And this other issue- which maybe is the more interesting one--- is that the brain certainly has much better ways of 'knowing things' than by language processing. The very nature of our body's homeostatic balances makes that obvious. I certainly accept the idea that we give words way too much credit for how we retain information and 'use' information that 'once' was verbally or affectively encoded. But at the same time I say this, we must be careful about developing the idea that there is another little person in our heads directing everything. In the earliest theories of embryology it was always easy to think that the sperm contained a little homunculus that simply got implanted and then grew. Iwouldn't think the unconscious exists that way. Maybe the Narcissus posts will offer dreams too. Vic!! On rereading this- it's probably best that you address only the first paragraph, since the rest probably won't get us anywhere!
If I focus on your premise that dreams propose a solution, I'm left stuck in the interpreting phase---because it is in the nature of the interpretation where the solution the dream provides presents itself. But--since the nature of interpretation drags us back into the murky depths, where are we now? If I'm understanding this better you are presenting a theory of dreaming on the one hand, but discussing clinical application with a different type of thinking involved on the other hand. I don't think you've specifically addressed the difficulties in the clinical application part. My concern is, as is usually for me, there is no clear anchor point for clinical validation other than our facile verbal reasoning (which is often suspect), which we think proves something to ourselves, but maybe it doesn't.
It is the work of our brain neurochemistry that we know so woefully little about. Our conscious experience of what we think the unconscious is, is very likely to go through some very major changes. We would do best now to let our minds wander a bit into what perceptual illusions (which we have both discussed) we may be suffering fromwhen thinking about this whole subject.
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