An Oneric Synthesis
“The dream is an extraordinarily complicated phenomenon, just as complicated and unfathomable as the phenomena of consciousness” (Jung et al., 2014 para. 491)
In this brief article we will look at the three ‘father’s of modern western dream work’, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and James Hillman’s respective dream theories. To make sense of these valid and independent perspectives T.S Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’ in The Four Quartets will function as our poetic frame of reference.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Psychoanalysis (and dream work I propose), Hillman (2019) believes, “is a work of imaginative tellings in the realm of poiesis”. Eliot’s poem imagines time as a fluid non-linear construct. Dunne in 1927 challenging the standardised notion of time, theorised its nature and experience as “an alternating fluid expression of matter”. For Dunne (1927), matter endures time, reaching backwards and simultaneously forwards into what we experience as the passage of time. Dunne (1927) continues saying that changes in matter ie. ageing, decay, youth and old age are three dimensional expressions of a fourth dimensional being, relative to the time-space continuum. In Eliot’s poetic imagination, “all time is eternally present”. As a metaphor for dream interpretation, dreams may similarly be continually relevant and applicable to every present (moment), irrespective of time. Applying this dynamic concept to the three perspectives of dream interpretation mentioned above, our ‘imaginative telling’ immediately makes Freud, Jung and Hillman collectively relevant and applicable. This poetic image facilitates an ambiguously structured synthesis of collective dream work. A synthesis I believe that finds grounding in a method of working with dreams known as Embodied Imagination.
To commence my imaginative structuring, I position the nature if the image as other, and upon the relativity of time I loosely format the three main methodologies into a single fluid image.
Image, Other and The Non-Linearity of Time
Before we begin to reflect on the differences of the dream theories mentioned its necessary to establish the perspective of Embodied Imagination as to where dreams originate? Embodied Imagination sees dreams not as products of the personal or collective unconscious, as Jung and Freud both did, but originate, as products or communication from the imaginal realm, also known as the Mundus Imaginalis (Corbin, 1964). The Mundus Imaginalis, from the Arabic ‘Ālam al-mithal, Corbin (1977 pp. viii - ix) says is a place outside of place, the space of the in-between, the realm of the supra-sensory soul and the subtle bodies of the Imaginalia (Corbin, 1964). Left mostly to the poets, says Corbin (1977 p. viii - ix) it exists as a liminal realm between science and imagination. Perhaps it is the place Rumi refers to when he says: “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there” (Rūmī and Barks, 2004). Rumi’s ‘field out there’ could be considered as a rhizomatic foundation from which images from the imaginal realm flower into the psyche. Corbin, as does Robert Bosnak believes that dreams and sometimes poetry as mythopoetic images, originate from this imaginal realm. By placing the origin of dreams outside the human psyche as it were, dreams are able to not only comment on psychic dispositions but also confer numinous tidings completely foreign to the psyche.
Analysis and the Playful Nature of Dreams
Nirenberg (1996) defines analysis as the untying and loosing of what binds concepts together. Dream analysis, accordingly, must move towards a metaphorical perspective, increasing the space between the images, between knowing towards the loosening of foundations and concretised perspectives. It is here, in the untying, in-between, in the unknowing of the liminal, that we find Plato’s concept of epistemology. Plato believed in a knowledge system closely aligned with Embodied Imaginations phenomenological experience of nature, in its ‘lusus naturae’, and its random playfulness. Whitmont and Perera (1991) hold a corresponding view, stating that the analysis of dreams requires appreciation of the playfulness of nature through the realm of soul found principally in art, poetry, music, literature and the visual arts. It is primarily through the engagement with the imaginal as the realm of soul, that our appreciation for dreams as playful communication from nature may deepen within the analytical process.
Dream & Time
Past: Sigmund Freud. Dream as causality - a looking back into the past
Freud principally viewed dreams as nocturnal manifestations revealing certain inhibited impulses which during hypnogogic hallucinations, or dreams, were allowed to surface as “wish fulfilment” (Freud, 1995 p.1323). Sleep, in his view, thus provides the opportunity for expression of repressed psychic content as immoral impulses hidden in the mostly irrelevant content (Chara, 2021) of dreams. This expression of an unfulfilled need within the psyche was furthermore hidden deep within the symbology of dream images (Chara, 2021). Freud felt that this aspect represented a defining characteristic of imagination, which for him, provided a commonality between dreams and psychosis (Freud, 1995). Aligning himself with the work of Joseph Breuer, Freud (1995) adopted the theory that psychopathology could be traced backwards in time towards a certain significant point of origin. The psychoanalytic approach to dream analysis aimed to find and scrutinise antecedents (Jung, Adler and Hull, 2014 p.130) as psychic structures that developed and conditioned the composition of personality (Higdon, 2019).
