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I J o D R Abstracts of the 33th Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams June 24 - June 28, 2016 Kerkrade, The Netherlands Content This supplement of the International Journal of Dream Research includes the abstracts of presenters who gave consent to the publishing. The abstracts are categorized into thematic groups and within the category sorted according to the last name of the fi rst presenter. Affi liations are included only for the fi rst author. A name register at the end is also provided. can be our guides in this stupendous process of birthing Contents: a new civilization, free from the indescribable cruelties and power struggles which have polluted the past and still des- 1. Keynotes ecrate the present. In ancient Egypt and Greece, in China 2. Morning Dream Groups and South America, in Sumer, Persia and Babylon and in Hebrew culture, this visionary guidance was welcomed and 3. Workshops honoured. In contemporary indigenous cultures it still is and 4. Clinical Topics they have much to teach us. The message of the visionary dream is to bring the human community into harmonious re- 5. Religion/Spiritual/Culture/Arts lationship with the hidden laws governing the cosmos. Our 6. Education/Other Topics culture has become disconnected from the invisible dimen- sion of reality, ignoring the presence of these hidden laws. 7. PSI Dreaming Consequently, it has become impoverished and ailing, like 8. Lucid Dreaming the Old King of Alchemy. 9. Research/Theory Fortunately, in the last century, there was a great Dreamer, a psychiatrist called C.G. Jung who reconnected us with 10. Posters/Hot-off-the Press the deeper dimension of Soul which had been neglected for centuries. His understanding of the role of the dream is carried in these words: “Everywhere, at all times, in all cul- tures and races of which we have record, when the greatest meaning, the highest value of life that man called gods or 1. Keynotes God needed renewal and increase, the process of renewal began through a dream...” In this talk I will share a visionary dream I had 40 years Visionary Dreams and the Great Challenge of Our ago which changed the course of my life and helped me Times to understand what we have to do if we are to survive as a species and create a better world for our children. All I have Anne Baring understood is contained in my book, The Dream of the Cos- Winchester, England mos: a Quest for the Soul. What is the great challenge of our times? It is to move to a new level of consciousness, realizing we are an inseparable Playing the Dream: On Dream and Narrative in part of the world around us and the wider universe. It is to Modern-day Digital Games create a new Cosmology, offering our children a different story which will give meaning and value to their lives. It is Frank G. Bosman to become whole by reconnecting matter with spirit. We live Vlijmen, the Netherlands in a radically unbalanced culture structured by beliefs and habits of behaviour which are now obsolete and are show- Dreams and dream-like phenomena play an interesting part ing increasing signs of collapse. The old story is fading and in modern-day video games narratives. The narratological a new one is being born. We are in the midst of The Great functions of these phenomena in video games tell us how Awakening: awakening to our true nature as cosmic beings we, as a society, think of the very nature of dreams them- temporarily incarnated on this planet. Dreams are messen- selves: breaking the boundaries of what is, humanly speak- gers between two dimensions of reality. Visionary dreams ing, possible. International Journal of Dream Research Volume 9, Supplement 1 (2016) S1 I J o D R In this lecture, video games will be identifi ed as ‘digital (in- the interactional dynamics of this interface. In its succes- teractive) playable (narrative) texts, combining insights from sive appearances, the developing dream shows the two- both ludological (the game as ludus, play) and narratological way communication between dream content and waking (the game as narrative, story) approaches of game study concerns: waking concerns have an input on the changing research.’ Especially, the narrative nature of video games is content of the dream and, the other way around, the dream important: as narratives, video games communicate mean- provides metaphors that assist the person in articulating ing, intentionally by the designer and spontaneously by the and understanding changes in waking life. In this case, I gamer himself. analyze, inspired by Foulkes’ (1978) continuity hypothesis, In this framework, ‘dreams’ and dream-like phenomena the successive manifestations of a developing dream of a in best-selling video games like The Elder’s Scroll: Skyrim, psychotherapy client. Following this client over a period of Far Cry 3, Fallout 3 and 4, and DMC: Devil May Cry can be 18 months I will show how an initially traumatic