Dreams and Surrealism
RCWilk
o Dreams and Surrealism -Richard Wilkerson rcw...@aol.com
"Whoever wants to be creative in good and evil, he must first be an annihilator
and destroy values." - Friedreich Nietzsche
For many of us, when Surrealism is mentioned the image that generally come to
mind is the liquid melting clocks of Salvador Dali. But In Europe, Surrealism
was also a social , political, and poetic human liberation movement that
championed the dream.
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." -Rousseau in _Social
Contract_
Like the Romantics before them, the Surrealists saw that the reasonable and
rational held out a limited view for mankind, and that rationality, reality and
religion had so choked our options for experience that all the marvels and
significance of being were missed. Andre Breton, the father of Surrealism
within the Modernist movement, drew together this Romantic spirit with the new
leftist politics and the discoveries of psychoanalysis. "(Reality) revolves
in a cage from which from which release is becoming increasingly difficult."
(Brenton as quoted by Kelly, 1994)
The solution was the development of practices that challenged the old order
and offered the new in the cast out forms of madness, social anarchy,
disobedience, the shocking and the absurd. However, this anarchy was never
anything more than a temporary technique for merging the social and the
aesthetic, the dayworld and the nightworld the sane with the insane. Waking
and dreaming reality were to come together in Surreality.
In Surreality, the role of dreams was to usher in the astonishing and open up
to new possibilities. As Breton once said considering the amount of time we
spend in dreams and waking like, that there is "disproportionate attention to
waking life." (Kelly, pg 37) The dream is seen as offering a challenge in
ushering in the marvelous. The search was to be a synthesis of dream and waking
in Surreality, neither a compliance to conventional reality nor a retreat into
dreamland.
Sadly, Surrealism itself went the way of many Modernist movements, it became
formalized and choked in its own institutions. Breton's contacts with Freud
were not particularly productive and Breton's analysis of his own dreams fail
to bring to bear the wonderful spirit of surreality offered in other realms.
But the spirit of the movement has endured and has widely influenced not only
postmodern philosophy and practice in Europe but offered itself as a kindred
spirit of the human potential movements in the Americas in the 1960's that
also began to see the reality being served by the mainstream culture as
limiting, repressive and dangerous.
How then can we approach the dream so as to liberate the marvelous on one hand
without sinking into complete unreality on the other? Akhter Ahsen, a
contemporary proponent of Surrealism, offers some modern perspectives and
techniques on dreams and imagery that may begin to give up a clue to the
Surrealist Experiment.
From Ahsen in _New Surrealism, The Liberation of Images In Consciousness_ :
"One gets up in the morning and the eyes are still heavy with sleep. One opens
up the eyes and the light comes in so strong that one dives back into sleep to
avoid the traumatic impact of impassive reality.
The impassive reality can be so traumatic that the mind learns to withdraw
from it. The passivity of an unmoving reality is anti-mind. When you look, the
things stay there, nothing moves. But the mind wants to move. That is the
contradiction. And if the mind has already been bombarded and constrained by
replicas of immovable mental objects, dogmas and frozen belief systems, then
where is the original movements of the mind manifested? Where is the original
face of reality and its strength revealed? Where is the original face of
reality and its strength revealed? How can we get there?" (p118-119)
Exercise: Let us see how some of Ahsen's imagery exercises might be applied to
dreams to bring up back into contact with surreality and contact this original
face.
A. Look at something static in your room, a bookcase or door. Watch it for
about a half a minute and return your attention to it if you drift. Note the
dullness and umovingness of this outer reality.
B. Now pick a dream.
1. Pick an image in a dream and hold it in your mind. If you begin to wander,
bring the image back again and again for about a half a minute.
2. Locate the part of the image that pleases you the most and repeatedly bring
this part of the image back into you mind.
3. Note the place of the image within your awareness, and how the image seems
to be inside the mind.
4. Compare the image to the outer image you had. Which is more pleasurable? The
outside boring world or the new freshness of the inner image?
5. Which part of the dream image gives you a feeling of beauty? Explore for a
moment the beautiful aspects of the image.
