articles.jpg (7423 bytes)ARTICLES

DREAM TREK
By Linda Lane Magallan

Electric Dreams Interviews Rita Abrams
by Lars Spivock

ASD Bulletin Board - Home to the Dream Titans!

Dreaming in the Millenium
Copyright 1999 by Lars Spivock

So You Want a Career in the Field of Dreams?
By Richard Wilkerson

 


DREAM TREK

By Linda Lane Magallan

Matching Nightmares With Appropriate Action

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A recent "20/20 " TV broadcast featured dreamworker and radio host Kathleen Sullivan. Kathleen, who is the author of *Recurring Dreams,* described her dream of an eagle caught in a web. She interpreted her dream eagle as a symbol for herself, caught in the web of alcoholic addiction. She was able to use that insight to change her life, to stop drinking and, as a result, her recurring dreams disappeared.

On the same program, another dreamworker, Gillian Holloway, spoke with four people who were suffering from recurring nightmares. Like Kathleen, she used symbolic interpretation in an attempt to match dream content with current life. Afterwards, two of the people interviewed felt that the use of metaphor and pun unlocked their dreams' meaning and revealed helpful information. But the other two weren't so convinced.

That symbols reflect current life is only one possible meaning for dreams. And to pinpoint the "meaning " of nightmares doesn't necessarily settle upset feelings and emotions. Even those dreamworkers who usually take a passive approach to dreams will agree that a nightmare is cause for action. Some examples of behavioral dreamwork techniques are: re-entry dreamwork, Senoi and lucid dreaming.

Furthermore, to focus solely on 'symbolic interpretation' can miss the literal cause of the trauma. Just as with any type of dream, each possible stimulus for nightmare must be considered in order to match it with the appropriate action. When dreams are multi-layered, several methods might be used in conjunction.

Here are several possible explanations for nightmares and suggested responses:

1. A metaphor for current life attitudes and activities. When you change your life, the dream changes. For example: you quit a job with a demanding boss and your chase dreams cease.

2. A metaphor for a bio-chemical glitch or surge. For example: You dream of your own body's dismemberment, as the pictorial equivalent of intrusive thoughts. Because this sort of nightmare is the result of the mind-body system not functioning at optimum (and expressing mental or physical illness instead), it can require physiological intervention such as diet or drug therapy. Conversely, drugs and normal hormonal changes can trigger it. For example: you dream of tidal flooding just prior to your menstrual period. A light touch of behavioral dreamwork techniques can shift content to a more positive metaphor to describe the sensation.

3. A psychic copycat of a current situation. For example: your sister has repeating nightmares. You "dream her dreams " because you are in psychic resonance with her. Your dreams end when hers do. Or they cease when you break the psychic bond with her, using cleansing or cutting rituals.

4. A repetition of a past traumatic event in current lifetime. For example: you dream of your recent rape, a childhood assault or your wartime battle. This type of nightmare is so deeply etched in the psyche that it can require heavy use of behavioral dreamwork techniques to modify the content and emotional intensity.

5. A depiction of a past or probable life. For example: you dream the last events prior to your violent death. A request for new information may provide additional dreams to shed light on the events surrounding this nightmarish experience. Treatment involves the sort of behavior modification techniques used for traumatic nightmares.

6. A depiction of the future. Confirmation occurs either when the dream comes true or when you change your life so it won't come true. For example: you repair your car brakes so you won't literally slide off the highway, as you keep doing in your dreams.

Methods that determine meaning plus techniques that modify behavior comprise the full tool set to resolve a nightmare, recurring or not. But selecting the appropriate tool depends on what is actually stimulating the nightmare to occur. There is no one-size-fits-all tool for nightmare work. So, don't rely on that first hammer you bought, when what you really need is a crowbar or a monkey wrench.

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Comments on "Matching Nightmares With Appropriate Action"

I would like to conjecture that there is another category, incubated nightmares. As gruesome and self-abusive as this may sound at first, I would like to suggest that there is always a risk of a situation getting out of control when we allow otherness to exist. That is, when we step out of the world we are used to, the one we control by force of will and habit to explore new realms, there is always the chance of encountering a nightmare of sorts. We go to a night club that gets raided, we go on a date with person who turns out to be nuts, we confront a litterbug in the neighborhood who goes off on us, we get involved with an activist group that has too radical an element, and so on. Each of these are potential growth situations that backfire and turn into nightmares. In this sense, nightmares can be part of the game of life.

