Dr. G. Scott Sparrow

This is a response to a woman who wrote to me saying that she has once enjoyed frequent lucid dreams, but had been in a “dry” spell for some time. She asked me why.

From the sound of it, your overall experience with lucid dreaming and the kundalini is similar to mine. I have had countless kundalini experiences, almost always associated with lucid dreaming, and sometimes culminating in the ecstatic experiences of white light. However, over time, the experiences have decreased in frequency, and now lucid dreams are infrequent (like once a month or even less often), and usually less significant. However, there is less conflict in my dreams, too. I think that lucidity is a formative experience, and not necessarily the fruit of the tree. While the kundalini is gratifyingly (and terrifyingly at times) powerful, it also can be seen as an “ignition” rather than the journey itself. So where are the fruits? In your charisma, personal power, compassion, intuition, and global perception, most likely. I sometimes think that my ability to “read” a person, whether they are a fly fishing client, or a psychotherapy client is downright prodigious, but there’s nothing to compare it with, that is, there isn’t a parallel life that did not experience all of That. There isn’t a control group in the experiment of our lives.

Ultimately, I think counting the number of lucid dreams you have is the ego’s errand. Instead, I believe that these experiences confer a mantle that rests with weighty implications for an anointed life.

Still, I know that if I got up every night, and woke up enough to do a credible job at meditating, lucidity would likely ensue. I show up sometimes, but I am not sure how important all that is in the mature, grounded life. Rationalization? Perhaps.

One of the final lines in the movie, Ashes of Time Redux, comes to mine. It goes something like, “If you cannot have what you once had, then the best you can do is never to forget.”

This is a message that I sent to a man who suffers from anxiety and depression, and has tried everything to now avail. He asks what so many of us ask– Why do some people enjoy the presence of the divine, while the rest of us feel alone in our darkest hours?”

Please forgive me for taking so long to respond to you. When I see that someone has communicated with such feeling and depth, I want to take some time to digest your message. I can feel the depth of your despair, and know that “place” myself. Even before I finished the book (I Am with You Always-Bantam) back in 94, I was already experiencing less frequent “contacts” with Jesus and the Light. Indeed, my next to the last encounter with him was set just before the crucifixion, and we were saying goodbye. I had a sense that it was going to a lonely path from thereon, and it has been. I am not complaining, however,

I don’t know why spirit manifests so profoundly in some peoples’ lives, and not in others. Certainly, “openness” is one factor. But for most of us, even those who espouse deep faith, “God isn’t talking.”

I believe, at least in principle, that this is about an initiation, and that while we do not have the communion we so dearly want, we do have resources that have to be brought into manifestation–deep character and courage that wouldn’t have to come out of us if we had more regular and satisfying communion with God.

If you could see yourself from the “other side,” you would probably smile. That is my hope, too, because I, too, often feel bereft of hope and conviction. But just as a voice once said to me in a dream, “you have done well with this,” I think it’s probably true if you just hang on and do your best, a great deal will come of it that is not evident at this time.

I suffered for several years with panic attacks. Depression runs like a deep, black river, in my life, but some pretty big fish have come out of it because I had to reach in and grope for meaning. I look at people around me, and while I know that all of us struggle from time to time, I do know that the conventional wisdom, and the conventional solutions, are so far beneath what it takes to touch the lonely place.

This is a message that I sent to three of my Atlantic University students, all of whom were considering the question, “How does one determine the validity of a spiritual experience?”

