In the dream, I observed from directly over the stadium a Yankees-Red Sox game. The Sox were batting in the bottom of the ninth, and with 2 out a man by the name of Daniel Ishben batted with a full count and the bases full, vying to break a 2-2 tie. Ishben surprised the Yankees by hitting a nubber up the center of the field that trickled between the confused and crowded group of infielders who converged on the second base bag. Two runs scored, including the runner who had occupied second base, bringing the game to an abrupt end.

I believe the diamond is an excellent symbol for the structure of the psyche. Like buildings whose corridors spell out the direction in which its occupants walk, so the baseball diamond determines the direction in which the runners run. I believe that this movement (structurally saccadic and counterclockwise movement along a narrow path) refers to a repeating cycle in psychological development. The source and destination of all movement in this diamond is home plate itself, which I take in psychological terms to refer to the core of the self and the impetus for all activity in the unconscious.

Home plate. The spontaneous origin of psychological products in the Unconscious. The batter symbolizes the hidden roots of all creative inspiration – to the nascent ideas and personal qualities that are left at our doorstep and that we may choose to take in, raise, reify, and refine. The batter is not a runner, which is to say he does not “occupy” home plate in the same way the other runners occupy first, second, and third base. The batter never even steps on the plate at this end, but hopes to step on home plate at the OTHER end. And the batter does not come from any place on the diamond, but from some place outside it. And yet the batter is the source of all movement for the runners. Not until he makes contact with the ball -- reversing the direction of the pitch – can the runners advance along their paths. The life of the runners remains static – the runners do not “run” -- which is to say the conscious attitude and mind remains reified -- without the inducement from the batter – at which point they round the bases in counterclockwise fashion until these one-time BATTERS return to home plate as RUNNERS, at which point they become part of the score and disappear from the field. This process strikes me a symbol of cyclic development, in which we seek to leave the current state of the psyche – conscious and unconscious – deemed “home” only to return AT A HIGHER LEVEL. There is a three-dimensional spiral structure implicit in this two-dimensional diamond, where we climb as we circle, returning frequently to the same longitude but at a higher latitude. It is truly a marriage of conservative and progressive instincts embedded in the nature of the psyche, which seeks to move forward without moving beyond or outside itself. In Jungian psychology, this is one aspect of the trickster archetype. One more point about development – and that is that we are constantly revising – constantly updating -- our histories such that no event will feel the exact same way in memory in the future as it does now. I suspect that these changes are subtle and that they occur on a daily basis so that we may not realize our memories – our versions of history – are being transformed at all. We forget aspects of the previous memory. I also suspect dreams play a role in this revision process.”

Now the name of the batter in the dream – “Ishben” -- is spelled phonetically here but when I spell it phonetically in German – which I took in high school – it becomes ich bin, or “I am.” The journey from home plate to second base refers to the effect of conscious awareness on unconscious material – which is similar to that which produces a diamond from carbon, i.e. refinement, elaboration, application and direction. This occurs especially for that material with which we identify personally or which are used to help us negotiate the needs and requirements of the external world. The material – call it skills, qualities, or ideas -- becomes incorporated into our routine activities and interpersonal relationships – becomes part of our lifestyle and is budgeted an allocation of energy we appreciate as meaning or significance. Jung refers to this process as PROGRESSION. I believe that the matriculation from home plate to second base is symbolic of this process. I believe that mainly because second base is that part of the diamond that is furthest from the point of origin in home plate.