Also, again in the service of growth and curiosity, we may begin to seek out nightmares. In bodywork, in psychology and in many spiritual disciplines, there is a technique of moving into the pain. The process is usually quite complex and involves much trust and having a surround of social and personal containers that are able to handle and support the exploration.

Are nightmares something to just get rid of, or can we develop a wider array of responses and relationships with this kind of dream?

-Richard Wilkerson


 

rita.jpg (14040 bytes)Electric Dreams Interviews Rita Abrams by Lars Spivock

http://www.dreamgate.com/lars/interviews/rita05.htm  

Rita Abrams is the composer of the international hit pop single "Mill Valley," and winner of numerous awards including two Emmys. Abrams and Stan Sinberg created For Whom The Bridge Tolls, an original musical-comedy revue that has played in the San Francisco Bay Area for four years, and is due to re-open in San Francisco in May 1999.

We were having lunch in an Italian restaurant in Mill Valley, California. The rain stopped and the sun shone on the blue inlet. Through the dangling willow branches boats meandered by Mt. Tamalpais. With me was Rita Abrams, talented composer, lyricist, producer, greeting card writer, product namer, author, singer, humorist, copywriter and as I was about to learn, dreamer.

Electric Dreams: Welcome to cyberspace, Rita. Thanks for coming. I already know you sometimes have dreams that have special meaning for you. Please tell us about one.

Rita Abrams: The first one that comes to mind is one where there is this very witty woman in a bus and she is saying all these brilliant things and they are just flying off her tongue. And I think to myself, "I wish I could be that smart." And when I woke up I thought, "isn't that hilarious? I was that smart, everything in the dream was coming out of my brain." And in the dream I envied this woman for her intelligence. And it was me! [laughing] I thought that was quite wonderful.

ED: Great, that's a classic. Any other particularly memorable dreams?

RA: I once read that the Gestalt school believes that whatever you dream is an aspect of you. At that time I had a dream that I am riding in my mother's white-red Chevy Impala convertible. Someone later said "be the convertible." I said, "I'm open ... unprotected, and anyone can ride me and use me however they want to. And nobody appreciates it." It was absolutely me.

ED: Have you ever had a precognitive dream?

RA: I had one very powerful experience in which one night I dreamt that my house was being robbed. I was living alone at the time in a house in the woods. And it was such a powerful dream that I awoke and went upstairs to see if my television and stereo were still there. And then I went back to sleep. It was just a dream.

The next night I came in; it was 3 am, I was getting ready for bed, I looked at my window, and it had been forced open. And I went upstairs and called the police thinking that the person might still be around; the police came and said "where's your television and your stereo?" And I started screaming "you won't believe this, you won't believe this -- this is exactly what I dreamed last night!" And he looked at me as if to say [sarcastically] "Yeah right lady, right." But it was a very amazing predictive dream.

ED: I'd like to ask you a little more about the brilliant lady in the bus dream. Can you tell me what your perspective was and where she was and what she looked like?

RA: I just now remembered what she said. This is a whole other element of it. The bus driver was kind of putting me down or being bossy and she shouted to me "why are you so willing to be talked at?" And I thought "oh my God." Isn't that brilliant? I never would have thought of that consciously. And that's when I said, "wow I wish I were that smart." That I could say something like that, that fast. And of course it was very true.

ED: Can you tell me about the driver's or lady's clothing or complexion? Or was the focus of the dream more on the dialogue and less on the visuals.

RA: Dialogue, yeah.

ED: Is that typical for your dreams?

RA: Definitely much more verbal that visual when I think about it now.

ED: Do you ever hear music in your dreams?

RA: Yeah, a lot. And I'll write things in my dreams -- funny things, good things. And I'll wake up with the solution to some kind of creative problem.

ED: How do your dreams help you with your creativity as a songwriter?

RA: Sometimes my dreams will give me a song title. I'll wake up in the morning with a song title which I'll then write a song about. One example of that was waking up and hearing the phrase from my dream which was "On the phone again" sung to the melody of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." So just like that it came to me and I called Elmo and I said we have to write the song "On the Phone Again." We wrote a whole very funny song about this woman yakking on the phone.

ED: What else do your dreams give you?

RA: Sometimes dreams will give me titles, other times dreams will give me both the titles and the melodies and a little bit of the lyrics like the chorus. The ones I've come up with that way in dreams are pretty funny and maybe not even usable. Like there was when I woke up singing this song about a rattletrap Ford which I've never used for anything and I don't know what prompted me to do that or to dream that.

