This is my attempt to fuse the popular notion of dream analysis with the empirical notion of dream research. In this extemporaneous piece, I offer what I hope will qualify as a tutorial for persons interested in empirically researching their own individual dream. I felt this was lacking in psychology, which would only deal with x number of dreams from n number of subjects -- that is, where it purports to deal with dreams at all. But what of the individual dream and what it should mean to the individual dreamer? How can he/she empirically approach the dreams that mean the most to them -- their dreams?

MOYER: “You mentioned there is a difference between dream research and dream analysis.”

EHRENFELS: “When someone sits down to analyze a dream, the aim is usually to find in the dream some wisdom with respect to how the dreamer should achieve or alleviate what the dreamer has consciously identified as an important aim or source of distress at this particular time. Toward that end, the analyst -- usually the dreamer himself -- attempts to translate or decode the dream, treating each image as a surrogate for some discrete entity in his current waking life.”

MOYER: “And you sound like you don’t approve.”

EHRENFELS: “I don’t disapprove. I just like to distinguish my kind of research from this more ego-centered and agenda-driven type of interpretation. Analysis is a lot like tobacco research conducted by tobacco companies. The research is funded and carried out to serve a purpose other than – or narrower than -- the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The dream analysis distorts the dream by emphasizing only those aspects with relevance for the waking goal. In effect, the dream is recast – translated into the language of the waking state.”

MOYER: “And your research?”

EHRENFELS: “Well, there are different types of research. I have done and enjoy doing empirical dream research like the kind discussed in the Experiography section. But that research is impersonal, which is to say there is no attempt to delve into the details of one’s own – or any one person’s – dream. In fact, in this kind of research the dream is secondary to a hypothesis about dreams or to an aspect of the dream highlighted by the hypothesis. The research I performed for Experiography was science-centered, which is to say it is organized by a hypothesis about the relationship between dreams and waking life. But what I want to discuss here is different because it starts with no preconceptions, conditions, or filters. This research is the purest possible expression of an open minded interest in the most fundamental question: “what is the dream?” The research I want to discuss here has been mistaken for dream analysis in that I delve deeply into the details of one or more of my own dreams. Psychology professors make the mistake of measuring the scientific value of a project by its sample size, and those skeptics on steroids who do not like dreaming will jump at the opportunity to dismiss whatever dream research they can as a collection of case studies or self-indulgent musings. You have to judge the scientific merits of a project by its methodology (and that includes its 'attitude' and faithfulness to the facts), but never judge it by its sample size or even by how many numbers the researcher can work in his article or how sophisticated a statistical technique he can select. I find all this indiscriminate and often-arbitrary, gratuitous, superfluous, or precipitous rigor all so cosmetic. But what I do is not dream analysis. It is really a very different animal altogether because I am not looking for the first -- or even second or third -- opportunity to settle on some 'interpretation.' The assumption here is not that the dream exists for the sake of the waking state, though pragmatically I realize we all want to be able to use dreams to understand or better our waking states. My goal is to understand the broader functions of dreams in terms of its language -- and that means understanding that dream language on its own terms -- its own voice -- rather than jumping at the first bad translation.

MOYER: “So then in your view there are three different types of work that people can do with dreams.”

EHRENFELS: “Yes. And that is a tremendous source of confusion. People understand me differently when I say I do “dream research.” I always feel like I need to elaborate – to disabuse them of their misconceptions. I’m sure this confusion played no small role in my difficulties gaining admission to graduate schools – not that any kind of dream research is acceptable to any of these drones.”

MOYER: “So tell me a little more about your individual dream research.”

EHRENFELS: "Well, it has always been my belief that what you experience when you are dreaming is comparable to surgery. You are experiencing changes to the cognitive structures at the foundation of waking awareness -- to the sources of that sense organ known as consciousness -- such that when you awaken in the morning, you are predisposed to perceive things in a slightly different way. A computer metaphor might help here. The dream is what you see on the monitor, the ouput of a programming script that is running in the background and that is re-calibrating or readjusting the very sense organ [consciousness] through which you know everything -- self and world. So it is really nothing miraculous to say that a dream can bare a remarkable resemblance to a future event or state of mind, because the dream is a concrete depiction of potential or evolving states of awareness -- consciousness as a work in progress. This is not to say that dreams predict future events. Far from it. Dreams present a glimpse of the sense organ itself, which to varying degrees across various dreams, may have a situation or object as its focus and, insofar as it does, you can discern some references to things in the dream that might be perceived down the road as having 'come true.' But bare in mind that the sense organ is itself responsible for taking that object as its focus and for giving it its meaning and properties. To take this one step further, the sense organ is under various conditions oriented by the same unconscious factors that responsible for architecting the dream."
MOYER: "Specifically, how does the dream make these changes?"

EHRENFELS: "I imagine there must be various ways to conceptualize this. The dream redistributes value or energy across the criteria for waking decisions and interpretations. It is important to remember that dreams are experiences, and that you are conditioned by these experiences in much the same way you are conditioned by waking experiences, only this conditioning is far more potent because it lacks the random and arbitrary elements of waking experience. Dreaming is the language of experience."

MOYER: "And how does this factor in to your analysis of dream material?"

