While I do appreciate both of your enthusiams about my discussing dreaming in relationship to perceptions of the therapist in the clinical situation, I do want to further address Vic's thinking about dreams in general, and especially this issue of verbal expression. At first, I was concerned that it might not be relevant, but clearly it is!
I hope that with just a little bit of introspection during an ongoing conversation, Vic, that you would notice that, in fact, people are amazingly fluent in their expressions, and that the rate at which people produce sentences (without getting mixed up or having word finding problems) is very impressive (the rule not the exception). I think the implication that there is an ongoing process whereby our brain chemistry is aware of meaning before we utter the sentence has to be true otherwise we could not produce such reliable grammar and coherent meaning so quickly. The processing of meaning 'in' the listener is just as fascinating. I agree context is all important. We can discuss how differing views of this can effect how we think about dreams--since here too meaning is being produced (but 'when' is it produced?Before the dream words are spoken??)-- but is there once again a process behind the words that acts as a central organizer. I would ask anyone reading this post to pay attention to yourselves in active, animated conversation with another person (or even in your thoughts) and think about how it is possible for you to put together a meaningful sentence without the implication that you must already knowing ahead of time what the meaning would be. This must be the case, otherwise we would have to speak extremely slowly to be sure that the whole sentence would have coherent meaning.
Now--about levels of consciousness. We are unaware of lots of critically important things the body does-- and most are counterintuitive. Let's think about this biologically. Our eyes have two visual fields a piece. The inner pathways actually criss cross as they travel back to the occipital lobes--this is not to mention the reversal of images on the retina and all that. And yet--we would all swear by our unitary visual experience that it's quite impossible our vision could be integrated in this way. So there is one level of very powerful unconscious processes that allows the brain to orchestrate quite an incredible orchestra.Verbalization is but one tiny piece and the one we are most conscious of. Surely we will all say we knewthese 'facts about the body' since high school, but have we really thought about this as being part of an unconscious process. I spoke of vision because our verbal reasoning porcesses would never cometo the conclusion that our experience of vision could possibly take place in the manner it does. In fact, increasingly, the brain appears to do nothing in just one central place. It is the integration that is so important and the forces of regualtion that keeps the whole process operating within prescribed boundaries.
Back to dreaming- The idea of the mind providing its own solutions was central Carl Rogers ideas of self-corrective experiences and Eastern religions--- the answers are already within us. Even a book on tennis- The Inner Game of Tennis- taught that if the player could disengage from self-instructions- verbal instructions- that the body already knew how to play- it just had to be freed up to do so. Let the Force Be With You so to speak. So now I hear Vic saying that dreams-- when the mind is freed up from outer reality (but processing information from that reality- that solutions will appear- with some physiological evidence added in.
I think it might be best to be less sweeping in generalizations here. At best, some dreams may offer solutions. All dreams? More likely some dreams will be far more productive then others But, Vic, I'm still confused about your approach to manifest versus latent content and symbols and metaphors and all that. Because-- how are we going to talk about solutions (which have to involve interpretations) if you take only manifest content. I certainly agree that associations are critical to the process, but don't you end up with the same problem that so plagues the dynamic therapies. That 12 different people will read into any one dream, 6 different solutions? "A" solution won't jump out as a whole cloth- so to speak. This problem of reasonable (and how poeple can differ about what is reasonable!) validation is not escaped. I really need you to provide dreams to show me how you manage this. Also, if you report the patients dream in a clinical context then I can also begin to speak about how patients try to communicate with therapists through dreams (although as I've already said this is an ongoing process of decoding messages during the actual psycholtherapy anyway). Oh, and Vic, during all these discussions, I realized I have no idea whether you are a practicing clinician and how you were originally trained. I missed all that!!
And Vic- one last plea!!-- you are so prolific in presenting ideas-- it would help me (enormously!) if we could focus on one particular issue at a time. I suspect my postings have made it even more difficult to do that. But let's try!!
Dreams do have an unfortunate way of accommodating themselves to so many different therories. The fact that our brains never rest from processing sensory experience (even without light or sound waves to do it), verbal experience and affective experiences is something that can't be argued. The 'why' of it-- the attempt to ascribe 'meaning' (another nonstop brain activity) is another issue. It would seem reasonable to assume that some important physiological, homeostatic mechanism is also at work here.
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