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TI-IE SOURCE
EDWARD C. WHITMONT
and
SYLVIA BRINTON PERERA
I~ ~~~!~~n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
When we consider the infinite variety of dreams, it is difficult to con-
ceive that there could ever be a method or a technical procedure which
would lead to an infallible result. It is, indeed, a good thing that no valid
method exists, for otherwise the meaning of the dream would be limited
in advance and would lose precisely that virtue which makes dreams
so valuable for therapeutic purposes - their ability to offer new points
of view.
So difficult is it to understand a dream that for a long time 1 have made
it a rule, when someone tells me a dream and asks for my opinion, to
say first of all to myself: 'I have no idea what this dream means.' After
that I can begin to examine the dream.
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION TO CLINICAL DREAM
INTERPRETATION 1
3 THE SITUATION AS IT IS 17
The dream-ego 18
Developmental possibilities through dream work 22
5 ASSOCIATION, EXPLANATION,
AMPLIFICATION: THE DREAM FIELD 34
Associations 35
Explanation 38
Emotions and bodily reactions 42
'Trivial' dreams 45
Fantasy, imagination, and enactment 46
Affect and jeeling quality 49
Amplification 52
The therapist's responses 54
CONTENTS
8 MYTHOLOGICAL MOTIFS 79
Recognizing mythological motifs 81
The interplay of archetypal and personal material 83
Dealing with mythological motifs 97
Some special motifs 99
The life play 100
Birth 102
Childun 104
Animals 107
Interpreting mythological material 109
13 CONCLUSION 180
Notes 183
Bibliography 191
List of dreams 194-
Index 197
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION TO CLINICAL
DREAM INTERPRETATION
2
INTRODUCTION
with which, for the sake of our health, we need to be in more conscious
relationship. Equally, it shows also images of those mis-constellated
patterns into which our personal lives are inevitably bent. The flowing
interplay between these healing and 'dis-eased' patterns can provide
inestimable guidance for the process of psychotherapy.
To the therapist, each dream reveals messages about psychic struc-
tures or complexes of the dreamer intrapsychically in past and present.
It also conveys information about the dreamer's relations to others on
whom those structures and complexes are projected. Each dream tells
the clinician about psychological dynamics, developmental patterns and
capacities. It also images the dreamer's relations to the spiritual dimen-
sion, to the Self and to archetypal patterns and energies. The dreamer
and his or her therapist may seek to learn from all of these levels about
hitherto unknown aspects of personal and transpersonal existence.
To approach dream interpretation adequately we need to find perspec-
tives beyond those created by dualistic consciousness, which rests content
with oppositions - exterior/interior, object/subject, day/night, life/death,
functional-descriptive/imaginal, focused attention/openness, etc. While
these opposites are valuable for defining rational awareness, we need
also to develop an integrative consciousness 13 that can read both daily
and nightly actions and events and nightly and daily visions from many
perspectives and to integrate these perspectives for ourselves and the
patient-dreamer before us in our consulting rooms. This capacity relies
on an ability to shift between the many forms of magic-affective, body,
mythological, allegoric, symbolic, and rational awareness. By developing
these modes, or particular styles of consciousness, it becomes possible
to shift between them just as we seek to shift from one situationally rele-
vant typological function to another. Thus we may gain the fullest possible
range of perspectives on the psychological significance of a given situa-
tion - be it an event or a dream or a dream event.
To use a comparable but simplified analogy of the possibilities of this
multifaceted approach from daily life, we can consider a red spot on
a tree: it can be viewed as a physical object with a specific physical purpose
(a road marker), as a focus of action or attention or emotion, as a spot
in a visual pattern, as a metaphoric or symbolic message, as an instigator
of memory images, as a revelation of properties of energy bound into
its molecules, as the expression of somebody's fantasy (a remnant of
a picture somebody was trying to paint). It can even be perceived as
a part of a color scheme among the forest greens. It can be functional
in all these forms of awareness - and others. To investigate it
3
INTRODUCTION
4
BIBLIOGRAPHY
191
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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the German by R. Manheim), Princeton University Press.
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192
BIBLIOGRAPHY
193