EHRENFELS: "In a dream experience, you encounter the same cornucopia of sensations and events you encounter in waking life. There is color. There is movement. There is shape. There is substance. However, unlike in waking reality, in which there is a largely arbitrary or random component, in dream experiences there is a shared aspect that cuts across or threads all this material. A cross-categorical or transcendental pattern. For example, if you diagram your walk from point A to point B in a dream, you might realize that you have just diagrammed a shape that also happens to describe a key object in the dream. I think too many analysts prematurely look for associations between the dream and the waking state, when this stage could benefit considerably from first documenting all the associations the dream has within itself. The dream is replete with all kinds of what I call self-similarities that make up the dream's internal consistency or structure. There is an architecture. Conversely, the dream is also replete with oppositionality, or diametrically contrasting elements. It is useful to note as many of these self-similarities and oppositionalities as possible because they form a structure."

MOYER: "Is that structure interpretable?"

EHRENFELS: "I think so, but I don't like to approach the dream as if it a one-to-one encryption of images to hidden meanings. The dream is a transformative experience and not a purely intellectual statement. There is some change to you that is taking place when you dream and I suspect this change occurs whether you interpret the dream or not, whether you even recall the dream or not. In this sense, there is a hard determinism at work, but there are also ways to take control. Dream work and insight can give you some control over the effects and from this soft determinism standpoint, and I use this term because insight can soften the effect of the dream experience, the effects simply become pressures to which you choose to respond in various ways. Awareness changes everything. I think awareness can be expanded by dream work, and I also believe the awareness can be used to modify the effects of the dream and determine the content of future dreams, which naturally react to what you know -- to the contents of your awareness. It is a dialogue. Awareness coupled with an open-minded attitude toward the irrational and unknown, keeps the relationship between conscious and unconscious states fluid and flexible and most likely one of cooperation or coordination."

MOYER: "Where do nightmares fit into all this?"

EHRENFELS: "You're one step ahead of me, Kate. Ah, yes, we tend to have nightmares when the relationship between these two states grows antagonistic as a result of a rigid or prejudicial attitude. Such an attitude introduces a bias or constraint. The more biases and constraints accumulate, the less flexibility we have to adjust to demands or to mature as personalities. So the dreaming mind creates an experience that really turns the table on us, one in which we become the object against which dream characters, settings, and actions are prejudiced. It's the perfect revenge."

Skipping ahead in the transcript

EHRENFELS: "It actually deals with the content of the dream -- and ALL the content of the dream. Understanding the dream – and how it works is paramount. You see – the dream itself is created unconsciously, which is to say, we do not willfully create it. So the dream is concerned with the whole psyche, which includes not only the person’s conscious personality and conscious life, but his unconscious life as well. An objective and scrupulous reflection of the dream’s details reveals patterns – a rich tapestry – which is entirely unconcerned with the dreamer’s waking attitudes and priorities but which clearly address the dreamer’s current condition. I believe that these patterns reveal the structure and dynamics of the psyche, probably because the psyche as a whole, unlike any “language” we know, is a language in which meaning and image are one. The psyche speaks through its basic structure and psyche. It does not have to translate or convert. And I do not suggest that the symbolic language is anything like an image alphabet where a particular image always means the same thing. Conscious reasoning and social communication demands that a language have a sign and a referent and that a relatively static or fixed relationship exist between these two them. The psyche does not even have any static or fixed units. Not only could a tornado mean somewhat different things from one dream to the next, but in one dream the tornado may stand alone as a purveyor of meaning whereas in another a tornado only has meaning in dynamic relation to certain other surrounding images. But my major point here is that a dream deals in the outer circumstances of the person’s life, but also in the psyche itself which unfolds according to various cycles and it is more often than not these cycles that determine the meaning of external circumstances and that a life at any point in time can be defined by the relationship between outer circumstances and the status of the cycle. This is how a dream is able to anticipate future events, and do so not literally, but as a symbolic blueprint. First of all, it portrays the future (as any other time) as the future of the inner state, and secondly, presents the whole state, and not one with a particular outer event (of waking concern to the dreamer) at its center. What also complicates interpretation is the fact that a dream is a “snapshot” of the psyche’s current condition. If anything can be gleaned about the psyche’s current state, it must be done in the context of the psyche’s timeless principles as well as in the context of the past and future of the psyche.”

MOYER: “What did you mean by ‘meaning and image are one’?”

EHRENFELS: “I meant that the dream is not the communications officer for the psyche. You will stand a far better chance of understanding dreams and the psyche if you know they are one and the same function. For this reason, I do not like to treat the content of the dream as representations of latent thoughts as Freud had done. Such an approach over-emphasizes the importance of the discrete images in the dreams and by that I mean the nouns – persons, places, things. The dream also contains movements and events – there are also feelings, intentions, and intuitions. Every detail is important – down to the direction in which something moves – such as East or counterclockwise. When I employ my method for establishing patterns in the dreams, it is important I minimize the number of details that I omit.”

MOYER: “What about the relationship between the psyche and the conscious personality?”

