Learning About Oneself Through the Dream of the Other
Paper for sub-plenary: The transformative use of dreamtelling during both everyday life and the covid-19 pandemic.
A dream told in the group:
‘My husband and I are at a railway station. We are going to travel by train, but we are going to different places. We have heavy luggage, we don’t wear shoes, only stockings.
We are going up to look for books in a shop. I wonder if we can make it before the train leaves. Yes, there is still half an hour. There are a lot of people, and the luggage is heavy.’
The clinical example is from a slow-open Dream Group, a group that works in the space between supervision and continuous self-development. The group has existed for more than 20 years with 7-9 members and one conductor. It meets twice a year over three days and two nights.
The members are all professionals who can bring dreams told in therapy or countertransference – and personal dreams.
The group has trained different approaches to the dream and Dreamtelling and through that explore the request for containment in the dream and from the dreamer, and the impact on the group and each individual group member.
Often the basis for the work is resonating to the dream as if it was your own. Other ways are to associate to chosen words or to retell the dream in the group, focusing on the opening, the main part and the ending of the story or focusing on the formative, informative and transformative aspects.
One female member, 75 years:
‘In my Dream I am at a railway station together with my husband. We are going on a journey but NOT to the same place. I am excited to go but also worried about the separation from my husband. We are wearing stockings but no shoes. We have heavy luggage. I feel I am NOT well prepared for this journey. Shoes make you walk safely and protect your feet. I feel vulnerable. We still have half an hour, so there is time to go to the bookshop. Here you can find new adventures without wearing shoes, it is a safe place and we Can share this together before leaving.’
Another female member, 45 years:
‘If it was my dream I would think: I look forward to travel, but I’m in doubt if I should go with my husband (and family) or I should go on my own (spend time working?). It is uncomfortable to wear stockings and to carry the heavy luggage, I’m afraid of losing something or being late. The feeling of being behind with something. Always divided between work and family. But nice to realize that I still have half an hour to spend with my husband in a bookshop – a place to get lost in time and history in a nice way, a place full of dreams.’
A third female member, 65 years:
I start by choosing 3 words with an emotional impact on me, that I get curious to explore: Train, Heavy luggage and Half an hour.
Then I write the concrete meaning, as I understand them:
TRAIN – For transportation. Moving in one direction. Going fast. You sit in compartments.
HEAVY LUGGAGE – Expensive and important stuff. Difficult to move.
HALF AN HOUR – 30 minutes. The duration of our presentation to day.
Then I write my associations:
TRAIN – Shoah. Travelling in Europe.
Denmark for family and work.
Adventure. Meeting people.
Not able to escape.
HEAVY LUGGAGE – Not able to leave it and let go. ‘Det går nok an at jeg tager, hvad mine såler bærer.’ ‘I think, I can take the soil that adhere to my soles.’
HALF AN HOUR – Time too long for doing nothing but wait? Enough for sex, a powernap, a coffee. Enough for establishing a meaningful relation.
If it was my dream:
‘I’m going for an adventure – alone. I leave my heavy luggage, to be able to move. And have time to say good-bye, have sex and a coffee before departure.’
If more members of the group share their understanding of the words, a fuller, deeper understanding of the dream can be achieved.
When choosing the three words and my associations to them I wondered why I often prefer this method. And I was confronted with the shame of my hidden wishes and dreams (of my unconscious).
And with the need to change my dreams – and this dream – from a subjective experience into an object, that can be analysed and related to as something outside myself, and by that outside my influence and responsibility.
It is a way to cheat myself and force myself to stay in relation and listen to my unconscious – and to myself.
About the group:
The group has developed into:
- A way of relation to each other, different from daily living.
- A container for our-selves
- A place to work with the interfaces between the therapist/the personal/the private me.
- A cornerstone in our therapeutic work with groups.
‘To be a member of the dreamgroup with people I know as colleagues and meet in professional and sometimes private settings, has a profound influence on the experience, containment and communication between us and still keeping the boundaries around what is taking place when in the dream group and outside.
The group is a special place for experience and reflection, a safe place for being held, contained and for caring between us. It is a way of relating to other people different from the daily life.’
‘The group functions as a container for our selves, a place to work with the interfaces between the therapist/personal/private me. I find it very enriching to work both with patients dreams and my own dreams in the group. The way we work in the group with the very open and personal reflections makes it possible to work with the interfaces between me in the role as a therapist or supervisor and the personal and private me. It’s a part of the framework in the group that both professional and personal issues are allowed, exactly as these issues tend to mix up in dreams.
I always feel contained and challenged by the group’s associations and reflections. New perspectives emerge that I didn’t notice until we worked on the dreams in the group.’
‘The work in the group has profoundly influenced my way to work as a group analyst and the way I understand the telling of a dream in the group. My thoughts when a dream is told in a group, my interventions and (not least) when no dreams are told. How is the group as container used by the group members? In a way I relate to every story told in the group as if it was a dream – and often as a dream of my own. It has stimulated my ability to associate more freely and speak more freely to the benefit of the group. It has become the cornerstone in my group analysis.
Being in the group is a continuous exploration of my basic feelings: shame, guilt, envy, sibling rivalry, jealousy, hate and love.
It is learning about myself through the dream of The Other.
To write about the group is a new development in my relation to the group and raises again the – still unanswered – question, ‘What is love – really – about?’
Camilla Jacobi. Psychologist and Group Analyst working in private practice and psychiatry, teacher at IGA Aarhus.
Tove Mathiesen. Psychiatrist, Group Analyst (IGA- Aarhus), Psychoanalyst (IPA) working in private practice after 30 years in the public sector.