The Relational Interpretation of Dreams

When it's About More Than Your Mother

Alicia Ann MacDougall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000380545
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

This book explains the use of dreams as a tool in psychotherapy to provide meaning, establish and maintain a therapeutic relationship, and thus enhance and progress treatment. Maintaining a focus on the synergy between dreams and relationship, it includes interviews with four eminent dream researchers and scholars: John S. Antrobus, G. William Domhoff, Mark J. Blechner, and J. Allan Hobson.

This book explores the synergistic qualities between dreams and relationships, and how that synergy generates biographically, professionally, and psychotherapeutically formative experiences. The book delineates the ways in which dreams provide a foundation for relating, provides a container (Bion, 1967/1993) for the unthought known (Bollas, 1987), creates meaning through relationships, and ultimately fosters dispersion of relational dynamics originating from the culture of the times and more. From a relational psychoanalytic perspective, this book describes the role of dreams in shaping our relational living.

This book provides a unique perspective that illustrates using yourself as a tool in relational establishment, preservation, and knowing. It is ideal for students working toward an understanding of the influence of intersubjective space in clinical interactions and clinicians looking for additional and alternate ways to connect with patients.

1
Setting the context

Using dreams to enhance psychotherapy

I had a dream last night. A humorous dream at that. I do not typically dream of my extended family members, but last night, I dreamt of my younger cousin Gregory, whom I feel particularly protective of. Gregory and I were in a local mall together and decided to go into the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat. Upon entering, we came across some of Gregory’s classmates with whom he has a tempestuous relationship. I took a step back as I watched Gregory interact with his peers, and, in the blink of an eye (or in this case, the changing of the context of the dream), Gregory was on a miniature red bicycle, fleeing from his classmates who were pursuing him in wooden gokarts. Gregory was frightened, knowing that if his peers caught him, they would beat him up. So, together, Gregory and I ran through the mall – he on his miniature red bicycle and I on foot. To our misfortune, Gregory’s peers were gaining on us, and we desperately needed a diversion to slow them down, something to buy Gregory and I some time. As soon as we thought all was lost, my very best friend in this world appeared on an ice-resurfacing machine. My friend wore a bright friendly smile accompanied with warm yet mischievous eyes, knowing that he was about to engage in some drama and save the day. My friend drove the ice resurfacer into the path of the gokarts which gave Gregory and I time to ditch the red bicycle, run out of the exit of the mall, and disappear into the parking lot unscathed.

I woke from my dream and chuckled to myself. I instantly turned over in bed to reach for my phone and message my friend about the dream. We shared a laugh, pondered over the meaning of my friend appearing on an ice-resurfacing machine as neither of us have “ice-legs” or attend sporting events involving skates or an ice resurfacer, and then continued to share our plans for the day ahead.

Any therapist or dream enthusiast reading this book has just formed about 50 different associations to the manifest content of my mind’s creation. They have uncovered themes, made interpretations, identified key archetypal images, and more – and that is perfectly reasonable. In fact, I will admit that I am a bit upset that I am missing out on hearing these insights! However, that is not the point of my sharing this dream. The point lies within the story that the dream facilitates, not the content that the dream possesses. Upon waking, the very first thing I did, even before using the restroom to relieve myself of the bottle of water I had guzzled down the night before, was message my best friend. The relationships I have in my life influenced the dream content, and the dream content influenced my reaching out to relate. Ultimately, the point I mean to make here is to highlight the synergistic quality that exists between relationships and dreams.

Introduction to setting the context

As implied earlier, this book highlights the symbiosis between relationships and dreaming and explicates the various implications of this synergistic phenomenon. The implications discussed throughout this book came to fruition through relating, as I embarked on a journey to interview four eminent researchers and scholars within the field of dreams – pun intended (Gordon, Gordon, & Robinson, 1989). As an organizing framework, I first discuss what research and experts say about the influence of dreams on the relationship within psychotherapy. I then discuss how through a relational psychoanalytic approach to using dreams, therapy sessions can be enhanced as a means to promoting self-growth for clients. To further complicate things, I reflect on the various kinds of relationships people have in their lives and suggest ways in which dreams can be inextricably influential in each of these relationships. Finally, I synthesize the aforementioned topics and the roles they play in fostering formative life experiences and enhancing psychotherapy.