6. Which part of the image gives you a feeling of power? What is the source of
this power and how does the dream image reflect this power? How might it be
developed?
7. Now hold this dream image again in your mind a few seconds and them look at
the outside world. Has the outside world now brighten up as a result? Note
how attention on the inner imagination can make the outer world look more
interesting.
8. Experiment with bringing into your dream image various people in your waking
life. Note how bringing them into the image, looking at them in detail and then
viewing them again in the outer world changes the way we view them.
Though Ahsen sees to miss the point that we are in the imagination as much as
the imagination being in us, his delightful array of imagery techniques (this
being but one of hundreds he offeres) still work to bring out the idea the we
can valorize dreamland imagery without getting lost it in, and that there is
place of exchange between the waking and dreaming world that offers us
tremendous sources of creativity and new possibilities in creation of our own
Surreality.
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If you are interested in the full class:
DREAM CLASS ONLINE: From Ancient Trace to Cyberspace.
The History of Dream Sharing.
Richard Catlett Wilkerson
The 27th time this class has been offered.
DreamGate Courses on Dreams & Dreaming. Starts May 1st. $29.99
Classes and groups all done via email. (And other special Net venues)
From Robert Van de Castle, author of OUR DREAMING MIND,
"...It is a GREAT course!"
This delightful class gives you both e-mail essays on the
the history of dreams and dream sharing, as well as
interactive labs and groups to teach you ways of working
and playing with your dreams.
See the Syllabus below or
at DreamGate Web:
http://www.dreamgate.com/class.htm
The class is $29.99 (US) and you will receive the address
to send the check or money order when you register.
Send to rcw...@dreamgate.com
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This is a non-accredited class and there will be no psychotherapy provided.
These are peer classes, with research gathered by the grassroots networks
in dreamwork and dreamsharing around the world. You must be at least
18 years old to participate in the groups.
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REGISTRATION:
Simply send an E-mail to Richard Wilkerson at
rcw...@dreamgate.com and say:
"Yes, I'd love to be in the Dream Class. Put me on the
May Class list and send the me registration address!"
WHAT YOU GET ->
When you have finished the class, you will have a grasp
of the whole history of dream work and be able to apply
many of the techniques to your own dreams and others.
(about 20 e-mail Lessons)
You will also be plugged into the global dream
community, given a free subscription to the Dream Sharing
Ezine Electric Dreams, and be sent *free* my _Dream
Guide to the Internet_ resource guide at the end of the
class, which in itself is worth twice the cost the class
by itself.
But what people like most about the class is that you
get to SHARE YOUR DREAMS IN GROUPS ONLINE! We teach you
how to do dream sharing via e-mail, mail lists, WEB,
Bulletin board, newsgroup and IRC (Chat).
New for the April Class - Saturday Meeting on IRC and
other online channels!
It is really fun - Come join us & register today!
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Class Syllabus: Intro to Dream Sharing On the Net
01. Introduction - Sign up to Electric Dreams Ezine
02. Dream Recall Basics
03. Dream Techniques From Freud I
04. Dream Techniques From Freud II
Dream Lab I insert - DreamSharing via email sign up.
05. Ancient Dreams: texts & practices in Early Cultures
06. C. G. Jung I. Me and my Shadow.
07. C. G. Jung II: Beyond & Through the Personal -
08. Jung III: Archetype & Myth
09. Jung IV: Jung and Dreams
10. Other Pre-1960's Dream Theories- Adler, Surrealism..
11. Perls, Gestalt & Dreams
Dream Lab II insert - DreamLink and other Web sites
12. Dreambody and Experiential Dreamwork
13. From the Couch to the Culture
14. Grassroots Dream work in America
15. Lucid Dreaming and Lucid Control
Lab III Dreaming on Usenet and IRC
16 Dreaming Science
17. Dreaming Anthropology
18. Extraordinary Dreaming
19. Dreams and Spirituality
20. Dreams & Cyberspace & resources
Want more information?
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NEW EXPANDED SYLLABUS
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Week 1
01. Introduction - Sign up to Electric Dreams Ezine
Get plugged into the major source about dreams and
dreaming online, the e-zine of the global grassroots
movement. Still in its infancy, this newsletter is more
of an online community and is highly interactive.
