The dream suggested a need for Wendy to rescue and shelter the fierce, animal part of herself. Where previously she’d been like an innocent lamb or a victim, with little ability to stand up for herself, this dream heralded the emergence of a positive capacity for aggression, will, self-defence, self-protection. A week later Wendy reported standing up to a friend who had wronged her, detailing her grievance, and expressing her anger. The dream coincided with the emergence of her inner wildcat.

The Dream of the Wall

Tanya, a woman in a sexless marriage, dreamed that there was a massive wall between the living room and the bedroom of her home. The wall symbolized her resistance to sexuality, her need to maintain boundaries to defend against physical and emotional injury. Contemplating this image proved helpful not only to Tanya but also to her husband, James, who was able to better understand the depth of Tanya’s fear of sexual intimacy. Tanya was able to recognize how her body had become frozen in fear, creating an impenetrable barrier to any sense of closeness. Working with this dream helped Tanya and James begin to dismantle the wall between them.

The Dream of the Sleeping Wolf

An ex-priest dreamed that he entered a cave where he found an altar, in front of which lay a sleeping wolf. The wolf symbolized not only his feelings of being a lone wolf, fending for his own survival now that he had left the Church, but also his long dormant (sleeping) animal nature, his sexual desire, his hunger for embodied, passionate life. The wolf in front of the altar suggested that rediscovering his sexuality was sacred. It was associated with a place, and feeling, of worship.

Six Dreams of a Depressed Woman

Dreams provide important insights into the therapeutic relationship. A fifty-four-year-old woman named Ann presented several dreams that referred to her transference. In one dream, Ann said:

I sat in the back of a lecture hall as you [Greg] gave a lecture. I couldn’t decide whether to stay or leave.

This dream revealed her ambivalence about the therapeutic process. Should she stay or flee? As Ann’s therapist, the dream informed me that Ann perceived me as overly intellectual or “preachy.” In another dream, I (the therapist) disappeared unexpectedly, reflecting Ann’s fear of being abandoned by me.

Dreams deepened Ann’s treatment immeasurably. Later, she dreamed:

I’m a flightless bird.

Ann’s flight and freedom of spirit were inhibited. She was dysphoric, chronically depressed, and unable to find any pleasure in daily living. When I asked her to explore this further, she described how caged in she felt in her marriage, how her husband actively thwarted her efforts to gain greater autonomy, and how little fun they had together.

Then Ann dreamed:

A man is at my window, angry and menacing. There’s something wrong with him. I feel concern for him, for he’s in desperate need of help.

Ann had a history of incest, so issues of boundary intrusion (angry man at the window) were central. She herself was desperate for help. But the dream also reflected conflicted feelings toward her childhood abuser, including fantasies of helping or rescuing him. Ann had suffered from a phobic aversion to sex and had been unable to make love with her husband for many years. This dream helped Ann understand how her refusal of sexuality started out in her childhood as a self-protective measure, to keep out the intruder. The man in the dream reminded her of her husband, who had become increasingly angry with her. She was able to see that while she wasn’t attracted to her husband, she was also terrified at the prospect of leaving him because, she believed, he needed her to take care of him.

Dreams illuminate relational issues that may be re-enacted in the therapeutic transference. Ann dreamed:

A little girl is playing innocently on a lawn, running around and catching fireflies in her hands, laughing and shrieking with joy. Then a small buffalo comes over and starts bumping his head against her. She’s not in danger, but she feels anxious and wishes he would go away. She wishes there were someone around who could make the buffalo go away, but there isn’t anyone to help her.

Ann’s dream of torment by a buffalo evoked childhood memories of sexual violation by her stepfather, her inability to protect herself, her sense of being abandoned by her mother, her longing for protection. The theme of innocence—its loss and recovery—became a central thread of our discussion. The buffalo also reminded Ann of her husband’s insistent sexual demands and his angry frustration with her unresponsiveness.

This material became the focus of the next several sessions. When I asked for further associations to the buffalo, Ann was reminded of me, her therapist. She said, “The hairy buffalo reminds me of your beard and long hair.”

I said, “You and I have been butting heads the last few weeks about some things.”

She laughed and said, “Actually, it was a very skinny, scrawny buffalo!” We both laughed. This dream opened up new space in our intersubjective field. Now she could talk about feeling anxious about whether she could find comfort and protection in therapy. We could talk about our therapeutic relationship and what it felt like when at times I challenged and confronted her.