Evaluating the validity or “truth” of a so-called spiritual dream or vision is an immensely complex and controversial matter. No wonder the Church basically declared the age of revelation was over in the second century, because Montanus claimed (to the Church’s chagrin) to be channeling the risen Christ, who was presumably going to reappear in Montanus’ home province in Asia Minor. The Church accurately surmised that if it accepted Montanus’ claims, then there was no way to manage the flood of similar claims, and the authority of the Church would be thereby undermined. One way that we can get around the issue of trying to figure out if a spiritual experience is valid or true without accepting them at face value or slamming the door on them,  is for us to uphold the idea that a spiritual experience does not come principally to guide or instruct, but to awaken the soul to action. When Jesus said to a woman (in my book Sacred Encounters with Jesus), “You are not where I want you to be,” the woman didn’t know if he was referring to the affair that she was contemplating having, the home she was living in, or the alcoholic husband she was married to. Probably all the above, but he didn’t say what he meant! Why? I think it is because a specific directive would eliminate the exquisite burden of choice that remains only as long as we do not know the will of God. The authenticity of a spiritual experience can thus be see in its ambiguity, not in its clarity. If it were so easy to understand it within the status quo structure of consciousness, then there would be nothing of value in it! Only if it points beyond the ego’s feeble grasp can it possibly be greater than we are. And if it does, indeed, point beyond what we already know, then how can we say that “this experience is directing me to…” It’s a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it? So if you treat dreams (in general) as a source of initiation or awakening (as I have suggested in one of the articles that I have posted on www.dreamanalysistraining.com) rather than guidance, then the measure of its spiritual value can be seen in the quality of the dreamer’s response to it, and no where else. People persist in believing that God is an oracle–a source of information that can save us from having to choose. I think not, but rather that God is a provocateur, an initiator, who awakens us to our greater calling, and would rather us remain in the dark and grow, than know the answers to our questions.

This is a blog piece that I wrote for dreamstudies.org. The first part was published last week, so I am including it here. I will post the second part after it comes out on DS.

A client of mine once dreamed that she was lying in bed. A man dressed in a robe, with a hood covering his face, walked up and stood beside her bed. He said, “I want your heart.” Visualizing the man ripping her heart from her chest, the woman awoke in terror.

She asked what countless people have asked upon awakening from such a dream, “Who was that man? What does this mean?” If she had posed this question to a frequent lucid dreamer, he or she might have disregarded the dreamer’s preemptive search for an interpretation,  and said, “Too bad you didn’t become lucid. Then you could have realized that it was only a dream.”

A therapist, looking at the dream as an indication of past trauma, or unrealized potentials, or both, might have asked in classic noninvasive fashion, “What are your associations to this figure? How might he serve as a metaphor for some aspect of your life?”

If the dreamer had simply become lucid, she could have responded fearlessly, or simply woke up. Her fear might have subsided with the realization that the man and his disturbing words were only part of a dream. Or, if the dreamer had acquired in retrospect the insight that the man portrayed, for instance, the dominating, Apollonian quality of maleness, she may have realized that her sense of self was feeble in the presence of such strength, and she may have associated her fear with actual past events and relationships.

What’s Missing?

Both of these approaches — of the lucid dreamer and the dream analyst — have merit and can produce meaningful results, but what is lacking in both of these orientations is the balancing perspective of the other. In my experience, lucid dreamers can be too quick to go off in search of something more desirable.  It’s their dream after all, so why not bag the old dream and go in search of a new one?

And therapeutic dream analysts, especially those of a psychodynamic bent, may remain stuck trying to discern the meaning of the imagery without regard for what the dreamer did, or could have done, to alter the dream’s outcome.

As an early lucid dreamer, I was passionate about the possibilities of experiencing higher states of awareness, and dream interpretation was initially not very important to me. My little book, Lucid Dreaming: Dawning of the Clear Light (ARE, 1976)––an outgrowth of my master’s thesis––went to the heart of what I considered the ultimate lucid experience: communion with the white light. I was largely uninterested in the unresolved conflicts to which dreams often alluded.

To give some sense of my priorities as a hot-shot lucid dreamer, I once told a psychoanalytically trained colleague the following dream:

I am on the streets of a Mexican town with my two best friends. We meet a beautiful woman, who could be a prostitute. We flirt with her, and them make arrangements to visit with her that evening. Just as we say goodbye to her, I notice my father standing nearby in the shadows. I know that he has overheard our conversation with the woman, and I can discern his disapproving look even in the low light. But just as we stand facing each other in silence, there is an explosion to the east. We both turn and see an orb of white light the size of several suns hovering 50 feet above ground. I look at my father lit-up face, and can see that he has forgotten the tension that was between us. I become aware that I am dreaming as the light begins to approach and pass over us. Then there is another explosion, and the light appears again to the east. This time, a strong wind begins to blow in its direction, and I am pushed along toward it until I lose my footing and fly up into the light.