02. Dream Recall Basics
Some basics and helpful hints for those who don't
recall & journal, or those wanting to improve these
skills.
03. Dream Techniques From Freud - Free Association & the
Unconscious
Since my interest is not in teaching psychotherapy but
in tapping into each individuals own source of (a.
Creativity and (b. Inner authority on meaning and value,
my approach is historic and playful, seeking in Freud
want can be used as productive viewpoints to engage dream imagery.
Some basic ideas are needed for this.
Week 2
04. Dream Techniques From Freud -
The Dream-Work + References
Freud's model for dreaming is still so highly referenced
in academic and clinical thought that I felt it was
essential to include this a part of an overview on dream
theories. Also, as postmodern thinking becomes dominant,
it is important to see the psychoanlytic roots and bias
that come with it.
---> Dream Lab I insert - DreamSharing via email sign up.
This is the core model of online dream sharing
groups as brought online by John Herbert and modeled
after Montegue Ullman. Groups are done in cooperation
with the Electric Dreams community.
05. Ancient Dreams: Dream texts & practices in Early
Western Cultures
A quick tour of Western Roots and its classical
attitudes towards dreams and dreaming. Again, a focus on
how to not just see this as abstract information, but
rather a doorway into re-combinations allowing novel
approaches to dream imagery.
Week 3
06. C. G. Jung I. Me and my Shadow.
I feel that even a quick foray into Jung yields potent
tools in perception and significant relationships with
oneself. But its a little odd for many to learn how to
approach icky, yucky stuff in dreams as potential gold
mines.
07. C. G. Jung II: Beyond & Through the Personal -
This essay carries Jung's basic model into contact with
the non-personal realms as they relate to dreams and
dreaming and extends the idea of what a relationship
with the unconscious might look like and how dreams may
mediate this relationship.
Week 4
08. Jung III: Archetype & Myth
One of the most accessible & popular aspects of
Jungian thought and practice evolves from Jung's love of
story, fables and myth. Campbell helped bring to the late
20th Century American Culture this love of story and
together they offer tools for those of us in love with
myth to continue the journey. When combined with
dreamwork, the study of myth becomes a study of the
journey of ones self as well as The Self.
09. Jung IV: Jung and Dreams
Though Jung never wrote a separate book on dreams,
there is *so* much material that a special essay is
needed to give a general lay of the land. Although Jung
felt *each* dream should yield its own new theory, the
Jungian have developed a wide array of helpful
techniques. While one could spend several lifetimes
mastering these techniques, many are accessible right
away with a little practice. As a matter of fact, Jung
thought dreams were *already* doing what they needed to
be doing. We simple help the processes along.
Week 5
10.: Other Pre-1960's Dream Theories
All is not Jung and easily Freudened! The Surrealist
Movement championed dreams as a path away form the
deadness of everyday worldviews and a gateway into novel
experience and surreality. Phenomenology combined with
psychoanalysis to produce ideas about approaching dreams
on their own, bracketing out our pre-conceived notions
and allowing the imagery to evolve on its own. This essay
explores these and other dream movements and theories
that haven't gotten as much attention as they deserve.
11.: Perls, Gestalt & Dreams
The 1960's brought with it an explosion of new
therapies and with them a renewed interest in dreams.
None was as popular as the Gestalt movement. While many
saw Perls techniques as derivative of others before him,
none can deny that Perls brought dream awareness to
millions of Americans and those in the world following
the development of the new therapies. This essay expores
this history and the relevant techniques that we can use
outside of therapy.
---> Dream Lab II insert - DreamLink and other Web sites
Week 6
12. Dreambody and Experiential Dreamwork
One of the areas that came into the light in the past
30 years in therapy has been the body. This essay looks
at two major practitioners who have combined Freud, Jung,
Reich, Eastern Practices and phemomenology to produce
methods we can use to dialogue with the body. In this,
there is a paradigm shift from content to process. The
dream becomes then a part of our process that we come
into dialogue with. Much of this work can be done outside
the therapeutic setting.