EHRENFELS: “Because the conscious personality is also not separate from the psyche as a whole, I believe that the psyche communicates through its effects. I do not believe dreams ask for our understanding or make any other kind of requests. It does not reach out and say ‘psst’ and wait for our attention. A dream is also not like a classroom instructor. By the time a dream speaks, we have already been fundamentally altered. I think it may be more accurate to refer to “effects” than “communications.” Some theorists choose to assume that dreams are portraits of our current condition. Whether they mean that or not, I think that metaphor implies that dreams simply hang on the wall inside our psyche as a painting or as photographs in an album. Yes, they do “display,” but what they show is the source of a transformation which occurred while we were dreaming and – a transformation that would not have taken place if it were not for the dream itself. Some theorists treat dreams as a vessel of images, like a blank sheet of paper with some code written on it. I like Jung’s metaphor better. In one of his works he corrected Freud when Freud referred to dreams as the façade of a house. Jung added that like any façade, the dream betrays an interior arrangement, and one full of life. It is this arrangement I seek to uncover in each dream. This is why I call myself a ‘Jungian.’”

MOYER: “So to you, dreams are experiences.”

EHRENFELS: “Yes, with a power to transform greater than most waking experiences, because the source and object of the transformation – and by that I mean the transformer and the transformed – are one-in-the-same. There is more to the dream than just a potential to change, because unlike waking experiences, dreams do not need to become relevant – they are created from all that is most relevant. So whatever effects or benefits there might be from remembering the dream or from interpreting it, I believe it is important to bare in mind the reasonable hypothesis that there are effects – probably the intended ones -- that coincide with the fact of the dream. Granted, recall and interpretation are may be necessary to unlock some potential changes in the dream and build what is contained in its blueprint, but for the most part, I believe memory and interpretation are useful in a different way. I believe they provide us with the chance – and a choice – to counteract the effect of the dream – to keep the dream’s effects within us from determining our decisions and perceptions should we find such effects unwelcome. Of course, I make it sound so much simpler than it is. The process is so time-consuming, that if you do find a few hours in your day to spend on the dream, that more often than not you have just enough time to glean the pattern and whet your appetite. But then there are those dreams – those Big Dreams – you feel compelled to make time for.”

MOYER: “Dreams have that much an effect.”

EHRENFELS: “Because the experience is unconscious, it affects us in ways we are not aware, and these effects can assert themselves in our lives in ways we cannot predict, control, or even see. When we consider the sum of our decisions and actions and perceptions, we take them for granted and attribute them all to consciousness, when in fact, most of them are determined at an unconscious level, expressed in, but most likely architected by, our dream experiences. The experience itself affects our moods and values – our sensitivities and thresholds -- our criteria for decision-making – re-asserting some – redistributing others – probably in very subtle ways so that when we awaken we do not suspect anything has changed in us.”

MOYER: “Sounds to me like surgery.”

EHRENFELS: “I couldn’t have put it better myself, Kate. Like surgery, every night our psyche goes under the knife. How radical the surgery is -- and how necessary -- depends on the relationship between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche and ultimately by how healthy an attitude we have toward the unknown and the irrational in our lives. The psyche is a system that continually redistributes its parts to remain in harmony with itself and with new experiences. If its natural flexibility is undermined by our conscious prejudices, there are system-wide consequences. I liken this to an unbalanced diet high in cholesterol. Under extreme or prolonged conditions of prejudice, major arteries can close up, and we can suffer a heart attack. The very center of our psyche -- the very structure or foundation of the psyche -- pick your metaphor -- re-asserts itself like an appeals court judge on behalf of the Constitution of the US when it is violated by a new law.”

MOYER: “And does the bizarre quality of dreams reflect this re-distribution?”

EHRENFELS: “I believe so. And if you read about bizarreness in my dissertation – which will also be posted on the site when it launches in February – you will see how in my sample of cancer patients those who denied the effects of the cancer – I called this a ‘conservative coping strategy’ – reported the most bizarre dreams. But you will also read that patients who employed a ‘progressive coping strategy’ – who pledged sweeping reforms in their lives and in their characters – experienced dreams where the imagery was remarkably non-bizarre but where the affect was intensely negative.”

MOYER: “Nightmares.”

EHRENFELS: “Yes. I believe a psychological ‘heart attack’ was had here as well. But the structure and dynamics of the psyche became most evident in the third group of patients whose coping strategy seemed relatively balanced. But I don’t want to get too far away from the point – the metaphors I have used up to this point describe major emotional and perceptual shifts in a person that directly oppose and sabotage his waking attitude and agenda. The psyche can be so cunning this way; it can even use the tools and materials of the conscious mind itself to undermine the aims of the conscious mind – so you make decisions and initiate acts which appear to serve reasonable – even ethical – purposes but which ultimately create effects opposite of those intended.”

MOYER: “I suspect your science-minded co-workers would not appreciate your use of metaphor.”

EHRENFELS: “I use so many metaphors because we lack a language in psychology to describe these processes – but before I blame this on Psychology – I should admit that I am not sure we should replace the language of life with lifeless jargon. The psyche itself communicates to us through the language of life, through symbols, and even through events.”

MOYER: “Through events?”

EHRENFELS: “You know we tend to think of events in life as happening TO us, as if we were selected arbitrarily. I am pretty sure we underestimate our own role in setting ourselves up for these events. We are just unaware of them because they are orchestrated at an unconscious level. So events in our lives – under the guise of objectivity and happenstance – are also part of the language through which our unconscious mind speaks to us. It’s all part of the psyche – it’s all connected. We break up the psyche six millions ways – into matter and mind – subjective and objective – conscious and unconscious – self and other – rational and irrational – concrete and abstract -- but at some level it may very well help to think of it all as one substance. You know – when we reason, we make sense of things by breaking it up into a million pieces and we always forget to put it back together again – or some of us think putting it back together again is tantamount to moving backward. We continue to immerse ourselves in the divisions until we find ourselves splitting atoms and seeking the meaning of life in the indivisible unit of matter. One of the dreams I will use to illustrate the structure and dynamics of the psyche will speak to this -- it will re-affirm the importance to progress of regressing.”