When I shared this dream with my psychoanalytically trained friend, he immediately seized upon my relationship with my father, and understandably wanted to ask probing questions regarding my sexuality and my father’s values. However, I was shocked that he would trivialize such a profound experience. I grew increasingly irritated with his questions, and cut short our conversation.

Somewhere in my late 20s, however, I began to shift to the therapeutic side of dream studies. Not only was I encountering my own powerful unfinished business in non-lucid and lucid dreams alike, but I began to pursue a career as a psychotherapist, working with individuals for whom the prospects of having a lucid dream seemed as remote as winning the lottery.

At first, I was convinced that if my clients could achieve lucidity in dreams depicting their life struggles, the therapeutic process could be greatly accelerated. I tried on many occasions to introduce lucid dream induction as a therapeutic intervention. While some of my clients were successful in having memorable and therapeutic lucid dreams, the great majority of them were not.
The Revelation

A breakthrough came for me in the form of a realization about ordinary dreams. In working with  clients on a day-to-day basis, I began to notice that dreamers already exercise considerable reflective awareness in their non-lucid dreams. In retelling their dreams, dreamers exhibit the kind of deliberate thinking that characterizes waking cognition, but everyone seemed to have overlooked that fact. Just because dreamers aren’t lucid, I concluded, it doesn’t mean that they are always passively uninvolved in the dream’s unfoldment and outcome. To the contrary. I wanted to shout from the housetops that dreamers were not merely “recording secretaries” in the dream, but were reflective and clearly influencing the outcome of virtually every dream!

It was right in front of our eyes, but neither the lucid dreamers who seemed overly focused on lucidity per se, nor the content-oriented dream analysts who remained devoted to analyzing the imagery, seemed cognizant of this feature of ordinary dream reports.

To me, it was an astounding fact, upon which an altogether new theory of dreaming could be developed.  I was talking about this “revelation” 30 years ago, and have never stopped talking about it. It’s simple: If the dreamer is reflective and thus capable of exercising a wide array of responses, and if these responses actually alter the course of the dream as they seem to do, then all dreams can be seen as an interactive, relational process, and analyzed from the standpoint of relational dynamics.

So from this point of view, systems-oriented family therapists are probably better at analyzing the dream than psychodynamically trained therapists.
A Co-creative Model for Dreaming

I wasn’t the first to articulate a cocreative, relational model of dreaming and dream analysis. I found a kindred spirit in the work of Ernest Rossi, who in his seminal work, Dreams and the Growth of Personality, announced that “there is a continuum of all possible balances between the self-directive efforts of the dreamer and the autonomous creation of the dream content.”

In this pithy statement, Rossi basically said that there are two systems interacting in every dream–the dreamer and the source of the imagery. (To those of you who are interested in brain science, you will probably think of the two prevailing positions on dream generation – but that is a vastly complex debate, which exceeds the scope of this essay.) By positing these two somewhat distinct co-contributing elements in the dream, he laid the groundwork for a view of the dream as an interactive, relational, and co-created event.

This view of dreaming makes full lucidity less necessary for good things to happen, and treats it as a special event within a continuum of awareness that is readily observable in ordinary dreams. It also suggests that the dream content, as a largely autonomous creation, may ultimately elude the understanding and control of even the highest states of lucidity.

A relational view of dreaming can also threaten the traditional clinical view that dream images can be analyzed as static content, unaffected by what the dreamer is feeling, thinking, and doing in the dream. What kind of interpretive conclusions can we draw if the dream imagery is in constant flux, tethered to and influenced by the dreamer’s responses? One can no longer say, “this means…,” but instead has to describe the dream process in such terms as, “this is what happens when you respond in this way.”

Although this approach can frustrate a person’s needs for “answers,” it underscores personal responsibility and unacknowledged competencies, as well as approaching the dream as an unfolding relationship.

Editor Ryan Hurd’s note on www.dreamstudies.org: This is part I of an introduction to a new relational method of dreamwork called the Five Star Method. Stay tuned for part II which goes into detail about each of the steps for this way of working with dreams.

