Dreaming in the Classroom

Practices, Methods, and Resources in Dream Education

Philip King, Kelly Bulkeley, Bernard Welt

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781438436869, 9781438436876
• eBook ISBN: 9781438436883
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Dreaming in the Classroom provides teachers from virtually all fields with a uniquely informative guidebook for introducing their students to the universal human phenomenon of dreaming. Although dreaming may not be held in high esteem in mainstream Western society, students at all education levels consistently enjoy learning about dreams and rank classes on dreaming among their favorite, most significant educational experiences. Covering a wide variety of academic disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, humanities, film studies, philosophy, religious studies, the book explains in clear and practical language the most effective methods for teaching accurate, useful information about dreams to students in colleges and university, graduate programs, psychotherapy institutes, seminaries, primary and secondary schools, and non-academic settings. Included are detailed discussions of how to create an appropriate syllabus, integrate material form multiple disciplines, nurture skills in writing and critical reasoning, propose courses to skeptical administrators, and facilitate a responsible process for sharing dreams in a classroom setting. The book draws on interviews with dozens of accomplished teachers, along with the authors' many years of pedagogical practice, to present proven strategies for using this perennially fascinating topic to promote successful student learning.

Chapter 1

Practical Guidelines for Dream Education

There are a number of issues to address in teaching about dreams, whether the instruction is in formal academic settings or in less-structured community environments. In this chapter, we explore the “nuts and bolts” and surrounding questions and concerns of dream education in the college classroom, and beyond. Our comments in this chapter apply in a broad, cross-disciplinary way. Subsequent chapters address specific academic fields, target audiences, and educational settings.

Dream education encompasses much more than dream interpretation. The study of dreaming leads us beyond finding meaning in the dreams of individuals to theories of mind, models of culture, and accounts of imagination and creativity. Although we focus primarily on college-level courses, the same basic principles also apply to dream education in professional training (e.g., psychotherapy, counseling, or pastoral training programs), in freestanding dream institutes, and in nonacademic community settings.

First we look at the environments in which dreams education takes place. These provide both opportunities and constraints. Any course on dreams is located in nested contexts, from its outer cultural and institutional environments inward to the course structure, content, and students at the center. The largest context is the dominant cultural attitude toward dreams, which in the West is a mixture of indifference, dismissal, and fear counterbalanced by a persistent interest, sense of value, and fascination. Our culture is ambivalent about dreams, to say the least. Important contexts are the educational culture and the wherewithal of the institution housing the course. In colleges and universities we find a wide range of resources, programs of study, academic standards, and student abilities. Expectations for student performance differ greatly. Students will be variously well or ill prepared, motivated, and focused. For these reasons, we need to consider the surrounding academic culture in proposing and teaching courses on dreams. Although you can always do more with better-prepared students and more lavish resources, it is possible to teach rich and meaningful courses on dreams almost anywhere. Instructor commitment, skill, and enthusiasm can make the difference.

Also to be considered in putting together a course on dreams is the type of college or university. In the United States this would include 2-year (community) colleges offering the associate of arts or sciences degree; 4-year colleges offering a bachelor's degree; colleges or universities offering bachelor's, master's, and perhaps professional degrees; and full-fledged research universities offering doctoral degrees. If you are proposing a course on dreams from outside the institution, you will have a greater chance of its acceptance at colleges having a high percentage of adjunct instructors. These tend to be community colleges and 4-year colleges with fewer resources. It is easier to get a new course accepted if you are a member of the regular faculty. Faculties guard their curricula, and take their responsibilities seriously. If you are not on the inside, finding a faculty or administrative ally who will champion your course will be helpful and may be necessary. One option is to volunteer as a guest speaker on dreams in an existing course, hoping thereby to generate interest in having an entire course on dreams.