MOYER: “Well, at least you don’t have jargon to worry about in dream research.”

EHRENFELS: “They destroy everything they touch – everything they love – these psychological researchers. I suppose some good has come out of the fact they don’t love dreams. But you see – when I seek an explanation for something psychological – I am not satisfied unless I find a psychological explanation. I like to understand something on its own terms – in its own language. Researchers who seek to understand dreams and life itself by cutting open the brain really have no interest in anything other than the brain. Well, I have news for them. The brain does not think. It secretes chemicals that we attempt to correlate with thinking, and brain research has not proven useful at all in the understanding and appreciation of mental life. Even Cognitive Psychology falls short because its description of the dream -- and indeed all mentation – reads like a computer hardware manual. While a metaphorical connection between the mind and a machine can help inspire and organize research, we must temper it with the understanding that something vital is missing from their account. Not even the bare bones of mental processing look that dry and lifeless. Rather than force these accounts down our throat with the scientific label, they need to ask themselves what it is that would account for the difference between the machine-like model and the human process and then address it. I have even read about one model with compares human thinking to an analysis-of-variance, a statistical procedure we use to analyze most of our data. Clearly, these researchers have tipped their hand as to where their expertise and interest really lies.”

Structure of the Psyche

MOYER: “So – how do we do this?”

EHRENFELS: “I will lay out some principles first and then regale you with some examples. I want to remind you that I am attempting to understand the dream on its terms with as little reference as possible to external associations. This is akin to asking your eye to look upon itself without the aid of a reflective surface like a mirror. So if I had to feel blindly over the dream to discern its shape – I would have to feel for some edges. I believe that such edges exist in the form of the dream’s internal consistencies and contrasts. Within itself, a dream bares both remarkable sameness and opposition.”

MOYER: “Is this a process science-minded psychologists would frown on?”

EHRENFELS: “I don’t expect they would. It is a qualitative process, and by that I mean I am not assigning any numbers and producing the kind of raw data they can grind through their preferred statistical analyses. However, that being said, it is a fact-finding process and one not beholden to any specific theory – so it’s grass roots atheoretical – and by that I mean unbiased -- description.”

MOYER: “That part they’d like.”

EHRENFELS: “Yes. What they would not like is that I have not laid down explicit rules for adjudicating what is a similarity and what is an opposition. The conventional course of action with qualitative data in Psychology is to present these rules in some kind of training manual with which I can train some confederates – and by that I don’t mean Southerners – to collect the data from the dreams. I would then ask them to offer an independent identification of the similarities and oppositions within the dreams I looked at and quantify the extent to which our assessments agree. This is usually expressed as a percentage – the number of elements in the dream that we both listed as similarities and that we both listed as oppositions divided by the total number of elements listed between us. Incidentally, because a satisfactory standard is debatable, psychological researchers tend to simplify the manuals and hence their methods to the point where they can maximize their probability of obtaining at least 90 percent agreement. But basically my method would receive the support of the psychological community when and only when I document an acceptable reliability coefficient.”

MOYER: “Seems simple enough. So why not do that?”

EHRENFELS: “Because I believe that it isn’t necessary and that it could be counterproductive. I don’t see reliability likely here – certainly not a level impervious to criticism. There are too many expressions of sameness and opposition in a dream, and even with the most conscientious manual, I do not see how it is possible for two independent minds to identify the same subset to a tune of 80 percent. Furthermore, I want to keep my mind flexible; and if I so much as write up a manual – even just for myself -- I run the risk of constraining my thought processes – of settling into a routine in which I am biased toward recognizing some types of sameness and opposition to the exclusion of others. In other words, I don’t want to undermine my research by gilding a method prematurely – not until I have a chance to learn all I can learn about this method. Third – even if no reliability were possible and I come up with a different pattern from that of my independent rater – this will create a false impression of a flawed method, when in fact the method is an open-ended one capable of documenting equally valid patterns in the dream. After an independent rater shows me his list of similarities and oppositions, I bet I am more than willing to incorporate into my list those he had identified that I did not. This is a case where the independent rater probably should not be used to deny the validity of the research, but simply to improve it.”

MOYER: “So what would they tell you if you two did not produce a satisfactory level of agreement?”

EHRENFELS: “Go back to the drawing board. Revise the manual until you achieve sufficient agreement.”

MOYER: “And if you don’t succeed?”

EHRENFELS: “Abandon the method. But they would not have any problem with the method itself with the agreement. That being said – I don’t think I’d ever be able to publish an article that used this method. I couldn’t compete for publication because the method would lack the level of statistical sophistication and psychometric panache of most submissions. But they would have no philosophical objection to the method. In fact, I like to point out that the method bares a metaphorical similarity to a sophisticated statistical procedure known as factor analysis. That procedure partitions variance into groups based on common differences in data. I am looking for variance in an individual dream.”