dream pro- narratologically interpreted. While self-identifi ed as ‘dreams’ vided her with metaphors referring to problems in her dis- in the games themselves, they consist of various phenom- rupted marriage and, moreover, was helpful for her to cope ena such as classic dreams, psychosis, relived memories, with these problems. visions, hypnosis and near-death-experience. Important for The developing dream is more than just a recurrent or re- a classifi cation of these phenomena is the question of how petitive dream. While a recurrent dream may have a content the ‘dream’ is induced: naturally or artifi cially (mechanically, that remains essentially the same over time (e.g., being un- pharmaceutically, magically, religiously and/or psychologi- prepared for an examination), the content of the developing cally). dream changes, in its successive manifestations, as the re- Another important topic in the narratological examination sult of input from waking experiences. From a methodologi- of dreams in video games is the result of studies of the inter- cal perspective, I will present a Self-Confrontation method connection between gaming and dreaming. Gamers report that can be used for the study of the content and (re)organi- that the dreams they have in their sleep resemble the scen- zation of one’s personal meaning system. ery and narratives of the games they have played. Besides Second, I will present and discuss the effect when, in Jun- this, there appears to be a correlation between gaming and gian terms, the interpretation of a dream changed from the lucidity in dreaming. object level to the subject level. The example is from a client The narratological functions of dreams in video games are, who in his dream was confronted with a murderer. During broadly speaking, to make possible what is humanly speak- the discussion of this dream together with the psychothera- ing impossible. Or, to put it more technically, to escape the pist, the client discovered that the murderer was not simply laws of causality, and of place and time; to convey mes- a purely external fi gure (interpretation on the object level) sages otherwise inconceivable; perform tasks, otherwise but part of his own self (interpretation on the subject level). I impossible; and to gain knowledge otherwise unreachable. will analyze the meaning of this dream from the perspective But there is more to be said. Some dream sequences in of Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, video games, however, immobilize (at least partially) the 2010), with special attention to the client’s response to the freedom of the avatar (and therefore of the controlling play- discovery of unrecognized aggression in his own self. er), forcing an uncomfortable passivity (directly contrary to My purpose in this presentation is to show two methods the interactive nature of video games themselves), creating (self-confrontation and internal dialogue) for the study of some sort of semi-lucidity. dreams in close connection with developments in waking life and to illustrate them with changes in the lives of clients in psychotherapy. In order to place these procedures and illustrations in a broader context, I will refer to trends in the The Dream as a Meaningful Experience in a Devel- scientifi c dream literature, where similar phenomena in non- oping Dialogical Self client groups were found. Hubert Hermans References Nijmegen, The Netherlands Foulkes, D. (1978). A Grammar of Dreams. Sussex, England: Harvester Press. Hermans, H.J.M., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical Self Theo- The focus of this presentation is on the relation between ry: Positioning and Counter-Positioning in a Globalizing Society. Cam- the meaning of dreams and signifi cant waking concerns. bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. More specifi cally, the question is posed of how the content of dreams changes and develops in close connection with meaningful changes in waking life. I will present two case studies which demonstrate how Dreaming as Consciousness: From Philosophy to paying attention to dreams has an impact on the waking Testable Theories in Dream Science concerns of clients in psychotherapy. One regards a so- Antti Revonsuo called ‘developing dream,’ the other shows the effect of moving the interpretation of a dream from the object level Turku, Finland to the subject level in the Jungian sense of the term. Along- side, I will present some theoretical and methodological de- There has been a long-lasting controversy about the fun- vices which are helpful in the study of the meaning of the damental nature of dreaming, both in philosophy and in the two types of dreams. empirical studies of dreams. Some philosophers, such as First, I will focus on the phenomenon of the so called Daniel Dennett, have put forward the controversial sugges- ‘developing dream.’ This fi nds its meaning on the interface tion that dreams are not conscious experiences at all.