There are also noncredit continuing education and adult-enrichment programs offered in otherwise degree-granting institutions. These often look for innovative courses appealing to segments of the public, such as retirees. They may have a lesser bureaucratic gauntlet to run, employ instructors from the outside, and may be more receptive to proposals for courses on dreams. Noncredit courses also are spared required assignments and products, exams, and grades.

Requirements will be even less stringent in nonacademic community institutions, especially when one offers the course on a noncompensated or minimally compensated basis. Although this does not relieve the instructor from the obligation to be well prepared and to follow ethical guidelines, it is easier to get permission to offer dream education in nonacademic settings. One of our colleagues in dream education, Athena Lou, started by teaching about dreams in a community center and on the radio, moved on to assist Phil King by leading dream discussion groups in an undergraduate course, and has since done her own workshops in IASD dream conferences and taught about dreams to clients in her management training company.

Educational expectations, including resource considerations, also are at play in dream teaching set in secondary or primary schools, and in institutions such as churches, community centers, prisons, and libraries. The questions to ask as a prospective dreams educator in these various environments are what resources the organization can provide, what by the instructor, and what limits resource constraints place on the kinds of activities that constitute the course.

Another significant context for dream courses is the institutional perception of a subject matter still viewed by some as exotic or even vaguely disreputable. This is especially important in universities and colleges, as academics view themselves (quite properly) as arbiters of scholarly legitimacy. We have found a mixed attitude among professors and administrators, reflecting the ambivalence most people feel about dreams. On the one hand, you will find a sincere interest. On the other hand, there will be skepticism and discomfort with, even fear of, the subject (perhaps in part because of its potential to reveal, even in the most benign and helpful way, workings of the unconscious and its relation to waking life). There also may be an implicit, although incorrect, view that the subject of dreams is insufficiently grounded in scholarship. We hope this book helps to dispel that particular assumption. Be prepared to offer evidence supporting the legitimacy of taking dreams seriously as an object of academic study.

Your task as the advocate of the prospective college dreams course is to convince the department faculty, chairperson, or other decision makers to let the course go forward. Although this may be easier for a full-time faculty member than for an adjunct or outsider, there still may be significant impediments to course approval. Almost all colleges require a formal statement of any proposed course's goals, objectives, relevance, planned topics, and activities, along with ethical safeguards and the instructor's qualifications and experience. It is understandable if the standard is higher for innovative courses in areas that are unfamiliar to the administrators and faculty committees charged with curricular oversight. We recommend that the prospective instructor cite similar courses taught by him or herself and others, and that he or she obtain endorsements from previous satisfied learners, dream experts, and responsible authorities at the institution where the course was taught. In Appendix G we suggest further strategies and tactics for getting approval for your proposed course.

In college settings, once the course is approved the next context on which to focus is the set of majors, minors, programs of study, and prerequisite course requirements within which the course is lodged. Your undergraduate course is likely to be an elective fulfilling a distribution requirement within the liberal arts or perhaps a specific major, depending on the course's disciplinary home. You could propose an upper division course, with a set of prerequisites. For example, in psychology departments prerequisites may include personality theory, psychological development, counseling and/or psychotherapy, research methods, and statistics. Alternatively, your course could be a lower-division survey course, which would have few or no prerequisites other than adequate writing and perhaps mathematical skills, depending on the subject area and course focus. Our experience is that substantial prerequisites unduly limit the number of interested students who are eligible to enroll in the course and who could benefit by taking it. In lieu of prerequisites, one can teach necessary background knowledge and skills within the course itself.

An interesting innovation in course structure is one taught by two or more professors from different disciplines (or from different theoretical perspectives within one discipline) focusing on a topic or theme. For example, there could be a course on movement taught by a dance historian, a physiologist, and a film studies professor. A curriculum at Antioch College included such courses, taught by three professors and comprising first-year students' entire course schedule for a term. Such a team-taught course structure could work well with dreams and dreaming. We look forward to an undergraduate “mega-course” on dreams, sleep and dreaming, and applaud in advance the intrepid group that pulls it off. (We have more to say about interdisciplinary dream course possibilities in Chapter 11.)