Freud accordingly came to regard dreams as important psychic activity that linked conscious and unconscious content on the road, back in time as it were, towards that key moment of psychic injury. He would take great care and effort to discover hidden determinants and “trifling details to life” (Freud, 1995 p.1843) that could elucidate the hidden meanings within dreams. Meanings that he felt would indicate the way in and perhaps out of psychic injury. Freud as a neurologist turned psychoanalyst (Miller, & Katz, 1989) loosens or separates the dream imagery, placing each individual element or concept under the microscope of his reductive reasoning. Accompanying this process with deep introspective association, Freud (1995) demonstrates how each element in the dream can be woven, as it where, back in time, revealing its contextual relevance, while the meaning slowly emerges.
Future: Carl Gustav Jung. Dreams as compensation - a continuity into the future.
In his essay, “On the Nature of Dreams” (Jung et al., 2014 para. 456) Jung says that all psychic phenomena pose a kind of inherent purposiveness, considered either from a causal or a finality (goal orientated) perspective. Jung strongly believed that dreams predominantly act in a compensatory function (Jung et al., 2014 para. 483), as compensatio; a counterbalance and a weighing of one thing against another (Etymonline, 2021). This for Jung would be either constructive or reductive in relation to the conscious attitude (Jung et al., 2014 para. 496). This compensatory function isn’t often immediately evident; however, it always strives towards psychic equilibrium for the individual, including often the greater context of mankind (Jung et al., 2014 para. 483). The word compensation derives from the Latin, ‘pendere’; to hang, cause to hang, weigh or pay (Etymonline, 2021). In this weighing, dreams may be considered as a balancing force, posing habitual consciousness against otherness or the unconscious.
Jung’s model holds that the compensational perspective of dreams function as an intensive aspect towards vital psychic growth (Jung et al., 2014 para. 487). Stating that dreams would indeed increase in purposiveness as well as vividness, directly contrasted to the extent of the person’s one-sided conscious perspective (Jung et al., 2014 para. 488). Jung (et al., 2014 para. 489) also points out that compensation occurs in a very personalised manner, specific for the “whole nature of the individual” and that it is in the particularity of dream images and their individualistic associations that we may discover the psychic cure. In describing the purposefulness and specificity of dreams, Jung quotes homeopathy’s foundational dictum: ‘Similia Similubus Curentur’, let like be cured by like (Hahnemann, 2020). As the poison holds the cure, so dreams and what we experience as most other, nightmares for example, pose the balancing force for our psychic wellbeing. Dreams within the Jungian model thus serve an important function of the analytical process and can be considered as teleologically driving towards individuation.
Present: James Hillman. Dreams as Image - the present moment of the image
“Stick to the image” is synonymous with James Hillman’s approach to dream interpretation, it also represents the way in which he engages with the psyche. In sticking to the image, Hillman follows Jung who said, “to understand the dream's meaning I must stick as close as possible to the dream images" (Jung et al., 1964 para. 320). Adding to this, Hillman says that although the psyche is image, image isn’t comprised of what we see, but the way in which we see it (Hillman & Ottmann, 2019). Simultaneous to his phenomenological perception, Hillman positions himself in the specific quality of the image relevant to the individual psyche. Hillman’s move considers the image as it presents itself relevant to where the psyche currently is, in what he calls its significant contextual detail (Hillman & Ottmann, 2019). Concerning himself thus, with how the image/psyche is, how it feels, behaves and interrelates. He questions its particularity and peculiarity, as opposed to why and what the image is. He believes it is in the “significant detail” as well as in the “how” that we find a “leading thread into the invisible weave or context of the psyche as image” (Hillman & Ottmann, 2019). “It is here” Hillman says, “in the specific weave (contextual detail) that, “it all fits together and makes sense” (Hillman & Ottmann, 2019). The foundation of Hillman’s perspective, originates in Jung’s formulation that the psyche is imagistic by nature, and is formulated through archetypal images, which according to Jung, is actual primordial instinct (Jung et al., 2014, para. 415…608). It is here Hillman says, in instinct, in the animal nature of man, that we may discover the archetypal divinity within.
Another core dream operation of Hillman follows Plato’s position of knowledge acquisition through uncertainty. In this perspective he adopts the romantic poet, John Keats’ concept of negative capability. Keats (2021) explained his perspective towards life and being as striving for the capability of not knowing as: “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact or reason”. This crucial perspective of sticking to the image from a position of unknowing forms the central core of Hillman’s approach of dream interpretation. A perspective which stands in significant contrast to the ‘understanding of the image’, by a knowing analyst, fully in command of symbology, mythology and objective interpretive associations. Through comprehending or understanding the meaning of the dream, we cross the Cartesian divide, moving from the realm of uncertainty, mystery and soul, to certainty, definition, linearity, and logos, effectively traversing the deadening divide of the subject-object split.