I've been collaborating on a new show called New Wrinkles and I'm one of the songwriter-lyricists There's another songwriter who's writing the other half of the tunes. And occasionally we critique each other's music. And so I have awakened sometimes having dreamed corrections to his lyrics and knowing that this would be better, sound a little bit smoother than the ones he wrote.

So I've been going to him with some of those. He's been very gracious about accepting my edits and my additions to his songs. And that has happened in dreams. So those are the ways in which dreams have added directly to my creative life and even my work.

One song that started with a dream was "Blame It on El Nis web site [to the tune of "Blame It on the Bossa Nova"].

RA: I wrote that with Stan Sinberg for For Whom the Bridge Tolls which ran for four years in Marin and is opening in San Francisco in May [1999].

ED: In what other ways have dreams communicated with you?

RA: My dreams have instructed me, and told me when to get out of relationships very, very clearly. It took me months to follow them but the truth of a bad relationship always appears first to me in a dream.

ED: Hmm, [cautiously] an example?

RA: I was dating this one guy who was not very sensitive but he had other qualities. He hadn't met my daughter yet. A little bit reluctantly I made a dinner plan for my daughter and him to meet. The night before we went out to dinner, I had a dream that we were eating and he said something really critical to me and she fell into my arms sobbing. And I said "it's over." And that was the dream.

The next night we went out to dinner and we sat down to eat and he starts criticizing her table manners and she starts crying. But I didn't say "it's over." It took me months more to process that. I am enthralled with the power of the subconscious and would like to learn more about it.

ED: Is there anything you would like to say to our readers?

RA: Pay attention to your dreams. I am being reminded to do that more by telling you about my dreams.

ED: Many of our readers are expert at all aspects of dreamwork. Would you like to ask them anything? Rita Abrams: How do you get your dreams to speak to you? How can I be more active with my dreams to answer questions or solve things?

Electric Dreams: I'm sure they will enjoy answering you via rita@dreamgate.com. It's been a pleasure talking with you and I wish everyone could have heard your beautifully expressive voice.

For Whom the Bridge Tolls The four-year hit musical comedy revue that lampoons life around the S.F. Bay area seen through the wits of songwriter Rita Abrams, and humor columnist/radio commentator Stan Sinberg. Re-opens May 6, 1999 The Plush Room in San Francisco 800-758-7495

New Wrinkles A hilarious, provocative musical comedy revue about the coming of middle-age. If you have to get old, you might as well do it laughing [Rita wrote half the songs for this one]. April 9-May 9, 1999 Playhouse West in Walnut Creek 925-942-0300

Lars Spivock is an international technology consultant and an original member of the DreamGate team. He has been a lucid dreamer since early childhood. He freelances for The Wisdom Channel, Electric Dreams, and America Online's Alternative Medicine Forum. Lars has contributed to outreach and education projects for the Intuition Network, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Association for the Study of Dreams, Bay Area Dreamworkers, and the Dream Library and Archive.

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ASD Bulletin Board - Home to the Dream Titans!

-by Richard Wilkerson

Jean Campbell, Linda Magallon, Ernest Hartmann, Robert Moss, Robert Van de Castle, Alan Siegel and more....

http://www.asdreams.org/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

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Asdlogo.bmp (46182 bytes)The Bulletin Board for the Association for the Study of Dreams was conceived and brought to live by Jayne Gackenbach in 1995 in a whirlwind of controversy and has maintained a steady flow of information and discussion for nearly five years. The board has had many hosts and has plans to bring on some real giants in dreams and dreaming for the 21st Century.

The only drawback, (or its shining glory to some) is that the meaning of actual dreams cannot be discussed. But even with this limitation, the message board creates a friendly face to dreamers from around the world. The web based bulletin board also has wonderful hosts, such as myself, Richard Wilkerson in San Francisco, Ad Christiaensen in the Netherlands and currently Jean Campbell from the USA East Coast.

Please stop by, ask question about the process of dreaming, science of dreaming, or current events in the field.

Here is a little more on information from the current host. Jean Campbell

Not long ago I listened to some people discuss how difficult it is to get people to participate in dream lucidity. Around twenty years ago I had a conversation with Anne Faraday, one of the first people to popularize dream work, in which she said she and other researchers doubted that dream lucidity might exist. I say we have come quite a distance in twenty years.