If you are preparing a course on dreams for the first time—or even with considerable experience—you probably have a lot of questions. What will be the class size and schedule? Are the students lower or upper division, or graduate students? What is their range of majors, and the courses they have taken? What skills needed for the course (e.g., empathic, analytical, compositional, introspective) do they have, and to what degree? What are their intellectual levels, ages, and life experiences? What are the gender and nationality compositions, and how do the international and domestic students' abilities compare? Answers to these questions guide the choice of course activities, assignments, and the degree of depth and rigor that you build into the course. Let us look at them one by one.

Class Size

Engaging and effective dream education can be accomplished with class sizes as small as a solitary student and as large as 100 or more. Instructional dynamics and strategies change with class size. Lectures, individual exercises, and small-group interactions not needing moment-to-moment instructor monitoring work well with large classes, and dream sharing with feedback works best with smaller ones. The key is to provide meaningful individual participation within a critical mass of group energy and interest. The authors have found 12 to 18 students optimal for purposes of discussion, dream sharing, and individual and small-group research projects.

Although smaller classes may be preferable for some course activities, instructors should be excited and not dismayed if they should happen upon a large group of students. Group energy, the inherently fascinating nature of dreams as a subject, and instructor skill and commitment produce effective learning in large groups. Montague Ullman has effectively taught dream group leadership skills to groups of 30 and more, and Kelly Bulkeley has had success teaching dream theory and interpretation skills in classes of up to 200 students.

Class Schedule

Typically a college course involves between 40 and 50 class “contact” hours spread over 10 to 15 weeks. Some courses are offered in shorter terms of 4 to 6 weeks. Courses taught over the duration of a traditional quarter or semester term (10 to 15 weeks) make possible a gradual development of skills, particularly in dream discussion and interpretation, which is more difficult to do in a shorter course format.

The educational institution rather than the instructor generally will determine length of class meetings, so teachers should be ready to configure their planned class activities accordingly. For standard three-credit undergraduate courses, we find that two meetings per week of 90 minutes each allow for significant time devoted to discussion of students' dreams at some sessions. Three-hour classes can be fatiguing, and sap energy and focus. Shorter meetings often don't permit sufficient time to get into the spirit and flow of dream sharing or lively discussion.

Dream teaching in settings other than dedicated dreams courses ranges from one short talk or demonstration, some as short as 30 minutes, some 1 or 2 hours, to a focused series of lectures, weekend workshops, or ongoing open-ended dream discussion groups. Obviously, what teachers can offer and accomplish varies tremendously according to how much time is available. We have found even a single presentation on dreams to be invaluable in communicating essential information and in sparking interest in further exposure to the subject.

Another element in college course scheduling is the time of day that the course meets. There are no hard and fast guidelines for the best time. Mid- to late morning has been a good time in our experience, as students seem most alert then. With regard to dream sharing, mornings have the advantage of being proximate to the previous night's sleeping and dreaming. Mid-afternoon classes tend to compete with a low point in the diurnal cycle when students need naps. However, many students nowadays keep late hours and may not fully waken until midday, so afternoon may be best for them. The same applies to evening classes, which may have the added advantage of attracting mature students who work full time (or those who sleep through the day). Of course, the instructor may not have control over the course scheduling and will need to adapt accordingly. Similar considerations apply to teaching in nonacademic settings.

Student Class Level and Age

Because of the universality and fascination of dreams, in some ways student level in college courses is not a concern (it certainly is not a concern in nonacademic settings). Students at all ages within the traditional undergraduate age range of 17 to 23 are equally likely to possess qualities of psychological mindedness and self-awareness, and all can relate well to their dreams. Dream students older than traditional college age generally are more self-reflective and may have more interest in their own dreams. This isn't surprising, as the extra years of life experience and existential bumps and bruises tend to guide their attention inward.

