Dream Airing
Notes, letters to the editor.
Send to Richard Wilkerson rcwilk@aolcom
Is
There Significance in a Poststructural Dreamwork? A conversation
with Robert Lewis and Richard Wilkerson
The following conversation took place in late december 1998 between Robert Lewis and Richard Wilkerson. It began as a response to an article I published on Electric Dreams volume 6 issue 1 entitled "Delirium, Desire and Deleuzioguattarian Dreamwork" Which is available for reading online at www.dreamgate.com/pomo/ Or via the Electric Dreams Backissues www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
Robert and I both agreed that by putting the conversation out here we might open this area and its conflicts up to the general public and draw more discussion. Please feel free to write in and join the conversation.
Robert(1): = Robert's first comments Robert(2): = Robert's second comments Richard: = Richard's Comments
Greetings Richard:
I found your article very thought-provoking, if only from an adversarial perspective, disagreeing with the general direction down which you are trying to take dream analysis.
Robert(1) : You refer, Richard, to the organizational straight- jacket of interpretation, that too much emphasis is placed on the meaning of the dream, and offer reasons why and suggest ways to break free from these, by and large, arbitrary social restrictions/structures.
Richard: I think this is fairly said, though I would make a few modifications. Interpretive acts are organizational acts, this I would agree with. And that organizational acts territorialize libidinal flows, this I feel is true. Arbitrary is a difficult word for me. I would say that interpretive acts are highly motivated rather than arbitrary. They are often done for various reasons that come before the act of interpretation. They are often an extension of a pre-existing system that is attempting, in the case of dream interpretation, to bring the dream into alignment with theory. I have a theory of wholeness, and I read the dream for signs of this. I have a theory of underlying sexuality and I read the dream for signs of this. I have a theory the dream is saying things about my waking life, and I read the dream for signs of this. These interpretive acts bring the dream and its meaning into the realm of the theoretical bias.
"Meaning" is another difficult word for me. It's just come to mean so much. And so it comes into question and I wonder if we can avoid some unconscious assumptions by avoiding the term. Saying dreams are meaningless or meaningful is part of the same game. I have two questions, who gets to control the meaning (my suspicious side) and what kinds of meaning can we attribute to the dream that free it from the "just as dream" syndrome (my productive side)?
ROBERT(2) : By arbitrary, I meant the methods (and their unconscious assumptions) used to interpret are unproven, that one method can be substituted for another in the absence of proof.
Robert(1) : It seems that you would ideally like to open up the field so that a dream can mean anything to anybody including nothing at all, that inter-disciplinary cross- fertilization knows no bounds.
Richard: I feel this is already the state of the dream field. We have Nobel Prize winner Crick saying that dreams are not only meaningless, but dangerous and counterproductive physiologically to recall. We have Freud saying that the manifest dream is just a obstruction of truth. We have groups that feel dreams are messages from God. Others feel that dreams are attempting to heal us and lead us to wholeness. Other groups feel dreams are reflections of dayworld concerns. Some feel that dreams are an attempt to draw us into the unhuman and beyond human. I think we have reached a point where we have a full spectrum of attributing meaning to dreams and dreaming. My question is which approaches are the most productive, the most profound, the most moving and transformative?
ROBERT(2) : These are indeed the axis questions, which raise questions in and of themselves. What do we mean by productive, unless it means positive/productive for the dreamer - and by extension his society. The word 'transformative' could be viewed as a goal and/or conclusion. Playing the devil's advocate, why is transformation desirable? I assume that what you mean by the best approach refers to the unraveling of the meaning of the dream, and that the dreamer will be transformed by this new knowledge. I guess my question is this, Richard. How do you propose we go about determining which approach is most productive/transformative? I suspect that you, and others, want to open up the field because the old approaches have not solved the problem. I certainly do not subscribe to the notion that the meaning of a dream, as a representation unconnected to life, is an acceptable goal. Transformation, as in becoming more self- aware, is precisely the goal, to better and more vitally connect with the flow of life, and dreams, as a source of self-awareness can facilitate this life-long progress. But uncritically extending the field interpretation to more possibilities will only encourage "uncritical" transformation when I think what we both seek is positive transformation.
