TOWARDS an INTERSUBJECTIVE SCIENCE of DREAMS George Bermudez, Ph.D., Psy.D
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UCLA DREAM SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATION (April 16, 2019) TOWARDS AN INTERSUBJECTIVE SCIENCE OF DREAMS George Bermudez, Ph.D., Psy.D. Core Faculty & Director, Child Studies Specialization Antioch University Los Angeles Training & Supervising Psychoanalyst Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis Los Angeles “The varied experiences in dreams may be thought of as continuously exploring, portraying, rehearsing, commenting upon, criticizing, adding to, varying and improving on aspects of the socially shared characteristics of a people… in the deepest privacy of dreaming, the culture’s ways are being developed, tested, explored, and reinforced.” Lippmann, P. (1998). 203-204. On the private and social nature of dreams. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 34, 195-221. “We enter into stories, we are entered into stories by others, and we live our lives through stories.’ Michael White, Originator of Narrative Therapy ABSTRACT: The overall objective of this presentation on psychoanalytic dream theory and dreamwork is to provide a brief introduction to and overview of the historical development of psychoanalytic dream theory, arriving at a contemporary vision of an intersubjective science of dreams. The arc of the evolution of psychoanalytic dream theory begins with Freud’s pioneering theorizing in his magnum opus, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), takes us through the refinements of Psychoanalytic Ego Psychology and the transformations of Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory, and arrives at contemporary psychoanalytic theories (Psychoanalytic Self Psychology; Intersubjective Systems Theory; Interpersonal/Relational Psychoanalysis; and Contemporary Intersubjective Systems & Field Theory, culminating in the “social dreaming paradigm”). The presentation will examine and reflect on the relationship between psychoanalytic theories of dreams and the evolution of psychoanalytic models of the mind. Despite the pluralism, which is often decried as fragmentation, in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic dream theory and the historical fluctuations in interest in dreams, Freud’s prescient assessment of the singular position of the dream in understanding the psyche seems to have endured: “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” (Freud, 1900, p. 608). The presentation will end with the recounting of two dreams from the presenter’s clinical practice, transparently demonstrating the intersubjective and social nature of the dreaming mind—which psychoanalysis reveals as mirroring the unconscious processes of the human psyche. As I suggested in the abstract announcement for this presentation, the plan is to provide an overview of Freud’s pioneering dream theory and the subsequent refinements and transformations. Psychoanalytic dream theory and clinical dreamwork is inextricably linked to refinements and developments in psychoanalytic theories of mind, specifically, building on Freud’s foundational formulations concerning unconscious mental phenomena and the structure or organization of the human self. This tradition has been the gift of psychoanalysis to human knowledge — an unwavering commitment to exploring the human unconscious through intersubjective experience —experientially, collaboratively, and self-reflectively. So, I will be tracing the major paradigm shifts in psychoanalysis over the course of the 20th century, which have shaped the contemporary pluralism in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Along the way, I will illustrate with some dream narratives. However, I’d like to briefly preview my evolving perspective, which is aligned with the contemporary intersubjective paradigm, and in sharp contrast to the traditional Freudian (i.e., “classical”) method, which focused on uncovering the hidden meaning—the latent content— obscured by the conscious narrative—the manifest content. Freud suggested that through the method of free association we would gain access to repressed drives/instincts and unconscious fantasies from childhood. I will return to Freud’s psychoanalytic story about stories that hide other stories! I’ll begin with a dream that was presented in a dream group I recently co-facilitated (with two other psychologists, Drs. Haim Weinberg and Martha Gilmore) at the California Psychological Association Conference (April 6-7, 2019). It is the initial dream in this group. the dreamer reports: “I had this dream 1/2 hour ago. It felt very vivid, very alive. I am hiking in a canyon with co-workers. It’s very slippery: some can make it and some can’t. I jump into green/blue water which is extraordinarily inviting. I emerge from the water after enjoying myself and discover that the group is in a circle as if a trauma has occurred. I hesitated to join the group because I was not there.” I’d like to direct your attention to several features of this “manifest content”. There is a central tension or conflict for the dreamer: how do I stay connected and respond to the group’s struggles? The dreamer initially withdraws from the group although there are some who are falling behind. The dreamer chooses to swim alone. However, the dreamer returns to the group to discover that the group is grappling with trauma, but the dreamer remains apart because he tells himself he was not there when the trauma occurred. It dos not take a rocket psychologist or psychoanalyst to surmise that the dreamer is struggling with self care, some might say self- absorption, vs. group care or altruism. Does the dream need “interpretation” or does the dreamer need encouragement to more fully experience and move towards resolution of the social dilemma portrayed in his dream metaphor? Are the dreamer’s concerns only his own private existential struggle or do they reflect larger intersubjective-group anxieties, or even an entire culture’s historic struggles? A later dream shared in the same group suggests that the trauma alluded to in the first dream is related to America’s historic struggle with race and those that have been left behind: in that dream an African American couple is “pummeled with questions about abortion” by a member of a White church. The African- American couple has five children, and although the dreamer apologizes, the tension /conflict is not resolved. A Freudian analysis would direct us to only use the manifest content as stimulus for associations revealing the real content: repressed instinctual desires (sex and aggression) derived from immature childhood fantasies. Each element of the dream would be associated to by the dreamer, and the analyst would synthesize into a comprehensive interpretation that would explain the dreamer’s hidden (repressed) real intentions. A contemporary psychoanalyst (for example. Philip Bromberg, a contemporary Relational Psychoanalyst) would view the manifest dream as reflecting the dreamer’s disavowed conflict regarding his social relationships, attend to the affective experience iconically represented in the central imagery of the dream, and encourage the dreamer to fully experience the existential dilemma enacted in the dream by recounting the dream in the present tense and more fully embodying the dream experience. My own psychoanalytic view of the dreams shared in the “social dreaming matrix” is that the dreams reflect, in addition to the dreamers’ personal and interpersonal anxieties, the larger socio- cultural issues in which the dreamers are embedded. As psychoanalytic anthropologists have discovered : the members of a culture dream with that culture’s symbolic code and enact, rehearse, or re-configure the culture’s scripts and role schemas. I aver that the dream narratives I’ve shared express some hope and implicit request for help in resolving profound socially-conditioned dilemmas : subsequent dreams and associations in the group lead us further to appreciating the socio-cultural struggles. For example, there are more dreams shared with images of shaven heads; heads with eyes in the back; images of caring grandmothers and lost innocence of the past, leading us to the hypothesis that dreamers are fearful and yearning for the protections and solutions of the past. How did we arrive at these different psychoanalytic formulations and approaches? Our story begins in late 19th century Vienna, a nominally Christian city in which Freud discovered enormous conflicts about sexuality in his patients, and a context in which Jews had recently achieved some relative relief from the socio- political and cultural “othering” that had made them the “Blacks” of Europe. Freud, influenced by a multiplicity of personal, professional, and cultural factors, not the least of which was his status as a Jew, focused his professional work as a neurologist on patients suffering with psychological -somatic problems. Influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, the energy and machine science of his day, and the contemporary unconscious socio-cultural conflicts, he developed a hypothesis concerning the organization/structure of the mind that would help explain the clinical phenomena he was seeing. Essentially, the mind was powered by an instinctual energy called Libido (life and sexual energy seeking pleasure), which, however, was in conflict with social norms. Hence, the dream, the royal road to the unconscious, reflected this conflict: the manifest content was the work of a censor (representing the prohibitions of the culture) which relied on certain mental processes (displacement; condensation; negation/reversal; and symbolism ) to disguise the desires (the latent content) of the