13. From the Couch to the Culture: Walter Bonime
Montague Ullman
While the Jungians have always enjoyed working with
manifest dream material, the psychoanalytically trained
schools have only come to this more recently. Bonime and
Ullman were two pioneers in this regard. Bonime shifted
the emphasis to the manifest or visible dream and Ullman
taught practices and held groups that could work with
this material in non-clinical settings. These techniques
have become the standard in grassroots dream work and are
used by the Association for the Study of Dreams at their
conferences for introducing new participants to group
dreamwork.
Week 7
14. Grassroots Dream work in America
There has been an explosion of regional small
dreamgroups in America which now has its own history,
journals, mini movements and conflicts. Some of this
movement has been organized and part of other social
institutions and communities, but the soul of the
movement has been the local dream group, usually of a
dozen or less people. These are the people tinkering in
the garages with techniques that now form a larger body
of literature and practices that can be found in popular
literature.
15.Lucid Dreaming and Lucid Control
One of the popular new offshoots of dreamwork is
lucid dreaming, or knowing you are dreaming while you are
dreaming and being able to varying degrees to control the
events and content of the dream. While clinical practice
has not been able to respond adequately to this phenomena
(usually siting issues of too much ego control based on
old theories of the unconscious)the lucid dreamers have
formed groups and organizations to address the particular
issues invoved and advance the techniques used to
increase the frequency of its occurance. This essay
explores the history and give some of the most popular
techniques for inducing lucid dreaming and control.
----> Lab III Dreaming on Usenet and IRC
While e-mail seems the easiest way to conduct groups,
it requires that the participants organize their own
notes over a week or two period. Usenet & Web Bulletin
Board style approaches are a way of keeping the group's
comments and dream texts together are available, but lend
themselves to a different mood. IRC or chat room venues
allow real time interaction and they too lend themselves
to a more emotionally based experience. In this lab we
explore some of these other venues.
Week 8
16 Dreaming Science
Why does a dreamworker need to know anything about
dream science? Besides how fascinating it is, and
defending yourself against attacks by pseudo-scientific
remarks as "Oh, science has shown that all dreaming is
just chaotic brain garbage." I would like for you to know
how science and imaginative exploration go hand in hand.
From the first REM discovery nights in the Chicago labs
to the latest debates on neural networks, this essay not
only explores the history of empirical findings, but
takes a more positive approach and looks at how dream
science can aid in dreamwork.
17. Dreaming Anthropology
If science is correct, we have been dreaming for as long
as we have been mammals, maybe longer. If Campbell and
Jung are correct, we have been making meaning from dreams
before recorded history. This means that some cultures
have been practicing dreamwork for millions of years.
This essay explores a general, brief overview of what we
know about native cultures and their dream practices.
Week 9
18 Alternative Dreaming
There is now a wider range of dreaming practices that
are being explored besides the the use of dreams for
therapy. Some make intentions before going to sleep and
incubate dreams. Some find that telepathic powers are
increased during dreams. Some people like to meet in
their dreams with others at pre-designated places, some
like to use dreams for inspiring writing and other arts.
Some simply like to *do* things in dreams, increasing
the chances of flying, eating, having sex and going on
virtual journeys. James Hillman & the Archetypal school
have opened the dream to the culture at large, and soon
the postmodern writers & cyberspace will be opening us up
to unheard of catagories yet to be explored. This essay
explores the alternatives and offers options to our usual
egoic efforts that impose uses on dreams. Yes, even
"being open" is an imposed paradigm.
19. Final notes & resources on Dreams and Dreaming
One of the more fun parts of the Networking is the
chance to see what others are doing and have them see
what you are doing. But even more than *seeing* is being.
It is not just an information exchange but a living
interconnection and chance to see one's place as a
microcosm in the macrocosm. In native cultures, the
process of initiation took the individual and his/her
inner light and opened this lantern to the society at
large. For several millenium we have lost this in Western
Culture as we made the transition from nature bound to
technologically bound reality. Changes happen too fast.