Richard2: When I say "productive" in the Deleuzian sense, I mean that the approach breaks through repressive forms of authority and creates new channels for desire. And here I am speaking of a productive desire, not a negative one that just seeks absent objects. I hesitate to say this is in service of the dreamer and his/her culture, except in a general sense. A "dreamer" might be construed as an ego, in the psychological sense of identity that has seen its day and is a culturally fixed little thing. Ego, and Ego Psychology, Ego Strengths, Ego Transcendence these are all part of a game where one "adjusts" to culture, or doesn't and gets adjusted by culture.
Transformation is also just a word, but one which moves away from representations rather than piling them up. We need only use it until it begins to use us. Even the most transformative words can lead us back into a representational system. Why is transformation preferable to neurosis? I'll have to say the answer to that question is outside the limits of the notion I am proposing, to find new liberating channels for dreamwork.
When you say that I feel old approaches have not solved the problem of the meaning of dreams, I would agree, but say this is not really my issue. There are wonderful and intense and provocative and amazing approaches to dreams that have been developed. I would prefer to say that each old approach to dream still have some productive lines that can followed. I would question the attempt to have a unified field theory of dream meaning, that would concern me. That is, if one approach were to begin territorializing all of dreaming.
Thus the notion of unraveling the meaning of the dream abstractly needs to be abandoned, (in non-representational dreamwork) not the particular approaches themselves.
Robert, when you say this: " Transformation, as in becoming more self-aware, is precisely the goal, to better and more vitally connect with the flow of life, and dreams, as a source of self- awareness can facilitate this life-long progress. " I agree with the vital connections, but would like to move away from the self-awareness game. It has its benefits, but also its pitfalls. The "self" has become like god, and who-ever has the highest image of how the self can actualize has the moral ground. Hey, the self is an imaginary concept, not a natural thing we have to argue about "what it really is."
I'm not sure how to respond yet to your main thesis: "But uncritically extending the field (of) interpretation to more possibilities will only encourage 'uncritical' transformation when I think what we both seek is positive transformation."
If positive transformation involves dissolving neurotic bonds and subverting repressive authorities, I would agree that is what we both seek. I'm not sure what the uncritical extensions are? I would like to extend dreamwork. If I were to put out a theory, it would be that each morning when we wake up we are able to unfold the tendencies of each particular dream.
Robert(1): You speak of organizations or organizing principles forcing outside events to 'selfishly' conform to an arbitrary inner logic, as if whatever restriction the principle imposes is undesirable simply because it's a restriction. I suppose it's true, that when we go to the supermarket to do our shopping, we are limiting ourselves if we restrict our purchases to the food on the shelves. In theory, it would certainly be more liberating if we would consider purchasing the shelves themselves, or the tiles on the floor, or if I were to run into your in aisle #3, I could put in a bid to purchase your shirt. But if in going to the market our objective (I assume having an objective in life is acceptable) is procuring nutrition, the greater the freedom your argument proposes does not necessarily advance our nutritional gains?