For me, most of that twenty years has been spent exploring dreams in one way or another. I have had a book published, DREAMS BEYOND DREAMING, and have conducted some research on group dreaming that gained international acclaim. The history of this group dreaming research, done through Poseidia Institute which I then directed, is being collected for the dream book

I am currently writing: GROUP DREAMING: DREAMS TO THE TENTH POWER Recently my research has taken me along another path though. Much of dream work, like traditional psychology, involves only talking. Yet, as therapist Stanley Kelleman says, "We embody our dreams." I have studied for the past eight years with Hector Kuri Cano, a Mexican therapist who developed what he called Energetic Metatherapy, a method of bioenergetic body work involving all levels of body, mind, and spirit. I have discovered that when dreams are brought to this type of work, the understanding, because it comes from a cellular and experimental experiential level, is much deeper.

Dreams are a human magic, and have the potential to unite us.

I am reminded of a slogan I saw once stitched in silk on a sweater in an exclusive Georgetown shop: "Dream the Revolution."

We could.

JCCampb@aol.com 

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Dreaming in the Millenium Copyright 1999 by Lars Spivock

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millen.jpg (12876 bytes)Artists, executives, and engineers are often delighted to find inspiration during their sleep. You do not have to wait for dreaming wisdom to come to you. You can simply ask for it! Here are two simple ways to gain insights about the millenium:

INDIVIDUAL MILLENIUM DREAM QUEST

At night -- * If possible, pick a day when you do not wake to an alarm clock. * Keep a pen and paper at your bedside. * Do only relaxing things in the hour before bed. * After closing your eyes, ask your inner self for a millenium message or symbol. * Also tell yourself that you will remember your dreams in the morning. * Keep asking for a message and affirming to remember it as you fall asleep.

The next morning -- * As you realize you are waking, keep your eyes closed and stay still. * Calmly review what you were just dreaming. * Open your eyes and immediately write out and make drawings of your dreams.

When journaling dreams, write down and draw everything you remember, even small fragments. You can wonder about their meanings after they are safely recorded in your journal. Keep your pen and paper with you to record dream memories that are triggered during your daily activities.

You are the expert when it comes to interpreting your dreams. Spend a little quiet time with your journal and you will discover messages that may be disguised as puns, metaphors or roles played by you or other characters.

You can repeat the above practice as often as desired. Have a relaxed attitude of acceptance and sooner or later you will be rewarded with some gems.

COMMUNITY MILLENIUM DREAM

Many of us will be staying up past midnight on December 31 or have friends in other time zones who will enter the year 2000 many hours before us. For this reason and to avoid weekdays, our mutual dreaming experience will be on December 25, 1999.

Follow the same general guidelines for the INDIVIDUAL MILLENIUM DREAM QUEST.

Before going to sleep Saturday night, December 25 -- * Prepare your writing materials and relax for an hour. * After closing your eyes ask your inner self to join with thousands of other dreamers to reveal the mysteries of the millenium. * Keep repeating your request and telling yourself that you will remember your dreams in the morning.

Upon awakening, Sunday morning, December 26 -- * Without changing the position of your body or opening your eyes, calmly review your dreams. * Journal your dream with as much detail as you can recall.

Please send email to y2k@dreamgate.com   with the results of your dreams and I will send you a summary of everyone's dreams. Those without email may send a letter to Lars in care of [this publication]. Participants will remain anonymous.

I wish you wonderful dreams!

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About the author-- Lars Spivock is an international technology consultant and an original member of the DreamGate team. He has been a lucid dreamer since early childhood. He free lances for The Wisdom Channel, Electric Dreams, and America Online's Alternative Medicine Forum. Lars has contributed to outreach and education projects for the Intuition Network, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Association for the Study of Dreams, Bay Area Dreamworkers, and the Dream Library and Archive. Lars may be contacted via y2k@dreamgate.com .

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So You Want a Career in the Field of Dreams? By Richard Wilkerson

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Note: book suggestions are with an eye towards people who have in some way made a career in dreams and have told their story or the story of other dream careers people. RCW

I have had many questions about how get into the field of dreams.

First the bad news.

I often feel that there was more money made last weekend for the latest blockbuster movie than for all the dreamworkers since the Interpretation of Dreams a hundred years ago in 1900.

Gayle Delaney, dreamworker extra-ordinaire has said that no one yet has really made a living doing just dreamwork. And having been on Oprah and Donahue, written tons of books and traveled with her dream show world wide, she should know!