MOYER: “And where do they look for variance. In a dream study, they would look for variance between dreams and between participants. For a procedure like factor analysis to be workable, you need not only quantitative data but a hell of a lot of it – so much that you don’t have the time to delve too deeply into any one source of data – just long enough to assign a number to it. This procedure is usually employed in questionnaire studies in which we ask our participants themselves to circle a number between one and seven for each of seventy questions. The approach is fairly superficial and because it is standardized – and by that I mean the questions are the same for every participant – you don’t really observe the uniqueness of the participant. Any uniqueness that exists must be expressed in terms of a unique pattern of responses across the seventy questions. It’s a ‘where do you fall on this continuum?’ sort of process that is really not a study of the person or the phenomenon but a study of the continuum itself. This research can be instructive no doubt – and it is appropriate for certain types of study like public attitudes – but I’m afraid it is over-utilized because it produces the kind of data that has the appearance of precision and that increases the odds of publication. But in my view it lacks precision, because I wouldn’t really be getting my hands dirty if I used it. When possible, I prefer to examine the phenomenon that interests me as closely as possible without any filters or short cuts. To me, the numbers conceal and occlude as much as they express.”

MOYER: “So let’s turn back to the dream.”

EHRENFELS: “Why don’t I illustrate the process with a sample dream?”

The Dream 010110 (January 10, 2001)

I was in a brilliantly-illuminated white stairwell just outside a corridor. I was accompanied by a fictitious male -- a bearded man in his late 30s or early 40s. I understood this man to be my leader, and I willingly deferred to him. I sensed our mission at this time was to escape a one-nation planet whose society could best be described as a police state. I peeked out the door into the hallway to keep a watchful eye on the armed and uniformed formation of citizens – men AND women – who marched in two columns in a blind search for my leader, our people, and me.

I remember a few skirmishes in which I fired upon and killed some of the residents of this “place.” I also remember a large conference room in which the leader and I took refuge with some of our people. We sat around an enormous square conference table – I mean this table must have been fifty feet in length -- in front of what appeared to be a theater-size movie screen which functioned as a camera monitor. There on the screen was the vast expanse of space. I remember all the stars. This view instilled in me the sense that we were far from home. (I do not recall whether we were now aboard a starship or whether we simply observed space from here as part of a simulation or rehearsal. If I had to guess, I would say this was some kind of dry run). At one point the stars re-arranged themselves to form spaceships (i.e., much like the letters that arranged themselves to form the title of my book on the splash page of its web site -- Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun).

Now we are all outdoors -- in the middle of this field – under daylight. It is sunny and clear. There is a sense that in this crucial last leg of our dash for freedom, that we will have to confront our enemies. About fifty feet ahead of us is a fifty-foot high brick wall, onto which our leader managed to secure a steel ladder. We arranged ourselves into a single line, with me in the front. Upon the leader’s instructions, I rushed the wall, running as quickly as possible to the ladder. I was aware of a responsibility to climb quickly so as not to hold up the people in line behind me. I moved quickly up the ladder until I neared the top, where I could feel the ladder begin to sway and where I feared the ladder might fall. I was able to stick my head just far enough over the wall to see the only mechanism by which the ladder was fastened – and not securely – to the wall. The top of the ladder itself curved over the wall like two claws of a grapple hook. This part of the ladder was painted a different color (I do not recall whether it was painted red or black, only that it was the same color as the wall). I became fearful of falling and so I was very conscious of where my hands were and very selective and scrupulous with respect to where and how they needed to be placed next. Before I moved one hand, I made sure the other grasp was firm, and I realized I needed to reach for the wall itself and not for a higher point on the ladder. But I was fooled by the fact the top of the ladder was painted the same color as the wall. The ladder jolted backward, but resettled into place. I was relieved it did not collapse. But I was moving too slowly. I could hear my leader yell at me from below to pick up the pace. He was desperate to know the problem, and he urged me to move forward and finish my climb. I hated to disappoint him, but I was paralyzed with self-consciousness and concern. I froze in my position while I studied the wall for a point I can grasp. At that time, I peered over the wall along the surface of this higher ground, where I saw the leader sprinting straight for my position. I surmised that somehow this man was able to save the day – and attend to my rescue -- by finding an alternate route up.

Now I am up on what appears to be higher ground bordered by a 2-3 foot concrete wall. I looked up into the sky, where I found numerous helicopters hovering at various altitudes above us. I am aware that our people are still being picked off by sniper fire from the helicopters – and that only a handful of us have survived. At this moment, it is brought to my attention that the leader himself is among the victims but that my feelings about his death were complicated – equivocated – by news of the discovery that the man was a double-agent. It occurred to me then that while the man had helped us out of every precarious position, that he may have been responsible for that position in the first place. I sensed the opposition might have killed him when it learned of his treachery. And I realized that I would never know for sure whether this man we called our leader ever intended to see this mission through to the end. His role as a double-agent would have created quite a moment of truth for him. In addition to news of the leader, I also learned that my grandfather had been killed.

Then I noticed a small snake coiled at my feet. I sensed that it was not poised to strike, and I could have walked away, but I decided to reach down and grab the snake by the head. But due to some misperception, I picked the snake up at the wrong end, alerting it to my intentions. By the time I grabbed the head of the snake, I was so uncertain in my grasp – and so surprised by its intent to struggle within it – that it managed to eke its head just far enough out to bite me on the back of my hand beneath my right thumb and forefinger. The bite itself was not painful, and I decided the snake was not poisonous. But the bite did turn a large patch of my skin a pallid white, in the middle of which were too ovular holes where its teeth had made penetration.