What research and experts say about dreams’ influence on psychotherapy

The clinical utility of discussing dreams in therapy sessions has been vastly explored. Research supports that talking about dreams in psychotherapy benefits clients (Schredl, Bohusch, Kahl, Mader, & Somesan, 2000). Cart-wright, Tipton, and Wicklund (1980) showed that discussing dreams in therapy has been associated with an increased commitment to therapy. Clients who discuss dreams in therapy report better understandings of interpersonal relationships than those who do not discuss dreams in therapy (Hill et al., 2000), and have an increased willingness to share difficult content (Brink & Allan, 1992; Hill et al., 2013). Brink and Allan found that dreams can serve as an alternative approach to working with difficult populations, while Diemer, Leslie, Vivino, and Hill (1996) found that dream discussion sessions resulted in reduced symptomatology in a distressed adult population. Clients who discuss dreams in therapy share more with their therapists, become more involved in therapy at a faster rate, have higher overall ratings of the psychotherapy process, and are more likely to enjoy the structure of therapy than those who do not discuss dreams (Hill et al., 2000). These clients also report an increased level of depth of therapeutic sessions (Hill, Diemer, Hess, Hillyer, & Seeman, 1993).

While Domhoff (2018) proposes a neurocognitive theory of dreams, he maintains support of the notion that dreams help clients talk about difficult events in psychotherapy. Dreams have the ability to drive conversations, influence topics, and produce movement based off of the essential topics of the internal world (Lippmann, 2000). For a client who cannot actively access internal emotions to drive psychotherapy where it needs to go, accessing dreams may be able to do that for them. As stated by Mark Blechner (2018), “the dream guides its own analysis” (p. 219) and thus tells us what the client needs from us in that moment.

Evidence of the utility of discussing dreams in sessions is abundant. By simply gleaning over the limited review given earlier, it is clear that dreams have an influence on treatment. What all of these studies have in common, however, is a framework that does not pay sufficient attention to the bond between dreaming and relating. While some studies (Hill et al., 2013) examined the impact of dreaming on therapeutic alliance, these studies maintain a lack of appreciation for the symbiosis of dreams and relationships while simultaneously failing to acknowledge the formative experiences fostered through this interdependent phenomenon.

Relational psychoanalytic use of dreams for enhancing therapy and self-growth

To understand the use of dreams via a relational psychoanalytic approach, one must first have an understanding of relational psychoanalytic theory. Relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy, also referred to as relational theory, emphasizes the importance of interpersonal, intrapersonal, and personal relationships (Aron, 1996; Barsness, 2018). Relational theory has its own school of thought and perspective but draws heavily from interpersonal theory, object relations theory, feminist theory, and self-psychology (Barsness, 2018; Benjamin, 1995). Relational theory suggests that humans crave relationships and develop the capacity to relate effectively through a cohesive sense of self (Benjamin, 2010, 2017; Mitchell, 1988). A cohesive sense of self develops via key relationships through processes such as recognition (Benjamin, 1995, 2010, 2017). The process of recognition constitutes that the other in the relationship, such as the mother in a mother–infant relationship, responds to the individual in such a way that confirms for the individual that he revealed an intention, created meaning, and thus has had an impact on the other (Benjamin, 1995, 2010, 2017). In a mother–infant relationship, the responsiveness of the mother to the infant is the basis of the infant’s development of his own sense of self and self-agency (Benjamin, 1995, 2017).

Principles of change from a relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy lens are dependent upon the ability to relate intersubjectively (Bromberg, 2008a, 2008b) or to relate through mutual recognition (Benjamin, 1995, 2010, 2017). To relate in this way, however, an individual must have a cohesive sense of self (Benjamin, 1995, 2010, 2017; Mitchell, 1988). Having a cohesive self means the self is not comprised of dissociated self-states (Bromberg, 2012). Instead, a cohesive sense of self is comprised of the integration of self-states, which ultimately makes possible the ability to share subjectivities with another and the ability to participate in reciprocal recognition (Bromberg, 2012).

Distilled to its simplest components, a relational framework posits that the therapeutic relationship serves as a template for the practice and development of relational capacities (Safran, 2002). Through the collaborative exploration of the relational patterns within the therapeutic relationship, the client can develop generalizable skills for managing interpersonal relationships outside of psychotherapy (Safran, 2002). Given this, anything that impacts the relationship in session becomes extremely important to attend to within the therapy hour. While relational theory posits that even negative transferences are important in session, there is strong evidence to support the benefits of a positive transference. The quality of the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist is a key contributor to, and predictor of, favorable treatment prognosis (Ardito & Rabellino, 2011). Client–therapist relationships with stronger alliances have lengthier treatments than those with weaker alliances, and those with weaker alliances are also more prone to therapy drop out (Sharf, Primavera, & Diener, 2010). The therapeutic relationship influences clients’ time in treatment, session quality, and overall improvement (Kivlighan, Hill, Gelso, & Baumann, 2016). Given this evidence, we should be paying particularly close attention to factors that enhance the therapeutic relationship. This is where dreams come in (though they were there all along).

