A Serpentine Journey
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a conference put on by the C.G. Jung Institute of Boston and held at Brandeis University called The Wisdom of the Dream.
This conference brought together a diverse group of presenters to examine dreams from a variety of perspectives with the stated goal to “enrich our critical examination and understanding of the wisdom of the dream, its place in today’s culture, and our approach to dream work in contemporary analysis.”
It was, in the words of Pamela Donleavy, president of the Jung Institute in her introductory remarks, “a serpentine journey” through the landscape of dreams.
As an experiment, I decided to try my hand at live-tweeting the event. Though I was concerned that I might be engaging in an activity that would distract me from the experience, the opportunity to share this experience with others through social media intrigued me.
As it turned out, I found myself even more involved in all the talks that were being presented, as I attempted to cull from each of them their essence and to share it.
Over the next several posts, I will present summaries of the various talks presented at the conference, together with a selection of my tweets from the event, and some thoughts on the information that was shared.
The Unconscious Has a Voice
The first speaker of the weekend was William Ventimiglia, a Jungian analyst from Topsfield, Massachusetts. His talk was titled Dreams: The Unconscious Has A Voice.
A graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Bill’s task for the conference was to give an exposition of the classical approach to Jungian dream interpretation. Having worked personally with Bill in the past and knowing of his great sensitivity to dream material, I was looking forward to hearing him speak.
He expressed his great respect for the exciting insights that have been emerging from the world of neuroscience about the function of sleeping and dreaming, but stressed that the neurological function of dreams is not identical with it’s meaning.
Jungian psychology, said Ventimiglia, is a developmental psychology in that it is concerned with the growth of the personality throughout the lifespan. One of Jung’s great insights was that dreams point us toward who we are becoming. That is, dreams indicate the direction of the ongoing development of our personality.
But that does not mean that we should be rigid in our approach to dreams. Psychoanalysis is a “therapeutic art form.” When approaching a dream one should not demand that it reveal it’s secrets, but rather welcome it the way we might welcome a guest into our homes.
Jungian Dream Interpretation
Jungian dream interpretation is only one of many ways that a dream can be approached. According to Ventimiglia, however, it is a powerful approach that maintains its validity even today, almost 100 years since it was first developed.
Two skill sets are needed when approaching a dream in a therapeutic setting: Interpretive skill and “affective attunement with the dreamer.” It is no use displaying one’s interpretive brilliance if it does not lead the therapist into a deeper understanding of the dreamer. In the therapeutic setting it is more important that the dreamer be understood than that the dream be understood.
Much of Ventimiglia’s talk centered around the understanding of the compensatory nature of dreams, a subject that I have talked about before in a previous post.
Dreams, he said, act as transformers of emotion and thinking. That is, they cause important shifts when our thoughts or feelings have become stuck or, in some way, dysfunctional. The dream is “nature’s automatic attempt at compensation.” It let’s us know when we have got off our proper path.
In his talk, Ventimiglia offered several interpretations of dreams, including a stunning examination of dream by Vincent van Gogh, which I will not attempt to reproduce here. Throughout the presentation his great respect for the dream experience was abundantly evident.
One of the most important insights for me was the idea of the dream as a “moment of meeting.” In psychoanalysis, the moment of meeting is the healing encounter between the analyst and patient. It is that moment when both people see and experience each other in their full and authentic humanity.
The dream facilitates just this kind of meeting. It provides a real meeting, not only with the other person — analyst or patient — but within the individuals themselves. In this way, Jungian dream interpretation becomes an encounter of the individual with his or her true self.
And so we come back to the experience of the dream as a guest. The first step is to sit with the mystery of the dream. It is to admit — as Ventimiglia did when describing his first reaction to a dream — that “I don’t know what the hell this is about.” When we can do this, without imposing our preconceived notions on the dream, then, out of that unknowing, a gestalt of meaning begins to emerge.
It was for this reason that Carl Jung declared that he always started with no understanding of the meaning of the dream.
Please join me for part 2 of this series, when I discuss Harvard sleep researcher, Robert Stickgold’s talk, Sleep, Memory and Dreams: What Does It All Mean?
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