Working with Dreams in the Therapeutic Setting

I began participating in therapeutic work with Dr. L. Because of an impasse in my relationship to my birth family. For fifty years, I had no ill feeling toward my mother, father, and older brother, but recent events had caused “the scales to fall from my eyes,” and it became clear to me that my birth family was intractably pervaded by dishonesty, manipulation, cruelty, abuse, and sexually deviant dominance. My previous denial of this had been so complete as to render the realization shocking. Yet, on reviewing my record of dreams over the prior twenty-five years, it was clear that my dreaming mind had been quite aware of the reality of the situation, and had frequently tried to communicate this to me. The language of dreams, complex and powerful, yet obscure to the waking mind, combined with my state of denial to obstruct the message. But as denial began to clear from my waking consciousness, the dreams became illuminated, bringing more clarity to my waking mind and to my dreams in a process that accelerated rapidly. It was in the early stage of this that I began my work with Dr. L., and I will here share some of our experiences that I believe illustrate a healthy approach to dream work in the therapeutic setting. I arrived at Dr. L.’s office with a letter from my mother. I had been dialoging with her by mail and email about what I was beginning to understand about the illness that pervaded our family — in the hopes of working toward some kind of forgiveness or peace — yet had been met only with a towering construct of evasion, denial, gaslighting, and blame. Many years before this, when our relationship had been good (so I had thought), I had written her a letter in French, which we had both been studying at the time, in anticipation of a family trip to Paris. Now, as our relationship was shifting, I was demanding honesty and responsibility, but she wanted nothing more than to return to our previous state in which I was a willing participant in denial and the delusion of the “perfect family.” Now. In a gesture that was a hallmark of her unconsciously brilliant talent for manipulation, she had sent the letter back to me, with no reference to any other discussion, telling me that she was proud that she could understand the letter. The letter had been from fifteen years prior to this moment. I was beginning to understand enough of her process to know that the letter was meant to remind me of my prior tenderness, and simultaneously appeal to my ego, in the form of my pride in linguistic abilities. I brought the letter to the room, shared it and its context with Dr. L., and discussed it with him. Then it was dream time. My brother and I are in a wooden fortress. The fortress comes under siege by an invading army of French riflemen. My father is concerned he will lose the war, and tells my brother and I to wait in the tower, and lock ourselves in, to be safe. But the tower is wooden, and I am certain the invading soldiers will set fire to it. Indeed, this is just what happens, after the defending army is quickly overwhelmed, my father killed. As we try to make a desperate, seemingly hopeless escape, the fortress is swarmed by another invading army of Russians. The Russians are clearly the more powerful army, but their intentions toward me are unclear. My brother has been left behind. I decide the best move is to throw in with the Russians, since my fate with them would be unknown, but my fate with the French would be certain death. The ground is covered with snow, the victorious Russians are vacating the field on sleds. I cling to one of the Russian sleds. Some French soldiers see my escape, and rush after me. I hack at their arms with a bayonet, and bash their heads with the rifle butt in a gruesome and desperate exchange of violence. I manage to free myself from the pursuers, and the dream ends with me careening off to an uncertain future with the Russian army, still shaken, but cautiously optimistic. After a pause, Dr. L. Asks, “So, what do you think?” “I’m quite at a loss.” Dr. L. gives me some time. then he says, “The French army is your mother.” I have trouble with this. “Why is she French?” He simply points at the letter. “Of course!” I respond, thinking now how obvious that was. Dr. L. waits again, but I still have no more to offer. “The Russian army is your father,” he says. But unlike his previous observation, which brought me an immediate sense of recognition, the father image does not resonate for me. “But my father appears in the dream as himself. He impotently tries to make me safe, putting me in a wooden tower that he thinks is safe, although it is obviously not so, and then is killed.” “Your dream can manifest a concept through multiple, even contradictory symbols. Is your father’s ancestry Russian?” “No,” I say, but his suggestion sparks the necessary understanding. “But my wife’s is.” Dr. L. Pronounces unhesitatingly. “The Russians are your wife.” I immediately know this is true, but I still don’t understand the message. “And the violence?” “You are cutting off their hands, which are reaching to catch you.” “Yes.” “You are cutting off the grasping ties of your mother, and casting your lot with your wife.” I feel the truth of this in my gut. I understand all of the dream now. It also aligns with prior dream series. My mother is often portrayed in my dreams as an overwhelmingly powerful aggressor, overcoming my father and brother, who submit. This is in fact a significant aspect of the dynamics of my birth family, as the others accommodate my mother’s narcissistic, even sociopathic, dominations and manipulations, while I am the only one to resist. For this reason my dream depicts my father as trying to protect me and my brother from her anger (represented as fire), while utterly lacking the knowledge and capacity to do so (hiding me in a wooden tower). This dream and the work around it were early in my process with Dr. L., and they illustrate some valuable aspects of healthy dream work. Dr.L. does not tell me the meaning of the dream without first asking me for my own thoughts. He does not “interpret” the dream, but holds space for me to reach my own relationship to it. Most importantly, he does not try to fit the dream to his own preconceived notions or theories. Only when I am at a loss does he offer his understanding. I emphasize that this understanding is offered, not given. His first offering resonates, and I accept it immediately. His second offering, of the Russian army as my father, does not resonate, and I resist it. Dr. L. pursues the lead a little farther, asking about my father’s heritage. This turns out to be a false trail, but it leads me to the idea of heritage that allows me to connect the Russian army to my wife. Crucially, as soon as we uncover this more resonant meaning, Dr. L. immediately drops the father connection, rather than attaching to his own pet theory and labeling my dissonance with the interpretation as resistant. We both know, simultaneously, the new understanding is correct because I feel it in my whole body, and he can see that somatic response. No dream worker can avoid their own projections, but by careful attention to resonance and dissonance, projections can be recognized and discarded. But it is also of note that, had Dr.L. not pursued his lead a little, in the absence of any other indications, we would not have arrived at the correct understanding. Right understanding arises out of a delicate interplay between projection and intuition. In this interaction, as in many things, a useful model can be found in the theory of Authentic Movement as articulated by Janet Adler in several of her works. In particular, in “Who is the Witness,” she describes a process of interaction among two or more conscious beings. Her model originates in somatic work, but I have found it to be applicable to numerous situations of intentional conscious interaction. Adler describes a relationship among the mover, the witness, and the field in which the interaction takes place, which she calls the container. This work is much worth reading at length. In the therapeutic setting, two or more conscious beings interact. The language we use to describe this interaction both flows from and informs our conception of the interaction. The therapist is distinguished as a professional whose help has been sought, and that label is an adequate definition of the therapist’s role. For the role of the other conscious being, the one who has sought help, I find the word “patient” to connote an unfortunate dependency and designation as “ill,” and the word “client” to connote a business arrangement that is equally inappropriate. I choose to refer to the two participants in the process as the therapist and the participant. The word participant offers a sense of agency and willing engagement on the part of the one who seeks help, and also frames the process as an an open-ended inquiry. In Adler’s language, then, the therapist plays the role of the witness, the participant plays the role of the mover. It is an important aspect of Authentic Movement that these roles are not fixed, although they take time to evolve. This is an aspect of dynamic interaction of consciousness that traditional psychotherapy would do well to consider. The container in Adler’s system is the complex field of relationship within which the interaction unfolds. Dance studios, therapy rooms, classrooms, and other physical settings serve as concrete metaphors of the container, but they are not the container. These physical structures can, however, serve to establish a sacred space for conscious interaction. Sacred activity in any society is often contained within a sacred space that may be demarcated by a consecrated building, a sacred gateway or arch, or a boundary of sacred plants. Within the sacred space, there are usually specifically prescribed rules of conduct that differ from the rules of conduct outside the space. Although the spiritual activity that takes place within the sacred space is bounded by the space and contained within it, the spiritual activity is not the space nor the rules of conduct. Yet, more than mere metaphors, the barriers are a physical manifestation of the sacred activity, and the rules of conduct are an enactment of it. So it is with Authentic Movement, or Authentic Psychotherapy, or Authentic Education, or any Authentic Practice, that is, a practice that uses conscious awareness of the witness-mover-container triad of Authentic Movement as articulated by Adler. Part of the role of the witness is to strive to be conscious enough of the actions of the mover to bear witness to the movement. The witness cannot know what arises in the consciousness of the mover during movement. But the witness can strive to be aware of what arises in herself as she witnesses the movement, and bear that witness to the mover when they meet subsequently in dialogue. In dialogue, what arises in the witness and what arises in the mover may meet and exchange within the field of the container. This is why Dr. L.’s approach to my dream was successful. At first, I was not able to say what had arisen for me in the dreams, I could only relate the dream itself. When Dr. L. bore his witness to the dream, he presented what arose for him: The French army is your mother. From the perspective of the witness, this was an easy conclusion to draw, though, as the mover, being inside the movement, I had been unable to see it. But once spoken, I felt a somatic and emotional resonance that revealed that his witness, what had arisen for him, was resonant with what had arisen for me. Dr. L.’s second testament was that the Russian army was my father. As with the first instance, this was not what had arisen for me, but what had arisen for him. When he bore this witness, there was not resonance for me, there was dissonance. What had arisen for me was not what had arisen for him. Yet I still did not know what had arisen for me, so the witness continued bearing his witness. Finally, an aspect of his witness, an aspect of what had arisen for him from the dream, did resonate, and resonated powerfully, with what had arisen for me. Even though the witness can only bear witness to what arises in himself, this arising can nevertheless spark a resonance with what arises for the mover — either directly, in the first case, or indirectly, in the second. This resonance in the mover is what brings understanding. Mutual resonance brings mutual understanding. Approaching dream understanding with witness consciousness, with careful attention to resonance and dissonance, and without attachment to projections, pet theories, or even grand theories, can lead to illumination in the participant-mover that may not have been possible without the conscious-enough presence of the therapist-witness.

Dying by Degrees

There were some who died right away.
The pandemic revealed the supply lines to be so fragile
That the stores could no longer stock their favorite flavor
Of pop-tarts.

Mind you, they had all the other flavors,
Just not the flavor that I eat
The frosted blueberry swirl
And so death was not far away for that one.

Others died a few more meters down the supply line
Victims of inconvenience
When they didn’t have my brand of pickles
When the waxing professional I used disappeared one day
When you could no longer get toothpicks.

There were many, many, who dropped along these intermediate lines.
You found their bodies in the aisle with the cereal boxes
Or the chips.

Then there were some who held out until the leaves fell off of all the trees
Until all the crickets vanished
Until there were no more bees
Until the cardinals stopped coming in the Spring.

These died of romance,
Which is a nobler death.

Finally there were those who survived everything
All the inconvenience
All the humiliations
All the famine of spirit

Until there was no more food.
Until the water was poisoned.
Until they choked on plastic
Until they were swept by storm out to sea
Until the oceans all burned, and the moon cracked and fell from the sky.

And who is to say these last
Died the more sensible of deaths?

What are we then

Cats are made out of mice
And birds.
Dogs of rabbits and squirrels.
A cow is made of grass.

The dog warns, and attacks the foe.
The cat defends the grain.
And the cow gives her life to furnish the table.

Twig Song

Saw a flash in the lake
Thought it was a fish
But it was only a twig
Only a twig
Only a twig
Driftwood driftwood
There has been a storm here
There has been a fire here

Geohydrolysis and the hydrogen fuel economy: A completesolution to the energy crisis and global warming

Using geothermal energy to hydrolyze water, providing inexpensive and practically limitless pure hydrogen to power energy systems through fuel cells or hydrogen combustion is technically and economically feasible, extremely reliable, has zero carbon emissions, minimal environmental impact, and zero potential for unmitigatable disaster.

So, engineering students, get on it!  Save the world and become a billionaire!  I'm too old and lazy for this sort of thing, so you get the outline for free.

The system would begin by using sea floor vents on the Midatlantic Ridge to generate electricity on floating platforms.  The abundance of geothermal energy in this zone is readily observable in the high levels of geothermal energy production enjoyed by Iceland,an island that is essentially a portion of the Midatlantic Ridge that has broken the surface of the Atlantic.  The ridge extends North-South across the entire Atlantic basin, and is a zone of sea-floor spreading that drives the movement of the American, European, and African continents away from each other.  The energy of earth-crust convection is released ubiquitously along this ridge in the form of sea-floor vents, which are undersea “hot springs,”or “geysers” of a volcanic nature. Because of the high water pressure, the boiling point of water is greatly elevated, and sea-floor vents produce liquid water in the vicinity of 700 degrees Fahrenheit.



To capture this energy, floating platforms, such as are currently used for deep sea oil drilling, instead of dropping thousands of feet of drill shafts, would drop thousands of feet of steel tubing capable of withstanding the high pressures and temperatures of the water.  The tube would form a closed loop.  Water (or another liquid) circulated through the loop would be heated by the sea-floor vents, or even in hot plumes nearby to the vents.  The heated fluid is used to drive turbines on the platform that generate electricity.