Richard: It may be that the use of the word "selfish" is causing the problem here. Its implies a personality with a motive. I intended more an impersonal structuring. I see that once a supermarket opens it begins to do everything it can to stay open. The lure is nutrition, but I see the profits of the supermarkets in my neighborhood being from liquor, cigarettes, potato chips and cookies, and that's what fills the shelves. Addictive substances make better customers and the stores can then better. // some cut //
---ROBERT(2) : The analogy is apt here. You would like dream study to open up its horizons, to be more elastic and inclusive in its methods in both the unraveling of the dream and connecting the dream and dreamer to his life and life in general. If the supermarket's goal is profit, it will open its doors to liquor, tobacco etc. But if our goal (qualitative) is nutrition, and we do not have a shopping philosophy or objective to help us with our purchases, we will include in our basket items that may not be nutritious. In respect to dream study, multiplying connections with other fields and methods of investigation will not help us in our quest (which is always a narrowing down) unless there is a goal, an endgame: to finally be able analyze (with some certainty) the content of the dream. But I agree that we should not be tyrannized by theory: i.e. dreams of snakes are, as a theory, sexual, therefor I will force my snake dreams to have a sexual meaning. Phenomenology is helpful here. "To the thing itself," says Husserl. So when we ask what is the essence of a table, we take away everything possible (the table cloth, the varnish, the bowl of nuts etc), until we reach the point where if we remove its top, for example, it is no longer a table. So in respect to the dream study's methods of investigation, and its reaching out into other disciplines to acquire new perspectives/tools etc., a phenomenological approach (getting to what is essential in the task) would eliminate much of what you would like to include if the goal is to unravel the meaning of the dream. Now of course, if the goal is to connect better to the flow of life, to the coax the dream to play a more vigorous role, you'll get a different phenomenological result. Ultimately this reduces to the big question: why do (we) dream and to what purpose? And if we don't ask these questions, there are no limits to what dreams can mean and how they can be (productively) incorporated into our daily lives like a grand unifying theory of (dream) consciousness.
Richard /cut / control the flow and circulation of desire and capital. Federal standards have attempted to limit the putrid meat, rotten vegetables, sales of liquor and nicotine and aspirin, but stores see these as restrictions on their own game. Federal agencies are little better, with their own organizational self-interests and expansionism. The really liberating act here is finding alternative flows, breaks in the flow. Farmers markets, barter, direct purchase. Any organization that gets together, does it thing and then disperses. I've noticed that the city planned Farmer's Market here in San Francisco has now turned into an outdoor yuppie fair.
Richard2 : Ah yes. I am a fan of the existential/phenomenological approach you mention, but it too is a perspective and has no privileged claim to truth. The fantasy of finding truth by "bracketing out" finds things different than other methods, but they can't be said to be more true, just more phenomenological.
In the Market analogy, we would like to agree that stores should be set up that focus on nutrition in a way uncontaminated by profit, but I see the best of health food stores finally give in to pill manufacturers and brand name teas. Same with dream theories. Over time they accumulate so much stuff and are used more to promote this or that theory, protect this or that school of thought than to help anyone or cause something really novel to occur. I prefer the Farmer's Markets over having a plan at Safeway. No matter how good my nutritional plan, their tomatoes are still tasteless.
Robert(1) : There are people in this world with major psychological problems, and for these people, not only are their dreams meaningful, but the meaning of the dream, as a plausible source of self-awareness, could be the difference between life and death, happiness or unhappiness, or the old (unfulfilled self) evolving into to a newer self: 'transformation', not for its own sake, but with the view of rendering the person healthier and happier. To use a one-dimensional term word that has fallen out of favor with the times: 'goal oriented' in this case would mean toward well-being.
Richard: You are saying quite a bit here. Let me see what I can sort out. I don't feel that you are trying to say that because there are people with psychological problems we have to be careful to interpret all dreams in a particular way,
Robert(2): Definitely, categorically, absolutely not. Whatever works is fine by me. The question, still unanswered, is what works, if anything, or what works best. And how do we determine, in the absence of reliable methods of verification, what works best.
// richard: but there is a hint of this your statement. I feel different contexts call for different approaches. I wouldn't recommend stealing or diminishing the meaning of a person's dream in any context (unless the meaning of the dream involved acts on the dreamer's part I wish to resist).
I feel that there are approaches to the dream that are quite profound and lead towards well-being. But by using this term, "well-being" we displace the issue. We will all argue about just what this means. The same for healthier and happier. I don't know that I want dysfunctional families being healthier and happier, I want them to stop being dysfunctional and this may require they are less happy, less healthy.