Our experience is that students entering or returning to college after some years of adult living—often women in their 30s and 40s—get the most from our courses. Younger students who benefit significantly tend to experience the course more as a personal awakening, an early orientation to their internal psychological life.

Dream education for children and adolescents is age-dependent, with distinct approaches and modalities appropriate for different age groups. (We address dream education for preschool and elementary through high school students in Chapter 10.) Where college students' level and age do make a difference is in activities that require academic skills unlikely to have been learned in high school, or a personal perspective that only can be gained from years of adult living. The importance of particular academic skills will vary depending on the course's pedagogic home and its focus. In psychology and other sciences, skills involving research design, data collection and analysis, writing research reports, and reading them with understanding may be crucial. In the humanities, a background in literature, cultural studies, and essay writing may be the most needed (although as we argue in Chapters 2 and 6, dream studies is an excellent topic for the teaching of writing and for introducing fundamental questions in the humanities). Self-knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and the ability and willingness to examine one's experience and connect it to theory are important in courses that involve the students' own dreams.

Besides deepening self-understanding, some students find that studying dreams sparks interest in research, writing, and other applications, such as artistic creativity, in their fields of study. Not infrequently in our teaching experience, dream courses provide impetus toward future careers—for example, in teaching, counseling, psychosocial nursing, and film studies.

Student Majors

Students from a variety of academic majors may take a college dream course, and bring to it different strengths and weaknesses. For example, pre-med students, although well educated in the sciences, may be less skilled in research design. Nursing majors may be more empathic but less analytical, literature majors stronger in narrative analysis but weaker in quantitative reasoning. Heterogeneity in the majors of students in a class should affect course design in the choice of reading assignments, class activities, and student projects. Instructors can address this by (a) simplifying the subject matter and activities to the point that all students can succeed; (b) requiring prerequisite courses; or (c) building necessary skills and teaching theory within the course itself. On balance, we recommend the last alternative. In psychology courses we have had success in teaching previously inexperienced students to access collections of dreams for quantitative analysis via the Internet; to code and measure dream elements; to analyze the data so generated using statistical software; and to write the methods, results, and conclusions using appropriate paper organization and format.

Instructor Skills

A great thing about dream education is the variety of disciplines, skills, and overall educational backgrounds needed for a comprehensive understanding of the subject, and the challenges and opportunities this provides for the instructor and for the pedagogy of higher education. Many fields (psychology, art, history, literature, biology, philosophy, theology, film studies, anthropology) can be used to reflect and develop the richness of the subject matter. For example, in his dreams psychology course, King uses excerpts from films—Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, and Hirokazu Koreeda's After Life. In his humanities course in dreams, Welt uses material from psychological theorists, including Freud and Jung. So we encourage not only multidisciplinary teaching, but also efforts to develop integrative interdisciplinary approaches. We caution, however, that when treading outside their fields, instructors should proceed carefully. We all have our areas of expertise, but as dream scholars, we constantly find ourselves in unfamiliar territory. One needs to maintain a humble attitude, as we all are perpetual students in this field. This is a blessing in disguise, as we are constantly refreshed with the discovery of new perspectives and challenged to develop new abilities. The sense of surprise and wonder we find in encountering our dreams therefore has a parallel in our experiences in dream scholarship and teaching.

Student Qualities

Dreams courses call on a wide range of student qualities and abilities. These include general intellectual and analytical ability to understand, question, and propose changes to theory; methodological and quantitative skills to produce and understand research findings; writing and speaking skills to articulate ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Practical Guidelines for Dream Education
• Chapter 2 Dreaming as a Fundamental Academic Skill
• Chapter 3 Psychology
• Chapter 4 Anthropology
• Chapter 5 Philosophy and Religious Studies
• Chapter 6 General Humanities
• Chapter 7 Film Studies
• Chapter 8 Psychotherapy and Counseling
• Chapter 9 Alternative and Community Education
• Chapter 10 Primary and Secondary Education
• Chapter 11 The Future of Dream Education
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography