Dream Seekers
Test pilots. A giant turtle. Denis Leary. What could it all mean?
[SIZE=-1]By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 29, 2006; M01[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]
It is January 2009.
Imagine, for a moment, that the new president begins his inaugural address by saying he has written down and studied his dreams. With a level head, and without detouring into the psychic or prophetic, he says he hopes to understand himself better by doing some dreamwork.
Imagine the CNN ticker.
"I mean, how would that go over in the press?" says Gayle Delaney, who for the past 30 years has striven to mainstream dreamwork -- the practice of sidestepping classical dream interpretation for a more nuanced, personalized meditation on one's dreams.
Delaney has done "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (five times) and "Today." She is the founding president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. She has written books and virtually shorted out the lecture circuit in the United States and Europe. And still, many people think dreamwork is bosh and bunkum.
"Prejudice against dreaming is huge, in part because so much nonsense is written about it," Delaney says.
Ask any professional with dream experience, and their message is clear: Ignore quick-fix dream "doctors" on TV and the Internet. Toss your conventional dream dictionaries to the curb -- they are too strict, too patrician.
And their meanings? Meaningless.
It's common sense, really. Many people dream about cats, but not all dream that cats are manifestations of one's mother, as Freud suggested.
"After all, a dream about a house must mean different things to a carpenter and an arsonist," says Karen Shanor, a clinical psychologist who runs a private practice in Northwest Washington.
Dreams should be worked rather than cut and dried into categories, Shanor, Delaney and others say. No book -- and no one -- can tell you what your dreams mean, since one's dreaming life can be understood only in the context of one's waking life.
As Dr. Phil-ish as it sounds, dreamwork is a matter of self-therapy, of being open to the possibility that reflecting on your dreams may yield some holistic or entertaining insights.
"People would just as soon think that dreams are random activity in your cortex," Delaney says. "There are still huge swaths of movers and shakers whom I have as clients who say, 'If I tell anybody I've seen you, I'll have to deny it.' "
Oh, if those Hewlett-Packard knuckleheads had prefaced their morning meetings with a little dream analysis . . .
That scenario is not so crazy. Business schools and management training programs in England and India use dream therapists to help hone problem-solving skills. Working through a conflict in a dream scenario may have a practical application to one's waking life.
Still, there is bias against dreaming, agrees Clara Hill, a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland. Some of the bias comes from a lack of understanding dreamwork, particularly the aspects that sound a little paranormal.
Take dream incubation, in which people condition themselves to dream about a certain topic, or prodromal dreaming, in which the body sends signals to the dreaming mind about impending illness. The validity of both is supported by a wealth of anecdotal observation and some supplementary research.
But they still have that faint whiff of the psychic, which turns some people off. Extrasensory powers may exist, but there is no way to gather statistical proof about clairvoyance.
"I think the jury's still out on that," says Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard Medical School professor who uses dreamwork in clinical and classroom settings. "It's a matter of faith. Most of us hear really dramatic anecdotes in that direction, and I think it's possible there's something we don't understand happening in communication outside of what we're consciously aware of. But we also underestimate coincidences."
Prepare yourself for a dramatic (or coincidental?) anecdote: In the '50s, Rita Dwyer was a research chemist at Thiokol Chemical Corp. in Denville, N.J. One day in 1959, rocket fuel exploded in Dwyer's lab, trapping her. Her co-worker, Edward M. Butler, rescued her from the fire. Afterward, Butler told her that he'd had a recurring dream about saving her from a fire and that he did exactly what he had "rehearsed" in the dream when it actually happened.
Because of this event, Dwyer's interest swung from aerospace to inner space, and she founded the Metro D.C. Dream Community in 1983. She and Butler still talk weekly.
"We've been encultured not to pay attention to our dreams: 'Oh, it's just a dream. It doesn't matter,' " says Dwyer, who takes a spiritual and holistic approach to dreamwork. "But they do matter. During the day we pick up materials that we're not aware of, process them at night and come up in the morning with some idea."
What about the skeptics, some of whom might still be reading this story (lips pursed, heads shaking)? How does Hill respond to naysayers who invoke psychiatrist J. Allan Hobson's theory that dreams are products of benign psychosis -- a mostly random firing of neurons?
"They might be, but if you can use them therapeutically and it works, that's great," says Hill, who has conducted about 20 studies on dreaming. "So I get out of the argument that way. The research we've done so far is that people really can gain insight."