A common principle–and, I believe, misconception– is that the dream images are aspects of oneself. This implies that the dream characters can, with some interpretive work, be identified as qualities that already reside within the dreamer, even though these qualities may have been repressed or overlooked. To some extent,  Freud “set this up” by saying that every dream image refers to something in one’s past waking life. Of course, Freud believed that we were resistant to this awareness, but nonetheless, the images always referred to known persons, objects and events, and always from the past. Hence Freud’s approach to dreams was both reductionistic and retrospective. Freud wasn’t the first to imply that dreams should be fully understandable. Plato believed that dreams were merely representative of waking life.  The Greek theory of mimesis posits that dreams mimic waking life, and waking life mimics the spiritual or supramundane reality, such that dreams are twice removed from ultimate truth.

These assumptions underlie Western approaches to dream analysis, such that analysis has been traditionally regarded as an exercise in interpreting what the dream refers to in waking life, as if to say that the dream points to what is knowable, but perhaps not fully acknowledged.  This culturally embedded, and largely unexamined assumption, overlooks the dreamer’s experience of the dream imagery as essentially mysterious and autonomous. Dream workers tend to ignore the phenomenologically rich and inherently mysterious nature of much of the dream imagery.

A chorus of voices have intoned a different view in recent years. Jung was one who believed that dreams had a prospective function, pointing to higher states of psychological integration that the dreamer had not yet become conscious of. Consequently, some dream images cannot be fully understood, because in essence they point beyond the status quo structure of consciousness.

If dream images cannot be fully understood, what should be our stance in working with them? Again, I refer you to the FiveStar Method, as one approach that places emphasis on the dreamer’s responses to the dream, and to the quality of relationship that arises from those responses. By placing the emphasis on the dreamer, our focus is on what is known, not what is unknown. By helping the dreamer see how different responses could have precipitated a different outcome, we divert attention away from the question, “what does the image mean?” to “how can I respond to it in a better way?” Marriage therapists face the same struggle when they endeavor to divert a person’s attention away from trying to figure out the other person’s motives, and instead focusing on one’s choices and the degree of control that one can exert over one’s own behavior and attitudes. Indeed, if you ask a counselor what is the principle mistake that people make, the counselor would probably say, “focusing on other people.” Other people are ultimately unknowable just as dream images are ultimately mysterious. We may try to reduce both of them to familiar categories of our own understanding, but in so doing we run the risk of trivializing the nature of interpersonal encounter, whether in the dream or in waking life. Do we really want to be able to fully “appropriate” the people in our lives, and the images in our dreams, into our own framweworks? That may always be the ego’s errand, but I think it promotes tension reduction over true development. When we view the dream as inherently mysterious, then our focus turns to where we can do our finest work: on improving our responses to the “other” who offers a relationship at the expense of surrendering the need to know.

Extracting a dream theme is a powerful technique in and of itself. Indeed, some people have developed entire dream work approaches around the dream theme, even though there are slightly different ways to approach this method. Robert Gongaloff and Paricia Garfield have focused on universally occurring dream themes, and have tried to create an encompassing list of such themes. Mark Thurston and I were probably the first to write about dream themes back in the 1970, myself in a little article that was published in the Sundance Community Dream Journal, and Mark in a book that he wrote a year later. But Mark probably deserves the main credit for devising this simple, but powerful analytical method.

Mark and I have always thought that the dream should speak for itself; that is, the theme or process narrative (as we have called it in a recent paper that was published in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health) should emerge from the dream structure, not be imposed from some predetermined list, however encompassing it might be. So our approach is to simply describe what’s there–the action devoid of content. This approach is very similar to what family therapists do when they analyze the interactional dynamics of a family system. They believe that the specific content of a family’s presenting problem is far less important than the way the family members are relating to each other. Not every family who struggles with, for example, a sexually active 15-year-old ends up in family therapy. Many families find ways to deal effectively with such challenges. So it’s not the specific problem that causes the family’s distress, it’s the way they relate to each other around the problem. So a family therapist will observe how the family relates, rather than focusing on the content of their complaints, believing that the solution lies in changing how they are relating, rather than specifically addressing the content of the problem. Indeed, structural family therapists believe that the family will be able to address the problem effectively if, and only if, the family changes the way they relate.