Icelandic energy experts have noted that Iceland could become a major exporter of energy if only a way could be found to transport energy across the Atlantic to consumers on the continents.  The transport of energy remains the only obstacle to the production of energy from sea-floor vents, as well.  A solution to this problem is found in the abundance of seawater surrounding both Iceland and the generating platforms.  Seawater is easily hydrolyzed (separated into pure hydrogen and oxygen by passing an electrical current through the water), but hydrolysis is generally energy-cost-prohibitive, since much electricity is needed.  But the geothermal generators will produce unlimited electricity, so hydrolysis becomes a viable way to produce abundant hydrogen.  Hydrogen can then be transported to consumers by various means. Hydrogen arriving at consumer use-points could be converted back to electricity through fuel cells or combustion to power a diversity of applications:  vehicles, buildings, cities, industry, etc.



Among the means to transport the hydrogen to consumers would be pipelines and shipping. But an attractive and flexible way to do this would be through remote-piloted dirigibles.  Of course, the specter of a Hindenberg-like disaster is raised, but if the dirigibles are remotely piloted and flown at safe altitudes, then such disasters,when they occur, would engender no injury or loss of life, and little loss of property.  Furthermore, the only byproduct of any accidental explosion would be water, and the falling debris of the vehicle, which would be minimal.



The environmental impact of hydrolyzing water at the platforms can be minimized by pumping water to be hydrolyzed into electrically insulated tanks, so that stray charges and voltages do not affect the surrounding ecologies.  Hydrolyzed water will leave a saline residue, and disposing of the residue will increase local salinity.  Average global salinity will be unaffected though, since all water hydrolyzed will eventually be replaced by pure water produced at the consumer end.  As water is hydrolyzed and the hydrogen captured, the local atmosphere may experience enriched oxygen levels.  This is not trivial, as the impact of any increase of atmospheric oxygen levels is unknown.  However, any excess oxygen produced at the platforms will be balanced, molecule for molecule, by oxygen consumed at the consumer end.  Total atmospheric oxygen will remain constant.



The transport of hydrogen may involve occasional leakage or explosions, but hydrogen is not toxic, and is lighter than air, so any spilled hydrogen will float harmlessly into the upper atmosphere.  Indeed, hydrogen is so light that the Earth’s gravitational field cannot retain it -- which is why there is little hydrogen in Earth’s atmosphere.  Any hydrogen lost accidentally will escape into space.



 At the consumer-use end of the process, fuel cells react hydrogen and oxygen, with only water as a product.  There is no harmful byproduct of reaction.  The construction of millions of fuel cells may require extensive initial investments in minerals for use as catalysts and electroplates. The energy and environmental costs of building fuel cells may be extensive.  A simple way to solve this problem is to simply combust the hydrogen in standard steam or internal combustion generators, instead of using fuel cells.



The costs of the system lie mostly in initial investments:  constructing the platforms and transport network.  These costs would be quickly recouped in supplying all of the world’s energy needs.  The actual production of energy has zero cost, since the sea-floor vents will continue to produce energy as long as the continents continue to move, which is to say, long beyond the foreseeable future.  The longevity of individual sea-floor vents is not known.  It may be necessary to occasionally relocate the platforms from dormant or less productive vents to active or more productive ones.  In the event that the vents are short-lived,remotely piloted or robotic submersible vessels could be deployed to continually seek out active vents.  There will always be some active vents as long as sea-floor spreading continues.  While this time frame is not predictable,sea-floor spreading has been steady for the last 200 million years.  In the time frame of human history, it may be necessary to relocate platforms over active vents, and relocating may be an additional cost of energy production, along with maintenance of the platforms and delivery system.



This overall system can yield a low-cost, minimum-impact,highly reliable, disaster-resistant means to produce nearly limitless low-cost energy to every place on earth.  All of the technical knowledge necessary to implement the system already exist.   So let's do it, kids, and don't forget your old math teacher when you're rich and famous, and enjoying the benefits of a sustainable techno-social system.

The Dream-Author

I have come to know that my dreams have an author.  This author is not me – at least not the me who is writing this now.  But it also is me.  Just a different me, a different person who is me.  I think it is right to think of the dream-author as a person.

