Dreams and dreaming

Thoughts on dreams and dreaming

I first became fascinated by dreams as a young man at university reading C.G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams and Reflections.  Nearly twenty years later this interest was central in my decision to train as a counsellor.   During my training I undertook 3½ years of twice-weekly Jungian psychotherapy centred on working with my dreams.  As I result I guess that the Jungian approach forms the bedrock of my understanding of dreams and has underpinned a great deal of my work as a therapist.

Over the years I came across other approaches to dreams, from reading, talking to colleagues from other therapeutic backgrounds and incorporated ideas and ways of working into my own, but I now have no idea what I learned from whom, and I thought of myself as having a mish-mash of ideas on dreams that lacked any theoretical coherence.

At the end of last year I had an argument with a philosopher who stated that there was no such thing as dreaming, and that what we called dreams were simply the mind responding to external cues at the moment of waking up, and that our attempts to give this experience meaning was purely social conditioning.   In the aftermath of the argument I came to the conclusion that I did have a reasonably coherent theory of dreaming and was prompted to write some of it down when a friend asked for some thoughts on working with the dreams of a particular client.

So here are my initial thoughts:

Dreaming is a phenomenon of the organism that each one of us is.   I start with the assumption that this process has a useful purpose.   I also assume the content of our dreams has meaning – I think a lot of people have assumed this over the ages!

The explanations of dreaming that make most sense to me are those that see it as a mental process, akin to conscious thinking, but mostly happening outside of conscious awareness, whereby we process and integrate the experiences we have each day.   We know there are neurological processes where experiences are held in short term memory and then transferred to long term memory.  In this process the “raw” right brain experiences are connected to left brain processes that put them into words, equate them with similar experiences, put a “date stamp” on them and file them away so they can be used to guide us later on in similar circumstances.

I assume, when I notice one of my own dreams, that I am catching a brief glimpse of my unconscious mind undertaking exactly this sort of process.   There seems to be a window of opportunity as we start to wake up when we are in touch with both the unconscious dreaming process and conscious perception, and in that moment we can access the content of our dreaming mind.   I think it’s likely that dreaming does its job of mental integration whether or not I notice or remember the dream, but I also think that becoming consciously aware of our dreaming process can contribute to our self-awareness and mental integration.

But I think dreaming is more than just unconscious thinking.  When we are dreaming we are not just having or connecting ideas,  we are acting in a drama of our own creation as a means of making sense of our experience. Acting rather than just thinking is a key element in the dreaming process.   MRI scans of the brain during REM (dreaming) sleep show that while controlling functions of the prefrontal cortex are switched off, four areas of the brain are highly active – the visual-spatial area at the back of the brain that enables complex visual  perception, the motor cortex that that generates movement, the hippocampus that processes autobiographical memory, and the amygdala and surrounding areas that generate and process our emotional responses.1   Everything is in place for experiences with a high emotional charge to be re-enacted (and in the process to be changed).   The fact that we do not just think, but act our dreams is demonstrated by the fact that evolution has gone to the great lengths of developing a mechanism for disabling our voluntary muscles during REM-sleep so that we can act our dreams without putting ourselves or our partners in danger.

The Functions of Dreaming

I think dreams fulfil a number of functions (some of these overlap)

  1. Problem solving and creativity.  

When we are trying to solve a problem using conscious cognitive processes, and then go to sleep, our dreaming mind appears to take up the task and can present the conscious mind with a solution.   My best example of this was during my university finals when we had 3 essays to do over 3 days.  I looked at the question for day 3 just before I went to bed at the end of day 2.  I woke the next morning with a dream in which I was planning an essay – I started drifting back to sleep then woke with a jerk realising that my dream essay was exactly the one I needed to write that day.  The “dream-planned” essay was far higher quality than my consciously planned essays – my tutor called it a “fucking showstopper”.       Experiments monitoring problem solving and creativity have demonstrated that those who sleep on a problem and dream about the problem or related themes showed 10 times the improvement in dealing with the problem than those who had also slept, but not dreamed about it.2