Parents can no longer initiate children into their
society, because by the time they could, it is gone.
Seeking all the answers in the paradigm of "out there
somewhere besides nature" has led to ecological disaster
and technological horror. But as with ancient initiations,
an element of this transformation is brought about by the
individual seeing his or her own death. As sophisticated
moderns, we see this death as symbolic, but fail to see
that its now not so much just an individual trip as a
collective journey. Our culture has seen it's own death
in the bomb and pollution and lose of traditional values.
But like the ancient initiation, we don't really die.
Apocalyptic theories will continue but they error in
literalizing the death of the world. Its simply the death
of the modern world.
I see two factors emerging in the modern world that I
want to bring forward into the post-modern. The first is
the inner relationship and the other is the outer
relationship. The inner relationship can be mediated by
dreamwork, bodywork, and meditation practices (not
literally inner, but a sense that there is value in what
we have, the subtlites of *this* moment and not just what
we can get from Otherness), and the outer relationship
with forms the community and can be mediated by regional
and neighborhood organizations and can be mediated
globally via the Net and what is surely to be later, more
extensive, and faster manifestations of the Internet. The
inner work provides the access to the individual and the
unique and the outer work allows this individuality to
unfold and be initiated in the multiple fields of social
& cultural practice.
In this sense, Dreamwork in Cyberspace provides a
model & practice for profound and diverse developments in
the 21st Century, which see nature & technology in new
ecologies as inter-dependent friends and assitants.
This final essay is more a call to the reader to allow
the community to support your individuality by offering
the resources we have developed and finding mutually
supportive platforms from which to precede.
Reading Reference:
Two kinds of Bibliographies will be provided. The first
will be the smaller bibliographies that will come with
each topic area and the second will be a wider
bibliography provided at the end of the class.
There are no required readings for the class, as we will
use more of a hands-on or interactive approach. However,
we do offer suggested reading and highly recommend them
as we feel they will deepen your knowledge base and widen
the experience, as well as providing alternative
perspectives to the bias we carry in the email approach.
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Suggested Readings for
Introduction to Dream Sharing On the Net
Some Introductory Texts that are available
HOWEVER, no books necessary to fully enjoy the class!
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1. Van De Castle, R. L. (1994). Our Dreaming Mind. New
York: Ballantine Books.
This is a great overview of dreaming by one of the top
researchers in the world. Now in paperback!
2. Faraday, Ann (1974). The Dream Game. New York: Harper
& Row.
[This is a very readable and easy to find book, usually
located in any used bookstore for a few dollars. Good
simple overview of the dreaming field]
3. Delaney, Gayle (ed) (1993). New Directions in Dream
Interpretation. Albany, New York, NY: SUNY Press.
[This is a bit more advanced text than most novices want
to take on, but provides authoritative essays on how-to
interpret dreams, many chapters by the people who
developed the techniques themselves. Gayle has a good
beginners book out too called (1988). Living Your Dreams:
Using Sleep to Solve Problems and Enrich Your Life.
Revised Ed. San Francisco: Harper and Row.]
4.Taylor, Jeremy (1983) Dream Work. New York: Paulist
Press.
[A great beginning approach to Dreamwork using Jungian
principles. Taylor has a new and delightful book out
about social dreaming now too, called _Where People Fly
and Water Runs Uphill: Using Dreams to tap the Wisdom of
the Unconscious_. New York, NY: Warner Books, Inc. You
should be able to find a used copy for $5 -$6]
5. Shafton, Anthony (1995). _Dream Reader: Contemporary
Approaches to the Understanding of Dreams_. Albany,
NY:SUNY Press.
[Probably have to special oder this and its pricey - I
think I just paid $30 or so. But it is quite extensive
and has a lot of information often left out on grass
roots dreamwork. Nothing about the Net, yet]
Specific Bibliographies will be included with each class,
Though no books are necessary - all material included
via email!
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(C) Copyright 1995/1996/1997/1998 by Richard Catlett Wilkerson
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DreamGate Classes on Dreams rcw...@dreamgate.com
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www.dreamgate.com/class.htm
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RCWilk
New Class starts June 1