The Composite: Robert Bosnak, Embodied Imagination and Mimesis
Robert Bosnak (2007) with a technique entitled Embodied Imagination, proposes a compositional structure as an imaginal network of embodied images or anchor points ‘held’ simultaneously, in a single composite image. Following Bosnak, I propose a coniunctio or union of the three dream approaches we have discussed above, into a single imagistic composite. It is in the coniunctio that Jung (Jung et al., 1978 para. 654) confirms we may find the goal of the work. However, Jung says that a coniunctio must occur within a medium (Jung et al., 1978 para. 658). Continuing with Bosnak’s approach, with the body acting as our medium to ‘feel into’ the three principal images and combine the methods we have discussed into a single adaptive imagistic network.
On the embodiment of images Bosnak says: “it is the way images become flesh… and it is a state of affect, image and physical sensation.” (Bosnak, 2007) Feeling the image through the body introduces the act of mimesis described by Michael Taussig (1993) as “a sympathetic magic” and a process or the moment of knowing experienced through the skin. Mimesis, mirroring or aping facilitates a visual form of knowing (Mageo, 2017a, 2018) or becoming the image, which Bosnak (2007) believes to be a prehistoric form of communication. Mimicry and ‘feeling into’ the image allow the dreamer to crucially span the object-subject split moving towards a perspective of inter-relationality. Using the principals of Embodied Imagination, with our body as the medium, we are able to combine the three dream interpretative methodologies into a coniunctio, from which may emerge the tertium quid and the unification with the unus mundus.
Conclusion: An Ambiguous Imagistic Synthesis
Traveler, your footprints
Are the path and nothing more;
Traveler, there is no path,
The path is made by walking.
By walking the path is made
And when you look back
You’ll see a road
Never to be trodden again.
Traveler, there is no path,
Only wind trails across the sea...
Excerpt from ‘Traveler’ by Antonio Machado (n.d)
James Hillman, in an essay entitled, ‘Radicle Relativism and The Click’ commences by quoting an Icelandic proverb that says: “every dream comes true in the way it is interpreted” (Hillman & Ottmann, 2019 p.128). In response to this proverb Hillman, the polytheist, comments that dreams come true exactly because of their interpretations, furthermore, believing that there is a god behind every dream and every interpretation (Hillman & Ottmann, 2019 p.128). In this essay I proposed a polytheistic, plural and inclusive orientation towards dream interpretation. Combined with the unfettering of the dream image from time, my proposal aims to move psychoanalytic, analytical and archetypal psychology’s dream interpretation perspectives, towards an imagistic synthesis, formulated on Jung’s alchemical concept of the unus mundus.
The unus mundus, Jung writes, (1970 para. 770) exists as a transcendental psychophysical background to our consideration of reality, in which mind and matter coexist in an amalgam of consciousness and the unconscious. This unified world, which to Jung, exists as a multiplicity of empirical worlds, as everything different and divided and resting on a single underlying unity of one and the same (Jung, 1970 para. 767). Specifically in terms of this essay, the unus mundus is considered as the unio mystica, the fusion of image and the unconscious as the ever-unfolding potential of creation ‘increatum’. In this psychophysical neutral realm of ‘caro spiritualis’ or spiritual corporeality, the body and the spirit are indeed one. Here image and body are of the same substance, with mimesis functioning as a core methodology in dream interpretation, becoming a connecting principle and bridge of unification. In this unified, neutral field, dreams seeded from the realm of soul; Corbin’s Mundus Imaginalis, flower towards a mystical union of self and other. Creating a potential for psychic healing through the psychoid archetypal expression of meaning. Meaning in this sense as an inter-relational phenomenon or correlation between mind and matter (Fach p.262).
In essence, this essay proposes ‘subjective inter-relational dream meaning’ to emerge as a consequence of the proposed correlation and synthesis between the three dream interpretive methodologies discussed above. The proposed synthesis as a flexible paradigm of dream work, engages the image as a continuous creative unfolding, incorporating, wish fulfilment and compensation with the specificity and relatedness of imagistic archetypal psychology.
Finally to conclude this imaginative synthesis, let's become aware of the presence of the Mundus Imaginalis throughout dream work. Turning one last time to Corbin (1995 p.11) who reminds us that the Mundus Imaginalis is situated beyond the mount Qaf, a place he writes: “where you were yourself at the beginning, and it is there that you will return when you are finally rid of your bonds.” To return to the beginning, to pay attention to the world of dreams and allow them to indicate unconscious wishes, compensate for psychic imbalance, allow the gods their critique and most crucially to loosen the bonds of understanding.
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