  1. Clarification or insight.   

When I first went into senior management I was totally out of my depth as a quiet, reflective, cautious and polite young man among a bunch of aggressive cowboys.   I had a dream where I was showering alongside the Managing Director – I was being very slow and careful and my main concern in dressing was that I kept my socks dry.  He was clumsy and splashy and got all his clothes including his socks wet and couldn’t care less and was ready well before me.  This dream was very useful for me as it beautifully clarified the situation I was in.  In response to it I started taking risks, acting on impulse, allowed myself to behave at times with aggressive rudeness, made a pile of mistakes (got my socks wet), but survived.    

  1. A corrective to a conscious position.    

We all have internal parts, voices, impulses etc which have been disavowed because of the way we were brought up and responded to when we were small.  The person who has disavowed anger, and therefore is not good at self defence, may find themselves dreaming they are murdering their spouse.  The dream is just trying to integrate the angry part and make sure its voice is heard.  The outcome of the dream may be to put the person in touch with anger so it can find some conscious expression in the relationship and solve the underlying problem.  The murder is just a metaphor – the more a feeling is disavowed, the stronger the metaphor in the dream.    This is of course Jung’s theory of the compensatory nature of dreams.  He illustrated this with an account of a young man, who looked up to his father but was too uncritical to be able to separate and lead his own life.   He dreamt his father was driving a new car clumsily and eventually colliding with a wall – he shouted at his father in a rage and then realised that his father was drunk. 3   A dream, which presents a picture which is  shockingly different from a conscious standpoint can give a voice to a suppressed or a newly emerging part and open up the possibility of change.

  1. Trauma processing.  

If we accept that the brain needs to organise and integrate the myriad experiences of each day, then perhaps the processing of traumatic experience is the most important function of dreams.   I am very struck by the parallels between what we know about processing trauma as therapists, and how we go about it, and what we know about the way the brain functions during REM sleep.  

  • As therapists we know that to access trauma in order to work with it, the neural networks that encode the trauma have to be activated, and that when activated they can be changed as present thoughts, sensations and experiences are added to that network.  After a few hours these networks close, and no new information can be added until they are re-activated.4       It is clear from the MRI data on REM sleep referred to above that when we are dreaming of a specific event or theme, the memory of these events, and the related networks controlling visual perception, motor response and emotional response are highly activated.
  • As therapists we know that if traumatic memory is triggered in contexts that are not safe, the only result is re-traumatisation.  Hence a great deal of trauma work consists in creating a safe place, in terms of the relationship with the therapist and the client’s sense of safety both in their internal and external worlds.  In the actual trauma work we constantly try to keep our clients in the safe place we call the “window of tolerance”5 in which change is possible by trying to calm them when they are over-aroused by fear or anger and trying to enliven them when they are in depressive collapse.  In REM sleep the anxiety-triggering neurotransmitter noradrenaline is shut off in the brain6 (the only time in the 24 hour cycle this happens).  Thus while the necessary neural networks are activated, the brain itself provides a “safe place” during dreaming to allow difficult experiences to be processed.
  • One of the techniques used by many trauma therapists for processing traumatic experiences is EMDR.  This uses repeated side-to-side movements of the eyes which we think helps to stimulate left-brain right-brain connectivity.   Dreaming sleep is named Rapid Eye Movement sleep as these same eye movements occur naturally.
  • Many trauma therapists use body-based approaches which help their clients reconnect with the physical reactions of their self-defence system connected with traumatic experiences. This is based on an understanding of trauma as the fear system failing to “reset” after a parasympathetic collapse.  An animal which suffers this parasympathetic collapse after having been caught by a predator can recover from collapse (given a window of opportunity) by reactivating the fight-flight response.  Clients are encouraged to notice and experience the physical impulses of fight-flight in a safe context, sometimes in slow motion or using the imagination (which can be just as effective as physical action as the motor cortex is activated).   In dreaming sleep the same process is taking place.  The dreamer is an actor responding to and integrating their experiences – they are remembering, visually perceiving and reacting with motor neurons fully active – physically completing the defensive movements activated in the trauma so the fear system can reset, but with voluntary muscles disabled so that this can happen safely.
  1. Repair and recovery