Several months later, Ann dreamed:

I was wearing the red dress I wore the night before my wedding.

This dream evoked the expectancy and excitement of marriage, and feelings of being young, beautiful, sexy, and desirable. Later she dreamed that she was pregnant for the third time. Ann was pregnant with herself; the dream portended inner rebirth and renewal. This dream coincided with her beginning sex therapy with her husband.

Dreams as Intensifiers of Emotions

Dreams reveal and intensify our emotional states. A man named Lonnie dreamed:

I went to a Thanksgiving party, but there was no substantial food there, only a few pieces of fruit and some small snacks. Some children arrived at the party and were disappointed that they weren’t going to eat.

This dream encapsulated an emotional experience of deprivation and lack of nurturance that Lonnie had felt since childhood.

A woman named Sandra dreamed of a dilapidated mansion of an “old family,” a family with a long tradition. She said, “They used to live in grand style, but the house hasn’t been kept up and needs repair and renovation.” This dream evoked sadness about her estranged relationships with her children and a longing for restoration of her sense of family.

A woman named Laurie dreamed that she was lying in a hospital bed. This reminded her of being sick, convalescing, being weakened. The dream depicted Laurie’s wounded self, her depression, which she needed to allow herself to feel.

A woman named Linda dreamed:

I was up on a stage wearing a frock my mother forced me to wear when I was a kid. It was very tight in the collar.

The dream clarified several emotional truths: Linda felt that her mother was always trying to show off her daughter, to validate her own self-worth; and Linda felt she had to comply with mother’s wishes, despite the way this was choking her emotionally. She felt suffocated by her mother’s expectations.

The Dream of Mother and the Grisly Murders

Dreams allow us to recognize and reveal our most disturbing feelings and memories. Cindy, an incest survivor, had this nightmare:

My mother was accused of several grisly murders. Part of her ritual in these killings was taking pictures of the bodies. I was looking through the pictures. I didn’t know the people. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a poorly exposed photo of a bloody face wearing a football helmet. I looked at her and said, “Mama, did you do it?” I shook her. She didn’t answer me.

The grisly murders and bloody faces suggested that people had been bludgeoned, representing the way Cindy felt she’d been assaulted emotionally. The dream was also a message to me, her therapist, to take seriously that what happened to Cindy as a child had been brutal. The dream initiated a discussion of her troubled relationship with her mother, and the buried rage Cindy felt toward her. Previously Cindy had done extensive therapy exploring her relationship with her stepfather (the perpetrator of sexual abuse), but this dream voiced the question, “Mama, did you do this?” In other words, “What was your role in what happened?” This dream brought to the surface Cindy’s feelings of not being able to trust someone who supposedly loved her and would take care of her. The dream also portrayed a transference issue: Could she trust me, her therapist? In the dream, a football helmet, which should have provided protection against injury, hasn’t worked. This insight enabled Cindy to verbalize her core disappointment—“that my mother abandoned me and left me in the hands of this terrible man.”

The Dream of the Pig

In stating that dreams are intensifiers of emotions, I also mean that the feelings evoked by dreams can be quite intense. I’ve found that the most intense, disturbing dreams are often powerfully healing, if we’re able to unfold their underlying emotional content. Once I was leading a group in which one of the members, a woman named Terri, dreamed:

I’m in a bathtub. I had to slaughter a pig. I sliced its arm. The pig was bleeding, slowly dying, passing out. I sat in the tub with the pig and held it under a faucet, stroking its head, comforting it.

Terri commented, “I was born in the Chinese Year of the Pig. People who eat too much are called pigs. A pig is a glutton. That brings up all my issues about food.”

I said, “It reminds me of being a glutton for punishment.”

Terri said, “Cutting the pig reminds me of a suicide attempt I made some years ago, when I cut myself.” When Terri said this, the other group members grew tensely hushed; it was a highly charged moment.

I said, “Don’t be afraid of all the feelings in the room. Terri, your dream provides an opportunity to resolve your feelings about this episode, and to bring into awareness the feelings that led you to do it. Only then can you really begin to heal. Washing the bleeding pig is a symbol of your healing.”

Terri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• PERMISSIONS
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• PART I. THERAPEUTIC DREAMWORK
• PART II. JUNGIAN DREAMWORK
• PART III. CASE STUDY
• REFERENCES
• INDEX