Now our leader-less group continued onward. Our next task was to descend to a lower level, to what would resemble a concrete patio with a swimming pool. Alik Mowais, who was the first to make that descent, took the plunge too abruptly, dropping from the top without climbing a distance first. He was debilitated when he hit the water – he just floated silently on the water -- his back broken. Now that he was unable to continue, I considered him “as good as dead.” We all did. But he was the last of us to die before we reached a small round spacecraft. I cannot remember now exactly how many of us remained (5-6), nor can I recall the identities of all those who did. My grandmother (deceased in waking reality since 1997) and mother were with me as well as two strangers – (1) a bald man with a black handle-bar mustache who looked like a biker and (2) and a beautiful blond woman with a light complexion.

As the spacecraft took off – the dream shifted – and now I am in space. There is a sense I had just awakened from having slept on the journey, and even though I knew we were in space, the environment outside the craft was a clear blue noon sky. We were all seated in fairly cramped seats. The feet of the woman behind me stretched ahead of me on either side of me, and I reached out with both hands to grasp hold of them. A few seconds later, she retracted her foot and it was brought to my attention that she was involved with the bald man. Out of spite and sadness, I announced my decision not to return to earth with the rest of them. They were completely unresponsive. Completely indifferent. As though I was never really there. At that point, the dream shifts.

Now I am on a planet. The terrain is rocky yet generally flat. It is not quite a Mars look alike, as the sky is blue and the terrain a sand-khaki color. (This is not a “red planet,” but more of a California desert). A handful of humans inhabit this planet, but they are not from earth – and thus not really “human.” These “humans” share the planet with a diverse population of humanoid inhabitants. There are creatures that resemble robots (I do not say ‘robots’ because I am not sure they are machines and not a self-sustaining biological or biomechanical race). I saw one (which resembled Iron Man a little, except without the colors, or possibly the creature from the film Iron Giant) operating a vehicle functionally equivalent to an automobile on earth. These are single-passenger vehicles. A large round glass dome encloses the head of the operator, whose body was entirely visible beneath it inside some contraption in which the body remained vertical as the feet pedaled the vehicle forward. (This is like a complex and sophisticated uni-cycle). I watched this vehicle move slavishly in its place within a column of traffic on a sandy dirt road. There were other races of creatures operating similar vehicles. (I do not recall the details of all the races depicted here; one may have been a bipedal reptilian). When I related my observation to a “human,” I used the term “division” or “class” to refer to race. The “human” stared at me in puzzlement for a moment before it became apparent to me that no such distinctions existed here on this planet. This “human” did not see the differences that were so obvious to me. I was also aware that dinosaurs inhabited the planet.

Now I am in this cabin-like structure where I intended to spend the night. In the back of my mind was the anxiety that some dinosaur could come ripping through here at any time. This was a fact of life here, and the residents have grown accustomed to it. A beautiful blond woman also lived here, and I was disappointed by the fact that as the only female “human” inhabitant, she was already married to one of the other “humans.” My pet Persian cat – Kit -- also lived here. I left the room to look for something (I do not recall what) and as I walked through this dark wooden hall, it occurred to me that I did not belong on this planet. I did not possess the skills needed to help these humans build a civilization. I thought to myself that I was a “big” “abstract” thinker, not an engineer like the others. I thought I should dispossess them of any misconceptions they might have of me. Upon opening a door to find – to my horror -- a Kit look-alike dash out – that one of the residents had fooled around with cloning. At that moment, about a dozen other cats that bore likeness to my pet scurried out from the behind the door. I say ‘bare likeness’ – because there was some feature – a detail that yet affected the entire appearance of the cat – that made the cat look just a little different. In most cases, this was simply that the hair was innately or constitutionally disheveled. Still, I was horrified – horrified that I might lose the real Kit in a sea of look-alikes and horrified that these cats were not really real. They were not “of nature” or if “of nature” they were not “of God.” And if not of God or Nature, then what were they? How could they exist in THIS universe? I did not feel part of the same universe as them.

Now I am outdoors wandering the daytime landscape when I came across one of the “humans” (who I suspected was the husband of the beautiful woman and leader of “humans”). He had yellow hair and a light complexion. I was amazed with what he had just designed and supervised: here – in the middle of barren land – there was a small stretch of earth – a row of streetlamps overlooking a paved road. I stared up into the face of the streetlamps – into these sophisticated technical products and asked him how he managed to “manufacture” the light bulbs, i.e. from the raw materials of this planet. Suddenly, over their shoulders, and on the horizon, there was the head and neck of a Giant brontosaurus. I turned and ran as it approached. As we all scattered, I realized that this was a hazard of life on this planet, that these dinosaurs could at any point destroy part, if not all, of what is built here. A few of us attempted to hide in this small one-room structure, but our hiding spot was snuffed out by the dinosaur, which was now a small yellow creature that resembled a gingerbread man. Even though its appearance had changed, I never stopped thinking as if it were this enormous unassailable dinosaur. In desperation, I grabbed hold of its legs and twist-tied them. As we fled from the scene, we entered this much larger structure where a large bearded “human” goaded me into wrestling him. He was a professional wrestler, and in my reticence – my apprehension -- I told him that while I had a lot of raw strength, I did not possess his training – his knowledge of the techniques. We circled for a moment, and I managed to grab hold of his legs and turn him on his head. I pushed the upside-down wrestler back-first against the wall, and he went limp, not resisting, not countering with any force of his own. But then I realized he did not evaluate the match the same way I did. As long as he was not pinned – and the match not over – I was not winning. I was awakened by my alarm as I decided to pin him.