Matthew Walker 7 describes experiments that demonstrate that lack of REM sleep blunts our ability to accurately read expressions and emotions in the faces of others while adequate REM sleep fine-tunes this ability.  This probably reflects the fact that high levels of stress or fear system activation shut down the social engagement system in the cortex.  Perhaps the elimination of noradrenaline during dreaming sleep is resetting our social engagement system?

Nightmares

It would appear that brain functions involved in dreaming are designed for trauma processing, but some experiences can overwhelm this process if they are too shocking, too persistent, and the dreamer has inadequate support in dealing with them.   In such cases the dreaming process cannot “digest” the experience – it repeats through many dreams without resolution and the full disturbance of the experiences are activated in the dreams without diminution.    We call these dreams nightmares.     It would appear that when the fear system is too highly aroused in severe trauma, the brain cannot eliminate noradrenaline to provide a “protected space” for experiences to be processed by the brain.  PTSD sufferers have excessively high levels of noradrenaline in the brain and therefore cannot enter or maintain normal REM sleep.   However if drugs are used to lower noradrenaline levels, normal REM sleep becomes possible and repetitive nightmares cease. 8

Thoughts on ways of working with dreams

I think the most important start point is to be really interested in another person’s dream.  Most people are interested in and vitalised by their dreams.  If they are too out of touch with themselves to be interested, it is possible that our interest and curiosity might stimulate theirs.  We might need to do no more than say “What an interesting dream! … what are your thoughts about it?

One useful question might be “why might your dreaming mind be working on these themes… do they resonate with anything in your conscious life?”   If there are parallels between a dream and conscious experience, in what way might the dream be reflecting this?

Another approach is to say “What if this dream is your play, and every one of the actors is a different part of yourself?  What might the dream be about then?”  One of my clients had a dream which included Donald Trump (a man she deeply hates).    I wondered what part of her he might represent (bracing myself for the backlash).    When she thought about this it occurred to her that Trump represented her powerful fear of being weak, and that this was what was holding her back in key areas of her life.

A useful way of working with what feel like unresolved or repetitive dreams is to invite clients to complete their dreams, acting out different endings in their imagination.

My friend Dzmitry Karpuk who runs trainings on working with complex trauma in Leeds 9  introduced me to a way of working with nightmares.   Treating them as a symptom of trauma he avoids re-traumatisation by inviting the clients to note what aspects of the dream or objects or people within it seem to them to be helpful / attractive / powerful etc.    He then invites them to notice what sensations are triggered in their body when they think about them.    He then helps them to slowly focus on these sensations which often helps to build up a general sense of competence, solidity or wellbeing in the body.    Only then would he turn to the more troublesome aspects of the dream and gradually process these in the same way allowing for a gradual integration of disturbing experiences.

I’d love to hear from you about what other ways of working with dreams you find useful, and also whether you can remember dreams that actually changed something about your life? Also do you have other ideas on the function of dreams and dreaming? Do contact me at michael.guilding@gmail.com

1. Walker, Matthew (2018), Why we sleep: The new science of sleep and dreams. Penguin  Books pp. 195-6

2. Walker, (2018) p.231

3. C.G. Jung Modern Man in Search of a Soul Chapter 1

4.  Ecker, B., Ticic, R. and Hulley, L. (2012).  Unlocking the Emotional Brain,  London, Routledge

5. Siegel, D.J. (2012). The Developing Mind. 2nd ed. New York: Guilford. 

6.  Walker, (2018) p. 208

7.  Walker, (2018) pp. 214-5

8. Walker, (2018 pp. 211-213

9   https://www.complextrauma.uk/working-with-nightmares–dreams.html