Robert(1) : By your logic, the dream should be able to connect to all things, (above and beyond conventional representation and territoriality), where all aspects of the dream are of equal, relative value/source of enrichment.
Richard: Connecting to all things would not be what I'm after here. By moving with the dream we can connect with new flows. Dream-connecting will in each case be very particular and specific. The goal is not to move beyond conventional representations. The goal is to move beyond representationalism itself. That is, to avoid becoming abstract, to live rather than represent living. Too often the dream becomes a representation of something else.
---ROBERT(2) : I agree here. Knowledge, any kind, in the abstract, that does not inform life, as live lived, has no 'practical' purpose. If I don't act upon the knowledge that stealing is wrong, it could be argued, as a practical consideration, I don't even possess that knowledge, other than as an abstraction. The representation, or meaning of the dream is the starting point: material for the dreamer to incorporate, as knowledge, into the very marrow and tissue of his life. As for "connecting to new flows" I would just caution that new flows for the sake of new flows may not be productive. Like going to the supermarket without a philosophy of nutrition, there will be more in the basket than you bargained for.
Richard: // These representations may be very useful to our projects, but they can also lead away from the dream-becoming back into some other becoming, becoming whole, becoming wise, becoming well.
Robert(1) : True as it may be, that by opening up the field, as you characterize it, the dreamer will be offered an endless "marvelous" horizon of possibilities, but will it connect him to the problem his dream might be addressing?
Richard: Here you say dreams represent displays of problems the dreamer is having in life. This is a noble viewpoint that can be very productive, but it is unfair to characterize all dreaming in the service of problem solving.
Robert(2): . How do we know that all dreaming isn't in the service of a problem, or means we (humans) employ to correct our illusions? Your use of 'unfair' assumes dreams serve other purposes?
Richard -// Or put else-wise, using dreams for problem solving is one of many uses of the dream.
Robert(2): I'm not saying that we must always use dreams to solve our problems. I'm only saying that I believe that we dream for reason, and ask why, to what purpose, and what does the dream mean. It doesn't mean that we can't use that same dream for our imagery in art (a la Dali) or as an idea for a short story (Borges) or whatever.
Richard : I'm suggesting that if you treated your friends this way, (Billie is useful for lending me money, Sally is useful as my therapist) they wouldn't for long be your friends. They would start becoming things that got you something else, somewhere else and they would begin to resent this, or start charging you. That is, they move from being real to being a service, a representation, and abstraction. We all struggle with this with our intimates, its not like there is a relationship free of user-used, but by treating friends (or dreams) as only representing something else, we miss something quite special.
Robert(1) : And how does your push for greater freedom help the dreamer narrow the possibilities that directly concern his well- being? Why should I empathize with, or emulate Jim dragging himself through the muck, if not to help him or be a part of the process of solving the meaning of his dream?
Richard: The whole notion of narrowing possibilities to arrive at the meaning of a dream is based on the notion that the dream is disguising something from us, a truth, which we must discover, uncover, reveal. This is a noble path, but tends to shift the creation of meaning into an abstract realm and the authority of the interpretation on a theory outside the dream.
Robert(2): I would say the authority is the meaning itself, if it's the correct one. And it's only abstract if the dreamer doesn't incorporate into his vital labors. In other words, at some point the dreamer has to take responsibility for the meaning of the dream. Also, because dreams are never self-interpreting, like a word can never be self-interpreting, the interpretation must always lie outside the dream, supplying the defect of knowledge between the dreamer and his dream.