I am not comfortable saying, with Freud, that the dream-author is the unconscious, because the dream-author shows that he is quite conscious (I project, linguistically, my own gender upon the dream-author, but the dream-author has no gender, or possesses qualities of all genders).  I say the dream-author is conscious, because he is very aware of my waking activities, possesses logic, intelligence, intent, language, and a desire to communicate.  The dream-author is aware of things that I am not aware of, and tries to communicate them to me using a hybrid of his and my own language.  I can identify numerous specific insights that my dreams have presented to me at various times, but which I did not understand because I myself lacked that insight.  When I achieved the insight at a much later time, It became clear what the dream had been trying to say.  This is evidence that the dream-author is aware of things in my waking life, that I am not aware of, and that the dream-author considers it important to attempt to communicate these things to me, as a friend would try to tell me something important that I do not know or understand.  These things tend to center around relationships to persons, and depth of connections to the world and the diverse disaggregated aspects of myself.  The intent of the dream-author seems to be for me to have a more fully integrated personality and to have healthier and more honest relationships, as well as to see the value of the most important things in life, and to see past my illusions of daily life to perceive things for what they are.  With its insight, intelligence, and caring, the dream-author seems more to me like a conscious personality than an amorphous unconscious substrate.

Yet I also cannot agree with Jung that the dream-author is the anima, the Atman or fully realized personality, robustly connected to the collective unconscious and its archetypes, an all-wise guide on the journey to individuation.  For although it is more astute than I am with regard to interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, it is terrible at certain other types of operations.  Mathematics, spoken language, and spatial orientation are notably suppressed.  We could say that the dream-author is not interested in these things, but I have evidence that it is.  It tries to understand the significance of numbers, tries to remember words in various languages, tries to relate to a geographic landscape, it finds these concepts useful, but is simply bad at them.  It is also neurotically anxious, often wasting my time with interminable, emotionally laden narratives about how worried it is that I will be unable to handle mundane situations like my job.  Some of these weaknesses are complementary to my own strengths, but a poor sense of spatial orientation is a weakness that I share with the dream author.  Again, the dream-author does not seem like the mystically omniscient anima, but more like some guy I met at school and became friends with, complementing my orientation to the world in some ways, and reinforcing it in others.

I think of the dream-author as a writer because he uses a language to construct an idea-complex.  On waking, the idea-complex becomes a narrative, but I am fairly certain that it is my conscious, waking self that imposes narrative structure on the idea-complex, since in its raw form the idea-complex is not understandable to the conscious waking mind.  I suspect this because in some moments I am able to retain the idea-complex in mind,briefly, before imposing the narrative.  I am sometimes able to be consciously aware of the process of imposing the narrative, which seems neither conscious nor unconscious, but somehow an inevitable product of the interface of the two worlds and their incompatible logics.  The dream-author draws images and feelings from my waking activities and uses them as symbols in its language of dream-logic.  Thus, objects in my quotidian experience can become words and phrases in my dream, but they are not the meaning of the dream.  I have learned that it is important not to be distracted by the connections of the symbols to waking life.  So, for example, I might dream of a fish “because I had fish for dinner.”  But while having had fish for dinner supplied the image of the fish, it is not the meaning of the fish.  If I wish to understand the meaning of the dream of fish, I must ask what the fish represents for me, how I feel about seeing the fish, and what is the relationship of the fish to other symbols in the dream.  I must not be distracted by the superficial image of the fish.

Dream work, for me, involves deepening my relationship with the dream-author.  I wish to better understand not only his language and his messages for me, but I wish to better understand him as a person.  I wish to know how I can be of help to the dream-author, so that our relationship is not a one-way affair.  I wish to see the dream-author, within myself as I dream, and in the mirror when I wake.  I do not wish to become one with the dream-author, to realize that he is nothing other than my own self, any more than I wish to become the same person as my friend or spouse.  I want to appreciate the dream-author as a person who is striving to become fully realized alongside me, a person who is taking this journey with me, who is insightful, honest, possessed of universal wisdom, bad at math, disoriented in the towns and buildings, and has trouble remembering simple words and phrases.  I want us to grow together.

Ghosts

Our ghosts that rest upon our frighted frame
That speak in ciphers crafted from our culted names
And hold within their fingers nighted mummeries
That spoken would consume our breath and memories

What now pale husks?
Search the skies at dusk
Of thee nor toe nor tusk.