But when the runner arrives at second base, he has arrived at a part of the field related by similarity and opposition to home plate. By this I mean that second base is aligned with home plate and that upon this base, the runner realizes that each additional stride will take him closer rather than further from home. It is at this point in the movement that progression has run its course. Our ideas have reached a point in their development that their value – their purpose – their meaning – has been actualized or consumed – and we need to tap ourselves for new inspirations or else we run the risk of slipping into a bias or routine – a prejudicial lifestyle that is too inflexible to respond to new requirements from the external world and, more likely, alienates the INTERNAL process by which our character unfolds and develops according to the inherent needs of our individual psyche. At this time, we need “new material” -- we need to “recharge our batteries.” In this movement from second base to home plate, which Jung called REGRESSION, we also personalize – or determine the personal meaning of – aspects of the external world we encountered on the way to second base. In other words, we think of aspects of our involvement in the world from a perspective that helps us to understand ourselves better. This relationship in and of itself is a potential source of new learning that can infuse us in such a way as to determine the nature of the next spontaneous idea. Regression is an important stage in development – it is in psychological terms FORWARD and not backward movement, which is why the runner continues to face forward after he turns second base and does not reverse his direction. Upon returning home – and this is critical to my point -- we are not the same person who left home as a batter. We are changed for having run the bases – which is symbolized by the fact the score is increased – so that in effect we begin our developmental cycle from the same place but at a higher elevation.

Now around the time I experienced this baseball dream – and indeed over my entire lifespan – I have dreamt of tornadoes. A tornado is this basic development structure – this coil – expressed in the substance of wind. The winds inside a tornado move in the same direction in which the runners round the bases – that is, counterclockwise – and debris that ascends in the funnel can be said to repeatedly visit all points but at a higher elevation. Even more coincidentally, scientists believe that inside the funnel – at its center – at its eye (or “I”) -- is a stillness – a space in which air travels calmly in a direct vertical path up into the atmosphere. This fact has its counterpart in the baseball dream, when Ishben (“I am”) hits a nubber (a slow roller) directly up the center of the diamond inside a “whirlwind” of confused and crowded infielders. The connection between these two motifs, the baseball diamond and the tornado – may have been alluded to in 990110 – when I dreamed that a tornado raked over rocks in a dark room, transforming coal instantaneously into perfectly cut and polished diamonds. The tornado also halved a penny – a powerful image akin to splitting the atom. The penny is the indivisible unit of value in our economic system and its halving may refer to Ishben’s grounder, which halved the baseball diamond into two triangles. The triangle on the right containing the vertices HOME-1B-2B would form the symbolic equivalent of progression, while the triangle on the left containing 2B-3B-HOME would form the symbolic equivalent of regression. Both progression and regression form an indivisible unit of value in the sense that one without the other compromises development. I will revisit this issue later when I take up the pitfalls of psychological development.

The Addresses

Around the time I experienced the baseball dream, I was mindful of some other peculiarity about my dreams in recent weeks: the use of a variety of former residences as dream settings. It occurred to me that my childhood home – featured prominently in these dreams – may correspond in some way to home plate in the baseball dream. I remember the address of my childhood home – 121 – which struck me as analogous to the view of the baseball diamond from home plate. Reading from left to right, the first base – which is THIRD base – is ONE (1) base-path away from home plate; second base is TWO (2) base-paths away – and first base is ONE (1) base-path away. If we connect the numbers, we get 1 – 2 – 1. I was inspired at this time to consider my current residence at the time of the dream, which was 210, and I realized that 210 may describe the view of the diamond from THIRD base. At the immediate left of third base was second base (2), followed by first base (1), and home plate (0). (Home plate is 0 because it is not a base and cannot be occupied, and yet comes before first base, i.e. before 1). And then I remembered the address just before my current address, which is 2025, which I believe described the view of the baseball diamond from SECOND base. Now second base is different because it stares directly into home plate. Home plate is the center view, which may underscore second base at a critical point in the cycle. I am also reminded of the statement from Jung that one cannot directly see or know the Unconscious source of oneself, but only infer it indirectly. So what does one see when one looks home from second base? Is the view deflected – distributed – in such a way – such that a runner on second base sees the rest of the diamond plus himself on second base? This would make sense since second point – as the most elevated and reified point of conscious awareness – would be tantamount to self-awareness. So to look directly at home plate from second base creates a hall-of-mirrors effect in which the person sees the sum of the VIEWS of every base from EVERY OTHER BASE. First base is associated with a (2), the sum of a 1 and a 1 – views from home plate and third base. Home plate remains 0. Third base is associated with a (2), the sum of a 1 and a 1 – views from home plate and first base. And the address would not be complete without a special FOURTH digit to indicate self-awareness here – the view of second base FROM second base. Second base is associated with a (4), the sum of 2 from home plate, 2 from third base, and a one from first base (or if you are not comfortable with the 1 from first base, perhaps you would be comfortable adding a 1 as an emergent property, a hidden contribution from the unseen home plate). Or maybe this extra 1 is hinted by the ball, which is hit directly at second base off the bat of Ishben.