Research supports that discussing dreams in psychotherapy increases feelings of connectedness to the therapist (Hill et al., 2013). From a relational psychoanalytic perspective, however, I argue that the key component of dreams enhancing feelings of connectedness lies within the approach utilized for discussing dreams. It is imperative that the dream discussion is a conversation between client and therapist, rather than an interpretation. As the therapist and client discuss the dream together in this way, they are participating in a dialogue. The therapist is not superior to the client; rather, the therapist is equal to the client and engaging in a mutual curiosity of the presented dream and its manifest content. By approaching dreams in this fashion, the client becomes an active participant in the process of understanding her internal world more deeply and allows for feelings of connectedness rather than otherness toward the therapist. This form of dream work in psychotherapy sessions is different than other more traditional forms of working with dreams.

Traditional dream work does not employ the client as an active participant in the dream discussion process. For example, in classical psychoanalytic dream interpretation (Freud, 1900/2010), the therapist is the only active participant. After describing the dream, the client takes a passive role for the remainder of the dream interpretation process. The therapist reveals the hidden meanings of different components of the dream, typically without feedback from the client and without providing an opportunity for the client to participate in the construction of meaning of their own internal world (Freud, 1900/2010). The use of dreams from this perspective is concerned with revealing the unconscious content of dreams (Freud, 1900/2010) rather than having a conversation or building a relationship. This type of dream work forces the dreamer into a passive rather than active position, depriving her of the opportunity to be a contributing member to the relationship.

Clients create meaning by being actively involved in the meaning-making process (Mahoney, 1991). Thus, it is important that the use of dreams in psychotherapy is a collaborative experience between client and therapist, rather than a hierarchical representation of an expert therapist constructing interpretations of a client’s internal world. As argued by Paul Lipmann, from a relational perspective we do not discuss dreams to look for meaning, rather, we discuss dreams in order to make meaning. It is the role of the therapist, then, to participate in a collaborative process with the client in order to make meaning of the dream (Lippmann, 2000). I propose that in a relational approach to dream work, the client actively participating in the dream discussion enables the development of a positive therapeutic relationship (Safran, 2002). By journeying and considering multiple perspectives together, the client and therapist can increase intersubjective competence or the ability to create a unified experience from two subjective experiences (Benjamin, 2004). Through engaging in mutual dialogue around dreams, the client gets a formative experience for intersubjective relating that then generalizes to relationships outside of the therapeutic encounter (Safran, 2002).

Clients who talk about dreams in therapy have reported gaining insight about their interpersonal relationships (Hill et al., 2000). They have been shown to have enhanced views of self (Mikulincer, Shaver, & Avihou-Kanza, 2011), increased connectedness with emotions (Hill et al., 2013), and improved interpersonal functioning and event insight (Diemer et al., 1996). Due to the synergistic quality between dreams and relationships, clients are able to discuss dreams in therapy while simultaneously building a relationship. In doing so, the client learns how to relate to an other, how a respectful other relates to them, and how to exist in a co-created, intersubjective space. These new skills translate well to job searches, academic pursuits, relationship construction and repair, and more. The skills are hard to teach and are, therefore, primarily (and best) learned through experience. Ultimately, these lessons become the foundation for self-promotion – self-growth.

The intimate connection between dreams and different kinds of relationships

There is a plethora of relationships in our lives that we do not think of as relationships. We become so enamored with the obvious types of relating – such as relating with our peers, colleagues, family, friends, teachers, advisors, and even pets – that we do not pay attention to arguably some of the most influential relationships we have. Such connections – our relationship with the culture of the times, our culture in general, society, historical contexts and events, diversity, social justice, therapy, and our careers as a whole rather than those we interact with through our careers – influence us deeply and become integrated into who we are.

From a relational psychoanalytic framework, every relationship is an important relationship. Therefore, I would do an injustice to neglect the ways dreams are intimately connected to, formulated because of, and are of interest due to, the relationships we have with these indispensable factors of our being. In the content to follow, I illustrate the inextri-cable nature of dreams and all of our relationships. Whether we like it or not, humans are relational beings and, therefore, have relationships with everything.

Summary

In this chapter, I have stated the purpose of this book as being an exploration of the symbiosis between relationships and dreaming. I have addressed arguments made by researchers and experts in the field of dream work that support the use of dreams in psychotherapy. I have provided a relational psychoanalytic framework to using dreams in psychotherapy for enhancing treatment and promoting self-growth of clients. Finally, I have provided an overvi...