Now the Good News:

Without full time professionals, how does the field evolve? Well, people do other things as well. Here are the most related I am aware of...

1. Psychology. Especially Jungian psychology, which has a heavy dream focus. Many dreamworkers have mental health training and many are psychotherapists. The general overview doesn't exist to my knowledge, though many books cover dreamwork from the original theories. But how it is now practiced in late 20th century culture is usually dealt with separately from school to school. And interesting study that looks at the practices and beliefs of several health care workers is:

Dombeck, Mary-Therese B. (1991). Dreams and Professional Personhood: The Contexts of Dream Telling and Dream Interpretation Among American Psychotherapists. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

If you are interested in dreams, the more Jungian education you can get the better. I say this not only as an advocate for Jungian psychology, but because Jungian work runs through nearly all contemporary dreamwork and theory and has deeply influenced the Dream Movement. Jung's story is a must, start with : Jung, Carl. G. (1965). _Memories, Dreams and Reflections_. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Electric Dreams Links : Carl Jung http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/online97.htm#jung  

2. Publishing and Lecturing and Workshops. Books are the main contact source for the dream worker and the more successful dreamworkers are also giving seminars, lectures, workshops, conference presentations and getting as much air time as possible. Most are still neglecting the Web, but some progress is being made. There are some writers who use dreams as rhetorical devices in their books and screenplays. There are a few scholars who write about dreams, but not many. One of the newest twists is Dream in Business. These workshops get people in business to use dreams as a way to bring the office into a better mode of communication.

If this area of dream show interests you, I would contact everyone possible on the Association for the Study of Dreams Who's Who list. http://www.asdreams.org/idxwhoiswho.htm  

3. Science and Medicine. Sleep disorder clinics and clinicians are on the rise, though dream specific research is on the decline. The focus here is on problems with sleep and some work can then be done with dreams through the backdoor of nightmares and other dream related sleep issues.

Be sure to get a hold of the ASD journal Dreaming and see the Electric Dreams links to Sleep organizations. http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/sleep_disorders.htm  

4. Religion. As Ron L. Hubbard once said to the Campbell, editor of Analog Magazine, "heck, all the money is in religion!"

There has yet to be a Church of Dreams, but I suspect we will see them in the 21stCentury. More often, pastors and priests and ministers take up dreamwork as a adjunct to pastoral counseling. Note for instance the success of Jeremy Taylor, who is a Unitarian minister and now has a full workshop and dream tours schedule. However, this came after 20 or more years in the trenches. Non-denominational dreamwork is becoming more popular as self improvement often includes dreamwork an spirituality.

For more information, I recommend reading Taylor's dream story in Taylor, Jeremy (1992). Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill: Using Dreams to tap the Wisdom of the Unconscious. New York, NY: Warner Books, Inc.

There are many other fascinating stories of dreamworks. See the collection at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/bibs/

5. Lucid Dreams. This seems to be almost its own category of dreamwork. Stephen Laberge has done the most to make lucid dream technology, science and psychology a life's profession. The topic continues to draw lots of attention. Many others are rapidly developing products.

For more on this topic, stop by the Lucidity Institute Online at http://www.lucidity.com  And the Lucid dream story of Laberge can be found in the classic Lucid Dreaming By Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.

Electric Dreams Lucidity Links http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/online97.htm#lucid  

6. Anthropology. Many people in the dream field are anthropologists. They study not only what other cultures have to say about dreams and dreaming, but our own as well. They look at how the dream and dream interpretations function in the culture and what the mean to the individual in this context. For more information, see Jayne Gackenbach's site http://www.spiritwatch.com I also recommend reading *at least* the introduction to Barbara Tedlock's

Tedlock, Barbara (Ed.). (1987). Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations.Cambridge University Press. --------. (Ed.). (1992 edition) Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations.Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. --------. (1981). Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Educational Needs of a Dreamworker

Courses specifically. Some of these you might have to get outside of traditional institutions.

1. Jungian psychology. Get a lot of this. Read all you can on your own. You might want to start with Jung's memoirs, Memories, dreams and reflections. But I also like the illustrated Man and his Symbols. I don't think there is a richer system of dreamwork on the earth., and most of what is used today in groups and by individuals stems from the work of the Jungians.