Having discussed what second base meant at length, perhaps I should elaborate on what it means to be on third, because it is apparent from the math here that each of the bases is a little different. The address of home plate is made up of the DISTANCES from THIS place of each of the other places on the diamond. Third base is different. Third base is made up of the COORDINATES of the other bases themselves independently of their distance from (i.e., relationship to) third base. Second base is TWO because it is second base, not because it is two base-paths from third base -- because it isn’t. And first base is ONE because it is FIRST base, not because it is one base-path from third base -- because it isn’t. Third base would appear to refer to a very objective accounting of where one has been before one stepped on THIRD base. This is actually descriptive of this point in the cycle, of the role of self-reflection within the cycle. As I mentioned earlier, we also personalize – or determine the personal meaning of – aspects of the external world we encountered on the way to second base. In other words, we think of aspects of our involvement in the world from a perspective that helps us to understand ourselves better. We also at this time take stock of the process. Having valued what we created – and remaining somewhat attached to the previous state out of which we unfold – we are retrospective. We look backward as well as forward – and this gives us a sense of how we are in the middle of a process.

The addresses around the baseball diamond -- the fact each address is composed of the coordinates -- or distance -- or view from -- the other bases causes me to think not only of the meaning of the various points of the cycle but also of the intrinsic relatedness among motivations that on the surface seem disparate. Just HOW is each of these motivations a variation or version of each other? I must confess that even after some rumination, the motivations assert a qualitative independence that defies the intrinsic relatedness hinted in the dream. Perhaps it is one of those empirical realities that is impenetrable to armchair logic. Experience, unlike logic, is irrational but no less truthful. I have always feared that a psychology controlled by pure philosophers or theoreticians (i.e., pure intellects) would be lacking -- that the references to irrational tendencies in human nature are references nonetheless based almost exclusively on logic. I have always respected the attempt by the scientist to access that aspect of nature that TRANSCENDS logic. And while I am convinced that the experimental method and other devices can transcend logic up to a point, I am also convinced that as a product of a SUPERFICIAL and SOCIALLY COMPROMISED logic, these methods also transcend the NATURE OF THE SUBJECT MATTER I care most about -- the human psyche. For this reason, I seek a logic so deep as to perhaps be one with the laws of human experience -- a logic so deep as to blur the distinction between logic and experience. I refer here to dreams -- objective and spontaneous products of the psyche -- that can best instruct us how to approach the study of the psyche. But while I infer facts about the psyche from the wisdom and raw experience of the dream, I frequently encounter facts I do not understand at all or that do not resonate with me. At this time, I treat these facts as possibilities with a metaphysical value, and assuming deficiencies in my intellect and my experience, I seek relief in research. THIS is why I do research -- to access the experiences that demonstrate the similarities and differences (i.e. the relationships) among putatively discrete entities. The need for this research will become painfully apparent a little later in this summary. Physicists were motivated to use research by a similar purpose, i.e. to enhance and beautify a body of literature which already explained all motion in the universe in terms of four laws: (1) Gravity; (2) Strong and Weak Nuclear forces; and (4) Electromagnetism. The new Z particle theory attempted to explain how each of these forces was a variant of the others and of temperature. Such a theory integrated the literature into a more efficient and aesthetic whole with a functional benefit: the capacity to explain the evolution of matter in the universe.

Click here for additional notes on the relevance of other dreams for the development of this model.