Back to the dream theme. Dreamers are often “caught in the headlights” of the specific dream content. They are alarmed, intrigued, and otherwise preoccupied with the “what” of the dream, and thus do not see the underlying relational dynamics of the dream drama. For instance, if I dreamt that my boss was chasing me with a book, trying to hit me in the head with it, and I was able to avoid him by reciting his favorite poem, I might spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what a book meant, and what the particular poem meant. By focusing on the content, I might overlook the process narrative, which might reveal more to me than any association to the dream images might produce. The theme, “someone is trying to avoid someone else’s aggression, and finally resolves the problem by appealing to his interests,” could greatly expand my associations to the dream by temporarily diverting my attention away from the imagery. Not that we want to avoid the imagery, but unless we look at the underlying process at first, we may never see this dimension at all. When you effectively formulate a process narrative, sometimes the dreamer will immediately see one or more parallels in the waking life. It’s a powerful intervention, and one that decreases the chances that the dream worker will project his or her biases onto the dream.

One other thing: You can state the process narrative from different perspectives. You can describe from the dreamer’s perspective (i.e. someone is trying to get away from someone else…) or you can describe it from another dream character’s perspective (i.e. someone is trying to catch up with someone else…). By stating the process narrative from other perspective, you help the dreamer get beyond a narrow view of the dream’s deeper meaning, and look at his or her own behavior through the lens of another dream character. This multidimensional approach will support Gestalt dream work when you get around to working with the imagery (in Step Four of the Five Step Method).

If the dream comes to illuminate what we do not know, then any effective dreamwork is going to be somewhat stressful as the ego contemplates the revelation of a previous blind spot. Whether we are bringing our own biases to the process or not, the dream is an unwelcome guest at the ego’s party. Indeed, the more significant the dream, the more likely the conscious self will resist it.

If a dreamer reacts defensively to the process, it’s important for the dream worker to allow the dreamer to find his or her comfort zone. Taking it further is what gives dream work its bad name. But just because the dreamer reacts does not necessarily mean that you haven’t done good work; to the contrary, if the dream work process does not raise some degree of defensiveness, then you probably aren’t even close to its meaning.

It is an art to elicit the dreamer’s awareness rather than to introduce it. But I think the best way to remain noninvasive is to focus, not on dream content, but on dreamer-dream interactive process. I have written about this, as some of you know (see www.dreamalysistraining.com). By focusing on interactive dream process–that is, the dreamer’s responses to the intrusive novelty of the dream–then the dreamwork revolves around fully evident responses, of which the dreamer is fully aware. Of course, the dream worker can have a different opinion of what constitutes a creative and growth-enhancing response, and this is where even process-oriented dream work can become invasive. But there is less potential of invasive projections if the focus is “right there” in the dream, not some abstract meaning that you are imposing on the imagery. So much can be revealed simply by elucidating the relational process in the dream. The meaning of the imagery emerges, quite naturally, in my experience, if one is first willing to ignore the dream imagery in favor of exploring the interactive process.

I know this is an altogether different way of dealing with dreams, but I think that if one can “go there,” it mitigates the intensity of our projections, and keeps the dreamer’s interests in focus.

Everyone seems to be aware of a central problem that arises in dream analysis or “interpretation.” That is, dream workers often overstep their boundaries, and effectively invade the dreamer’s autonomy by making precipitous conclusions about the meaning of the dream, or its images. Jung was the first to announce that the dreamer was an essential part of the analysis of any dream, and that the dreamer’s unique experience had to be taken into account for any interpretation to be valid. He introduced amplification as an effort to obtain the dreamer’s unique associations to the dream imagery, and amplification survives today in many forms. Boss believed that the dreamer’s experience was not so much to be interpreted, but to be treated as just another experience in the life of the person. He adovocated a very careful, dreamer-centered process called “explication” that probed into every significant detail of the dream so the dreamer could grasp its implications. But you know what? Both Jung and Boss were known to break their own rules, and assume a rather heavy-handed role. In more recent times, disciplined approaches like Ullman’s group method, and Delaney’s Interview Method, endeavor to do an even better jog in protecting the dreamer from arbitrary projections. Taylor joins Ullman in trying to protect the dreamer by having group members precede their comments with, “If this were my dream,…” But beyond that, Taylor believes that projections are inevitable, and thus takes a less restrictive approach to the dream process.