2. Other psychologies: Ask for the basics and history. Freud, Adler, Jung, Maslow, Sullivan, Erikson, even Skinner. But also look into Frederich Perls, Mednard Boss, Bonime, Montegue Ullman, Arnold Mindel, James Hillman. Try to get as close to having a session with them as possible. Obviously this isn't possible for many as they are dead, but move from the generalizations about them to finding out what an hour with them was actually like. If you can afford therapy, try out different kinds of therapy yourself. Very Important to get as close to first hand experience as possible. If you get deeply into psychotherapy, I find the Object Relations therapies quite interesting and a way of bringing forward classical psychotherapy. Kohut and self-psychology forms a bridge between object relations and human potential and wholeness oriented therapies.

I highly recommend Raymond J. Corsini's Current Psychotherapies for a quick journey into several types of therapies at the experiential level.. Fossage and Loew put together a comparison of dream therapies in Dream Interpretation, A comparitive Study second ed 1987. Its a little dry, but interesting. A more exciting new comparison is Anthony Shafton's Dream Reader. Also, Gayle Delaney has a good comparison dream book called New Directions in Dream Interpretation.

3. Anthropology. Again, much of dreamwork has a cultural component. Exposure to alternative cultures allows for a wider grasp of individual issues and offers a unique way to find a context for dreams. On dreams & anthropology, read Barbara Tedlock's (1987). Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge University Press. and Devereux, George (1969). Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books

See the Dream Anthropology bibliography at

http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/bibs/anthro.htm  

4. Literature. I feel that getting the sense of what writing and literature is about has helped me with dreams. Interpreting stories is something the fields share in common, and they enhance one another. Dreams are often interpreted using literary criticism's techniques, not only the simple dynamic structures of plot and character, but the more elaborate philosophies of criticism with investigate the psychological and policitical forces in all narratives. In Dreams, See Jones, Richard (1979). The Dream Poet. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company and States, Bert O. (1988). Rhetoric of Dreams. London: Cornell University Press.

For more see Rupprecht, Carol Schreier (Ed.). (1993a). The Dream and the Text: Essays on Literature and Language. NY: SUNY Press.

5. Religion and Mythology: This could be under anthropology or literature as well. Both religious studies and mythology look at stories that struggle with the creation or understanding of the meaning and value of life. Be sure to read Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God. There are several in the series, all great. I would read Mircea Eliade's The History of Religious Ideas as well, also a kind of mythologically based text. Push through on religious studies to the esoteric/ mystic side of the religion. We hear a lot of horror stories about Islam in the West, but we rarely hear about the fabulous Sufi traditions. Again, be sure to check out Carl Jung on his rendition of Christianity and Western religions.

6. Philosophy: while philosophy has done very little in its investigation of the world of ideas to explore dreams, I find it invaluable in the understanding of dream techniques and where they are coming from. All forms of interpretation are motivated by other ideas and powers. To the degree that we learn to be conscious and aware of these, we won't as often fall prey to being the victim of the idea. Also, being able to deeply question the assumptions and categories we live by is very similar to a lot of dreamwork which does the same. Of course, one might point out Descartes as an example of a philosopher who made a career on dreams. It was the dream that led his to posit that he could not really be sure of reality, only that he existed thinking it was real.

7. Science. Understanding the functions of dreaming used to be clearly separated into those who wanted a clear biological answer and those who wanted a psycho-spiritual answer. Now the fields mix and blend and having a good background in biology, physiology, chemistry, ect, can help in sorting out the psychological from the physical. We used to think about schizophrenia, for example, in moral terms. Something was wrong with the person in that they failed to use their will power to come up to snuff and therapy involved getting them back on the right road of consensus reality. Now we know that there are terrible chemical inbalances, many genetically informed. Therapy may still involve helping the person adapt to reality, but it no longer assumes the person is *trying* to be weird. In dreamwork, we may make use of a nightmare to investigate some deep soulful path, but its also important to check out the physiological components and influences. The more science we have, the better we can refer these clients to appropriate care.

Graduate Programs

I'm not aware of any at this time that offer advanced degrees in Dreaming. The Association for the Study of Dreams offers Continuing Education Units at its conferences. Www.asdreams.org 

However, there are people who do offer graduate studies in dreams. For a full list (as collected to date by Don Kuiken) see http://www.asdreams.org/subidxedugraduatestudies.htm  

Dream Centers and Resources.

Jill Gregory at the Dream Library and Archive has helped many other dream centers get started and many dream careers get going for many years. For more information go to the Dream Library and Archive:

http://members.aol.com/dreammzzz/index.htm