Test pilots. A giant turtle. Denis Leary. What could it all mean?
[SIZE=-1]By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 29, 2006; M01[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]
It is January 2009.
Imagine, for a moment, that the new president begins his inaugural address by saying he has written down and studied his dreams. With a level head, and without detouring into the psychic or prophetic, he says he hopes to understand himself better by doing some dreamwork.
Imagine the CNN ticker.
"I mean, how would that go over in the press?" says Gayle Delaney, who for the past 30 years has striven to mainstream dreamwork -- the practice of sidestepping classical dream interpretation for a more nuanced, personalized meditation on one's dreams.
Delaney has done "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (five times) and "Today." She is the founding president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. She has written books and virtually shorted out the lecture circuit in the United States and Europe. And still, many people think dreamwork is bosh and bunkum.
"Prejudice against dreaming is huge, in part because so much nonsense is written about it," Delaney says.
Ask any professional with dream experience, and their message is clear: Ignore quick-fix dream "doctors" on TV and the Internet. Toss your conventional dream dictionaries to the curb -- they are too strict, too patrician.
And their meanings? Meaningless.
It's common sense, really. Many people dream about cats, but not all dream that cats are manifestations of one's mother, as Freud suggested.
"After all, a dream about a house must mean different things to a carpenter and an arsonist," says Karen Shanor, a clinical psychologist who runs a private practice in Northwest Washington.
Dreams should be worked rather than cut and dried into categories, Shanor, Delaney and others say. No book -- and no one -- can tell you what your dreams mean, since one's dreaming life can be understood only in the context of one's waking life.
As Dr. Phil-ish as it sounds, dreamwork is a matter of self-therapy, of being open to the possibility that reflecting on your dreams may yield some holistic or entertaining insights.
"People would just as soon think that dreams are random activity in your cortex," Delaney says. "There are still huge swaths of movers and shakers whom I have as clients who say, 'If I tell anybody I've seen you, I'll have to deny it.' "
Oh, if those Hewlett-Packard knuckleheads had prefaced their morning meetings with a little dream analysis . . .
That scenario is not so crazy. Business schools and management training programs in England and India use dream therapists to help hone problem-solving skills. Working through a conflict in a dream scenario may have a practical application to one's waking life.
Still, there is bias against dreaming, agrees Clara Hill, a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland. Some of the bias comes from a lack of understanding dreamwork, particularly the aspects that sound a little paranormal.
Take dream incubation, in which people condition themselves to dream about a certain topic, or prodromal dreaming, in which the body sends signals to the dreaming mind about impending illness. The validity of both is supported by a wealth of anecdotal observation and some supplementary research.
But they still have that faint whiff of the psychic, which turns some people off. Extrasensory powers may exist, but there is no way to gather statistical proof about clairvoyance.
"I think the jury's still out on that," says Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard Medical School professor who uses dreamwork in clinical and classroom settings. "It's a matter of faith. Most of us hear really dramatic anecdotes in that direction, and I think it's possible there's something we don't understand happening in communication outside of what we're consciously aware of. But we also underestimate coincidences."
Prepare yourself for a dramatic (or coincidental?) anecdote: In the '50s, Rita Dwyer was a research chemist at Thiokol Chemical Corp. in Denville, N.J. One day in 1959, rocket fuel exploded in Dwyer's lab, trapping her. Her co-worker, Edward M. Butler, rescued her from the fire. Afterward, Butler told her that he'd had a recurring dream about saving her from a fire and that he did exactly what he had "rehearsed" in the dream when it actually happened.
Because of this event, Dwyer's interest swung from aerospace to inner space, and she founded the Metro D.C. Dream Community in 1983. She and Butler still talk weekly.
"We've been encultured not to pay attention to our dreams: 'Oh, it's just a dream. It doesn't matter,' " says Dwyer, who takes a spiritual and holistic approach to dreamwork. "But they do matter. During the day we pick up materials that we're not aware of, process them at night and come up in the morning with some idea."
What about the skeptics, some of whom might still be reading this story (lips pursed, heads shaking)? How does Hill respond to naysayers who invoke psychiatrist J. Allan Hobson's theory that dreams are products of benign psychosis -- a mostly random firing of neurons?
"They might be, but if you can use them therapeutically and it works, that's great," says Hill, who has conducted about 20 studies on dreaming. "So I get out of the argument that way. The research we've done so far is that people really can gain insight."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