I was so involved in the dream – the dream so vivid – such another world -- that it was almost traumatic to awaken so quickly and involuntarily. I continued to see dynamic images in front of my eyes – even seconds after I was awake. The image of an angry face – that of the child who plays “Malcolm” on the FOX network television sit-com “Malcolm in the Middle” -- probably expresses an anger that I had to leave this dream-world for the real one.

Groundwork for an Interpretation

If I weaved together all the observations I made across my dream diary, I would arrive at conclusions much more sophisticated than the ones I have offered thus far. And indeed now that I have been banished from the field of Psychology, I have the time and authorization to proceed with this project (for which the next few pages is simply a germ). I think it is clear that there is a structure within these dreams. Whether this structure is the “structure of the dream language” or whether it is a symbol for the structure of the broader psyche remains very much a question here. I realize that by brainstorming over some very rudimentary observations and that by documenting these inchoate notions here, I am exposing myself to every fashion of criticism and ridicule by the “professionals” who, figuratively speaking, will not allow you to see them outside a tuxedo. However, I believe it is crucial for a researcher to account for as much of his reasoning as possible. I believe that if the reasoning of psychological researchers was laid out in plain view, that the public would understand that its approach is no where near as polished or finished or ironclad as people are led to believe – that the public would see the conventional scientific or statistical methodology for what it is – a philosophical position and not a sacrosanct Covenant with nature itself. These brainstorms of mine are intended to encourage thinking about and yes – even empirical research into – the structure, dynamics, and development of the psyche and the role of oppositionality and symbolism within that system. In this solid earth do I build the foundation for my house. At present I have no house to show, but if only the academics would let you into THEIR house would you see it has no foundation. And some day soon, it will wash away or collapse under its own weight. Hopefully when it does, it will not be replaced by another such artifice. Unlike the academics I have nothing bold to claim, but then I have nothing to hide either.

The dream can be divided into a number of self-repeating units. I think you will find by the time I am done here that there is a parallel structure among the different episodes in the dream.

The streetlamp and the dinosaur – as they are portrayed in the dream – have a remarkably similar form. The dinosaur, visible over the horizon from its neck up, forms a slender vertical shape that curves upward into a budding protrusion at the head. Similarly, the streetlamp is a slender vertical shape that curves into a budding protrusion where we find the bulb. This similarity is a critical piece of evidence in our case for the relationship between these two objects – a relationship to which we can add such other forms of evidence as interaction (i.e., the objects are not only in the same scene, but face one another) and opposition (i.e., the objects face one another because of an opposite orientation, and this opposition is underscored by the fact the dinosaur aims to destroy the streetlamp). The opposition between the dinosaur and streetlamp is underscored by a contrariety between the properties that define them. The dinosaur is understood within the dream to be a prehistoric being, while the streetlamp is received as a technology erected to advance the civilization of this planet.

Conservative & Progressive Instincts

I start with this episode of the dream because it is clear to me immediately that it bares relevance to the mission which is being advanced as I speak by the publication of my book and its website. In an ongoing series of interviews with publicist Katherine Moyer, I have criticized the abandonment in the name of science and professionalism of the most conservative principle in Psychology – human nature. I have basically complained that Psychologists would prefer to engineer the infrastructure of their own profession – and their own individual careers – than capture the timeless essence of the human condition. The opposition implied here is one between conservative and progressive approaches, an implication that may have been facilitated by the memory of a passage in Jung’s Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious about conservative and progressive instincts in the human psyche. It may also have been facilitated by the memory of my own doctoral dissertation, in which I classified cancer patients on the basis of vastly different coping strategies that lent themselves to this distinction (see Dreaming & Stress Coping in Cancer Patients). In the dream, I realized that dinosaurs were likely to destroy only and exactly half of all the new civilization, which may have been the dream’s way of portraying a natural balance between these two instincts.

Regression & Progression

Before I return to this dream, I find I must elaborate on the process by what conservative and progressive instincts are balanced in the human psyche. This explanation is provided again by Carl Jung and illustrated in one of my cousin's dreams 980205 (i.e., dream for the fifth of February in the year 1998).

980205 (THE DREAM OF FEBRUARY 5, 1998)

In my cousin's dream, he observed from directly over the stadium a Yankees-Red Sox game. The Sox were batting in the bottom of the 9th, and with 2 out a batter by the name of Daniel Ishben (at least that's how I decided to spell it upon wakening) stepped to the plate 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 infield, trickling beneath the pitcher's 2 legs and between the 2 confused infielders on either side of the 2nd base bag. Two runs scored, including the runner who had occupied 2nd base, bringing the game to an abrupt end.

I'd like to impress upon you the dream's unique mathematical properties. Around the time my cousin experienced this baseball dream, I was mindful of some other peculiarity in his impressive dream diary around the time of the dream: the use of a variety of former residences as dream settings. He dreamed of his childhood home. He dreamed of his current home. He even dreamed of the residence he occupied just prior to this one. Some hunch compelled me to examine whether the numbers associated with these addresses could be mapped on the baseball diamond, with its 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base and, yes, it's "home" plate, point of both ORIGIN and DESTINATION in the pastoral sport of baseball.