Richard: Imagine a fellow playing a flute by the side of a road. We can stop the musician (dream) and ask what he's playing and if he refuses or can't say we can tell him it sounds like a mix of 1920's Mississippi Blues and Preservation Band Jazz. We can say how this kind of Blues moves us and how his particular rendition will contribute to our day and make us feel good. These are all fine approaches. What I'm suggesting is that when we find this music happening we pick up an instrument and begin to play along, we begin to sing, to dance together and then bing , a mutual improvisational event may occur, a new channel, perhaps a new form of music. Richard: Jim's liberation, his push for greater freedom, his seeking meaning and healing in his life can be a puzzle to solve or an encounter which transforms his identity and original project. In the first approach the dream carries a meaning which Jim can then apply to his behavior and life. In the second, Jim's meaning and the dream's meaning lean against one another as they both move forward into something unexpected. That is, they dream asks of Jim, "What do we do now together, how do we move from here?". They form a Jim-Dream becoming.
----ROBERT(2) : I agree with this entirely: the merging of the meaning of the dream with the dreamer's goals or life projects. But I suppose the question will always be: is this what the dream really means. Jim, plowing through the muck, might have had this dream because in his waking life, he has convinced himself that he's progressing, advancing, whereas the dream is telling him that he isn't!!
Robert(1) : Much as you would like, there is no escaping our fascination/quest or the meaning of the dream. And why should we? If our dreams were completely known to us, as understood, there would be need of a field of (discipline of) dream study.
Richard: Well, I'll agree that we can't fully and forever escape our desire to make the dream represent things outside of itself. We often desire our own repression too. The mind sees things in terms of representations. Language itself is a representational system. But we don't have to give in to these dictators.
Robert(2): Like with music, sometimes we just want to bask in the sound and be damned with whatever it's supposed to mean.
Robert(1) : The root of this kind of thinking derives from Post Structuralism,or deconstructionism as it is used often in literature. It's a philosophy(derived and misapplied from phenomenology) that ultimately allows literature to mean whatever you want it to mean. It takes the work, deconceptualizes it, frees it from all of its debilitating contexts (historical or binary straight-jackets that impose time-place prejudiced meanings on the work), and opens it up to any and all interpretation.
Richard: Well, I would push the roots back a little farther than just this last century, but these are definitely part of the stream of postmodern thought informing the article.. Rather than saying it is a mis-application of phenomenology, I would prefer to say it doesn't quite achieve the status of philosophy at all. Rather this collection of texts you refer to, both post-structural and deconstructive, provide tools with which to explore and rework our world. That it forces us to consider the politics and unconscious assumptions behind our meanings and displays of interpretation aligns it very closely with dreamwork. I'm not quite clear what your complaint is about being able to use these tools to make meaning. I thought you liked meaning?
ROBERT(2) : My complaint is that these post-structural investigative methods, in examining the work itself, (now de- prejudiced re. time-place), allow the work (the dream) to mean almost anything liberating, yes, helpful, very doubtful.
Richard : If you had a special hammer that allowed you to build anything you wanted, this seems like a good tool. No? I think we all have the freedom in the most actualized parts of our Western society to make the meaning we want. Whether we can get ourselves or others to believe that our meanings are believable or worthy is another story altogether.
Robert(1) : The crisis of relativism that has catastrophically undermined literary criticism is symptomatic of the crisis of values that plagues our greater society.
Richard: Surely you are not blaming the crisis of relativism on the messengers?
ROBERT(2) : Absolutely not.
Richard: I don't agree with you about literary criticism being undermined. The demand that the meaning of a text is held by the author or someone other than the reader is being undermined. The demand that the text must have a particular meaning and if you don't agree with this interpretation you are wrong is being undermined. I see the ability of the new literary critics to be able to draw upon any field of thought as an improvement. Its so much of an improvement that critical essays now have the same status as the literature they respond to, and are creating social change, activism and a new left, a far cry from the days of the height of literary critic getting a nice little article in the New Yorker magazine.
