Dream Trip

Dream Trip

If we suppose that telling a story – our story, the story of ‘I’ – is a process that is important in the therapeutic healing, development and change process, then a reasonable question seems to be: how do we help clients to know of and tell their stories to themselves and  to us as therapists?

Put another way, how can we work with the aesthetic object, the symbol and container that creates itself in the telling of it?

I believe, as Bion claimed, that we dream both by day and by night. This is a process that is the nature of ourselves. As Shakespeare put it:

We are such stuff

 that dreams are made on,

And our little life is rounded with a sleep.

(Tempest, IV I, 156)

So, what is the dream and the dreaming process, a dream and the stuff of a dream?

‘The peculiar value of a dream, and the dream-level of an artwork, is that it cannot be invented by the self; it is a gift from the gods – or a curse’ (Meg Harris Williams, The Aesthetic Development: the Poetic spirit of Psychoanalysis p.135-6)

‘Dreams are the psyche’s attempt – with a varying level of aesthetic achievement – to symbolize it’s present emotional conflicts in order to reorientate itself towards external and internal reality’ (ibid p.136).

One might say that a dream is a narrative, a given narrative. There is linking (as Bion described it) between internal and external states, consciously and unconsciously. We can consciously think up a story about ourselves in the external world, for example ‘I am a teacher who came into teaching because…’ Then this story needs to match up with unconscious internal states, to link at boundaries (of internal/external; conscious unconscious; closeness/separation).

The dream though cannot be invented by a conscious sense of self. As such a self, we have to wait for the linking, the boundary area where the dream appears. This may appear as a revelation or reverie in a waking state, or a night dream in a sleeping state. The form is usually cinematic and symbolic. For example Murakmi’s description of his protagonists’ revelation of himself as a little boat, when the waters clear to reveal a great depth at the bottom of which lies a volcano (The Second Bakery Attack).

Such a story simply cannot just be made up: it’s necessary to be in a state (Bion would say reverie) which allows the possibility of such revelation. Then it is necessary to work on the possible meanings of it and how it might link with conscious, rational thought. Further, how the rational thoughts can be fed back to the boundary for absorption by dream processes.

Consciously – unfortunately or fortunately – we have the capacity to hold out against the dream process, though we are unable to stop it. It goes on whether we like it or not. And our actual situation as a person may be revealed to consciousness when, as with Murakami’s character, the waters clear and we realise the actual depth of what is happening and the strength of the volcanic forces involved.

We dream both by day and by night as Bion put it. There may now – in addition to this ‘aesthetic evidence’ – be some scientific evidence for this. I can’t quote the references for this at the moment because I haven’t got access to them currently (in Singapore). Essentially there are different states of brain activity both within sleep and in waking states. However, an underlying state has been observed in both waking and sleeping states and this may be the physical equivalence of dreaming, if such separations of the physical and the state of psychic operations is meaningful.

Quoting Murakami, from a book he wrote on the Tokyo underground gas attacks, in the context of the idea of giving up one’s ego to a guru:

 ‘If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can’t live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or the systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others.

Now a narrative is a story, not logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realise it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are the whole and you are the part. You are real and you are shadow. ‘Storyteller’ and at the same time ‘character’. It is through such multilayering of roles in our own stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world.’ (pp. 201-2 in translation Underground, quoted in Jay Rubin Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words p.244 quoting from Murakami’s Underground).

I might say that the multi-layering of stories is like Bion’s idea of linking containing states. We need stories for the individual, the family, society. In our western society it can be argued that our stories have become more fragmented and split off from each other. Though fairly obviously this is a broad generalisation as in a multi-cultural society there are many religious beliefs, along with scientific beliefs and literature and art continue to provide a powerful presence.

So, how can we help our clients tell their stories? How do we enter a state of reverie with our clients?  I think we have to start with our own processes as therapists. I’ll focus on that in my next piece.