Some would say that human nature, or ignorance of countertransference, accounts for the difficulty in keeping our hands off other peoples’ dreams. But I think that the problem doesn’t reside as much in the dream worker as we have previously thought. I believe that projection arises as a consequence of our view of dreams. By believing that dreams are their content, we set in motion a process of trying to discern what the images mean, or what they are saying. This is same approach taken by art critics who try to analyze the statement that the artist is making. Critics comment on whether the artist succeeded in conveying the presumed message, or not, and whether the message itself is valid. This preoccupation with the meaning of the content, and the intention of the creator, influences dream analysis, as well. For as I have pointed out elsewhere, the ancient Greeks set this whole project in motion by treating dreams and art as representative of something else (our waking life).

Susan Sontag, the writer and critic, is known for many things, but her essay “Against Interpretation” is probably her most famous essay. She makes an impassioned and masterfully crafted statement that the interpretation of art is driven by an unexamined and trivializing assumption:

“The fact is, all Western consciousness of and reflection upon art [and dreams, too, according to the Greeks], have remained within the confines staked out by the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation . . . it is still assumed that a work of art is its content. Or, as it’s usually put today, that a work of art by definition says something”  Sontag, S. (1966). Against interpretation and other essays. New York: Picador

So how does this relate to my topic today? Consider this possibility: that to the extent that dream workers believe that dreams are comprised of content to be interpreted, they will almost inevitably offer their own conjectures based on their own experiences and assumptions. A content focus thus encourages invasive projections. In contrast, a process orientation the dream analysis–in which the dreamer’s feelings, thoughts and actions are seen to influence the dream’s outcome–focuses on what actually transpires during the encounter. This focus does not encourage invasive projections, because it is based almost entirely on what is clearly evident in the dreamer-dream interactive process.

So why do dream workers overstep their roles? Even the great teachers of our time? In my opinion, it is because in spite of their stated positions, they were wedded to an underlying culturally embedded view of the dream as content rather than interactive process, and thus infected the dream work with their own subjective pronouncements. The solution to this problem, therefore, is not having a more disciplined approach to dream content, but having an altogether different view of the dream, in which the dream worker’s responsibiltiies have virtually nothing to do with interpreting dream content. Again, I refer you to the FiveStar Method as an example of an approach that makes the dream process the centerpiece of the analytical work.

To Dr. Sparrow’s DreamStar Institute’s Dream Analysis Training website, www.dreamanalysistraining.com

To Dr. Sparrow’s Spiritual Mentoring website www.spiritualmentoring.com

Students of the FiveStar Method often ask me how to apply the FSM in a therapeutic or personal growth group. Interestingly, I originally conceived the FSM as a group dream work method, probably because I received some training years ago with Montague Ullman, whose approach to group dream work is well known and highly effective. But after using the FSM in group and individual work, I’ve discovered that it doesn’t depend on a group for its effectiveness. That being said, it can offer a group that is lead by a seasoned leader a very dynamic interactive process, which can enhance personal insight, faciliate interpersonal learning, and deepen intimacy.

The problem, as most therapists realize, is that a group of inexperienced group members will often make precipitous and invasive interpretations that effectively short-circuit the process of slower and surer discovery, and override the dreamer’s role as the ultimate authority. This is partly due to the age-old belief that dream analysis involves figuring out what the dream is saying, or what it means. Within this tradition, dream workers focus on dream images or “symbols” as the carrier of meaning, and may set about to “solve the puzzle,” rather than viewing the dream through the lens of cocreative or relational dream theory, which treats the dream as an interactive process between the dreamer and the dream content that unfolds in real time–like any real relationship. As the first systematic approach to relational dream work, the FSM focuses prinicipally on the dreamer’s responses to the dream imagery–his or her feelings, thoughts, and reactions in response to what manifests “out there” in the dream. The FSM also views theses responses as “cocreative” of the dream’s outcome, because the dreamer’s reactions clearly affects how the imagery behaves, and so on, in a synchronous feedback look. Until a group becomes familiar with this relational reorientation, they will operate according to the old model, and they will focus on interpreting the images rather than helping the dreamer see how he or she is interacting with, or relating to the dream content.