Robert(2): Yes, indeed. Sometimes the critic deserves more attention than the art he is reviewing. For ex., critics that wax ecstatic over minimalist works, or installation art, are usually much more interesting than the works themselves, with the pleasing result that they have rendered the minimalist work unnecessary, superfluous. And I have absolutely no quarrel with critics drawing from unrelated fields of thought in the quest of new meanings from a work perhaps gone stale. When I propose (I'm not alone here) that literary criticism has been undermined by post-structuralism (deconstructionalism), what I mean is that in their evaluative capacity, the critic, as the custodian of our culture, has, as a consequence of phenomenology (to the thing itself), has taken 'to the thing itself' all too literally, and has abandon what is required to give a fair evaluation of a text, or an author's work. For example, a couple of years back in the New Republic there was a review of the work of Graham Greene. By the time you got through that well written, well-informed piece, you would have to conclude that GG was one of the greatest writers who ever lived. The reviewer supplied selected quotes evincing Greene the philosopher, Greene the humanist etc. This review typified what some have come to view as the crisis in criticism. The review never asked why GG never won the Nobel prize, it didn't compare his works to his contemporaries, or if he resolved a particular problem more or less effectively than writers from the present or past. The reviewer stuck to 'the thing itself,' made Greene mean whatever he wanted to, and, by my reckoning, performed a disservice to all those readers who look to critics for guidance. Phenomenology can be very helpful in all fields of investigation, but its present authority is unwarranted: it is merely one of many tools responsible critics should employ in their interrogation and evaluation of a work, or a dream. Surely, unless it's purely for fun, when a dream interpreter offers an interpretation of a dream or critiques a dream, the dreamer is seeking his guidance. Most of us read reviews of a film we haven't seen, for guidance?
As you might have guessed, Richard, I see dream study in the throes of a crisis, having thrown all caution and discipline to the wind, reveling in new found freedoms where everything is permitted. Perhaps this is a necessary tribulation, an adolescent phase that will one day incorporate more science into its mad methods.
Robert(1) : And now, dream analysis wants to get hip and open up and expand its field of operations. Which begs the question: as a development, should this be encouraged without considering if it may or may not be helpful to the dreamer. (assuming dreams are purposeful and help the dreamer to connect to or evolve a healthier alternative self). I think the flaw in your argument is equating greater freedom with greater insight merely because you multiply the possibilities. True as it may be that if we were granted unlimited freedom, we would end up doing most of the things we do in dreams: fly, walk through walls, jump over buildings etc., but to what purpose? Descartes writes that to be free is not to be able to do what one wants but to want what one can. In deciding what to include in its vital labors, dream analysis might profit just as much from looking back as looking ahead.
Richard: I don't want to multiply the possibilities, I want to end them. Possibility is an unactualized state of abstraction that refers to many things that might be but are not. If someone is helping a dreamer, I want to know what this help looks like. Helping is always motivated by a particular model of heath. If you can get the government to see you are quickly putting people back on the assembly line, your vision of heath and therapy will get lots of funding. Much of the dreamwork found in native cultures is in the service of bringing the person back into the fold of the culture. Psychoanalysis functions in this way as well, and dream analysis here is in the service of tying the libido up in the past, in mommy, papa, me. What does it mean, it means I felt this way about mommy, this way about daddy. For Jung, the libido is tied up in the future. The dream teleologically points the way. There is of course more to Freud and Jung that transcend this simple characterization, but my point is that we can become swamped by our representations of reality and miss the real flow of life. This flow is not in more possibilities, but more intensities.
ROBERT(2) : Again, I would just say, "intensities" but to what purpose?
Richard: Deciding the purpose before the trip is like deciding what kind of marriage partner one wants and then looking for them. It's a great way to control, but the objects will soon begin to accumulate all around you and feel quite empty.
ROBERT(2) : I agree here, and leave the last word to you, Richard. This has been both fun and informing.
Richard: Thanks to you Robert for this continued exploration on the edge of dreamwork. There is obviously much more that can be said about the issues raised. You clearly have, for me, a deep concern for dreams and dreaming, and the dreamer as well. The question of whether poststructural thinking will open us up to more profound dreamwork or simple scatter meaning to the wind remains open. Perhaps in self reflection upon what we fear losing, we will find what we want most to liberate.