So it’s important to put the group on notice from the outset that they will first have to learn how to contribute the dream work process, and that means the leader must be willing to control the process in a disciplined way until everyone gets the hang of it. You don’t have to be a stormtrooper in providing corrective feedback, but you do have to intervene immediately to redirect wayward projections.

It helps to break down the five steps of the FSM into clearly delineated stages, and announce beforehand the focused tasks assigned to each stage. Much of your work will be to keep the group members from getting ahead of the process, so you can intervene with messages such as, “That’s about the imagery. We’re not there yet, so hold onto those ideas until we get there.” Also, you can encourage savvy group members to help you “police” the process until everyone has adjusted to the requirements of the FSM. Some client/members will catch on quickly, but some will find the shift in worldview to be quite difficult to negotiate. But remember, controlling the process is very important, and if you’re inclined to be overly polite, you will lose control of the process, and the dream work will quickly deteriorate into a trivial guessing game. So before you introduce the FSM to a group, you need to take stock of your readiness, as well as your group’s capacity to adopt a very advanced and powerful therapeutic intervention.

In my next blog, I will recount a session of FSM group work to show you how the method can facilitate therapeutic movement.

To Dr. Sparrow’s DreamStar Institute’s Dream Analysis Training website, www.dreamanalysistraining.com

To Dr. Sparrow’s Spiritual Mentoring website www.spiritualmentoring.com

In cocreative dream theory, nothing is fixed from the outset. The dreamer and the dream content interact in real time to cocreate the dream experience. A fundamental assumption of this approach is that the dreamer’s beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and reactions influence the way the dream unfolds, and that any change in the dreamer’s overall attitude or response set is mirrored by changes in the imagery. So the dreamer and the imagery are, to some extent, autonomous systems. But they are bound together in reciprocal interplay. It’s kind of like marriage, in which a wife’s needs may be perceived as demanding, leading the husband to believe that he needs to distance himself in order to be comfortable. The wife, in turn, sees him “doing what he always does,” approaches and become more emphatic. You know what happens then. The interaction between the dreamer and the imagery is very similar if you are able to take off the traditional view of the dream as a fixed message, and see it as relationship process. A therapist working with the couple would endeavor to show them that they both play a part in the conflict, and that they each can bring about change by working on their side of the equation.

So let’s look at the image for a moment. At first it may be a black dog, which can then  into a threatening man, who then might have a heart attack and die when the dreamer hits him over the head with a frying pan. Pretty dramatic, right? In the traditional approach to symbols, the dream work might revolve around what a dog means, who or what the man represents, what a fying pan means, and what a heart attack means. The dreamer’s responses might be seen as justified, and thus completely overlooked. This approach bears fruit, but from a cocreative standpoint, we’re really missing the boat to take the separate images and analyze them apart from the interactive process. From a relational standpoint, we would be interested in what the dreamer did just before the dog turned into a man. That is, what she was thinking, feeling, and doing? She may have petted the dog, or she may have run from the dog. Mostly like the latter, right? Because in dreams, if you pet a dog or kiss a frog, it’s likely to become more approachable and positive, just as in mythology and in fairy tales.

From the standpoint of cocreative dream work– of which the Five Star Method may be the only systematic method developed thus far–we wish to analyze the dream much the way that a marriage therapist analyzes a complex relationship: We want to track the dreamer’s responses over the course of the dream, and assist the dreamer in reviewing and considering alternatives to those responses. Perhaps the dreamer’s reactions were based on fear. If so, we discuss how a less fearful response  may have impacted the imagery and the eventual outcome. This is the essence of effective relational therapy, regardless of whether it takes place between a husband and wife, or between a dreamer and the dream images: In both cases, we are trying to analyze what is going on between the two parties, and get both of them to assume responsibility for their own actions and assumptions. Of course, dream work is a little different, because we don’t have access to the dream imagery. But even family therapy, a therapist knows that systemic change will occur even when a single member of a system changes the way that he or she relates to it. Looking at the dream as an interactive process empowers the dreamer in determing a course of action that may change fundamentally the way that he relates to the dream and to the world.

To Dr. Sparrow’s DreamStar Institute’s Dream Analysis Training website, www.dreamanalysistraining.com

To Dr. Sparrow’s Spiritual Mentoring website www.spiritualmentoring.com