It occurred to me that his childhood home - featured prominently in these dreams - may correspond in some way to home plate in the baseball dream. The address of his childhood home -- 121. How could "121" fit the baseball diamond? Well, if you are a batter standing at home plate, 3rd base is 1 unit of distance away, second base is 2 units of distance away, and 1st base is 1 unit of distance away. "121" is an expression of the view of the infield from home plate.

I was inspired at this time to consider my cousin's residence at the time of the dream, which was 210. If I were viewing the infield from 3rd base, 2nd base is immediately to my left, followed by 1st base, and then home plate, to which we can assign a 0 because it is not a base and cannot be occupied, and yet comes before first base, i.e. before 1. 2 - 1 - 0. Little did my cousin know at the time he would be moving to a city where he'd actually put down roots nearly as deep as those he put down as a child. By symbolizing his current residence as 3rd base, this drream is communicating that he will soon begin the next meaningful chapter in his life, bringing him full circle from a HOME OF ORIGIN to the HOME OF HIS MAKING.

Now if I plot the numbers on the bases, "121" from Home Plate plots 1 on 3B, 2 on 2B, and 1 on 1B. "210" from 3B also plots the 2 on 2B, also plots the 1 on 1B, and plots a 0 on home plate (which makes sense since home plate is not really a base but a point of origin that precedes 1B). These two addresses then give us numerical assignments for all four bases.

Home plate = 0
1B = 1
2B = 2
3B = 1

And then I took up the address just prior to his current address, which is 2025. Just how does the four-digit address "2025" express the view of the infield from 2nd base?

If we read the bases from the vantage point of 2B (and this is the same whether we read clockwise or counterclockwise), we read 1-0-1-2. If we double this number, we end up with 2-0-2-4, just one digit shy of the "2025" address! We do not have to just double 1-0-1-2 willy nilly without an explanation. There may be meaning in the fact 2024 (an approximation of the "2025" address) is derived from a doubling of 1-0-1-2. Unlike the other bases, 2B stares directly into that special place on the diamond that cannot be occupied and that serves as both point of origin and destination. (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, much like one only sees oneself in a mirror or much like astronomers have to infer black holes from its pull on nearby stars). So what does one see when one looks home from 2B? The four digits suggests that the view of 2B is included among the diamond viewed. This suggests self-awareness. At this point, I am inspired to think of the diamond as a representation of the human psyche, the structure and dynamics of which preoccupied us intellectually in a late-evening discussion. Then it occurred to me. This conversation may have still been on his mind as he slept. Many theorists equate dreaming to a form of sleep thinking. The dream may have picked up where we left off in our pre-sleep reflections. In this dream may be the answer to some important questions, or at least a useful perspective.

Human development, at both the micro (day-to-day dynamics) and macro (individuation across life span) levels, can be conceptualized as movement along the basepaths. At the point of origin, all thoughts originate from outside our awareness. Home plate refers to 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 Daniel Ishben in the dream supports this interpretation, as "Ich bin" is German for "I am." If I trace back the evolution of all my thinking, I end up with a dimly perceived or spontaneous hunch, vision, or feeling. As we take control of the thought, subjecting it to our consciousness, it is refined to the point where we begin to think of it as our own product (1B, 2B). At some point, we may even identify with it, or if we're talking about our identity, we may become so foreclosed on our identity as to deny ourselves the freedom and flexibility necessary for further growth or adjustment. We are said at this point to be stuck on 2B, stranded on our own island to tend to our self-awareness. We may pride ourselves on our distance from our sources, developing a prejudice that causes us to frown on all things intuitive, spontaneous, undeveloped, or outside our control. (Actually, I have indicted the whole field of Psychology as being so stuck).

Now around the time my cousin experienced this baseball dream – and indeed over his entire lifespan – he's 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 he 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.

Back to the Dream

Dream 011001 alludes at multiple points to the coil motif incarnated in previous dreams as a tornado and a baseball diamond. It is an important motif. I will later demonstrate how it has manifested itself in so many other dreams. The coil motif may be embedded at some level in the structure of every dream. This would not surprise me because as the symbol of the indivisible yet repeating unit of psychological development, when is it not relevant?

The manifestation of the coil motif in 011001 that I noticed first is the ironic circumstances of the planet’s civilization. As impressed as I am in the dream with the efforts to develop the planet, I am disappointed that the development should merely mirror those that had already taken place on Earth. There is a sense here that history is being repeated and that no genuine progress is taking place. It is as if we are “running forward into the back side of ourselves” – which also calls the coil to mind. I use that phrase – “running forward into the back side of ourselves” – because it is a recurrent variation of the coil motif in my dream history.

The Water Coil

“I was in California. The dream became quite vivid at this moment. It was dusk, but there was enough light left so that I could tell the sky was dark overcast. There was a storm in the area. I remember thinking about the possibility of a tornado ravaging the land, but as I ran toward the road, I was surprised to see a giant wave building. But the ocean was behind me! A man’s voice cried out “tsunami!” It was quite scary to see this thing build in mass so quickly. Everyone walking in the same direction as I had stopped in his or her tracks and reversed direction toward the building -- behind which there was apparently an ocean. As I ran, I knew there was no way I could escape from the tsunami. I was afraid as hell of the thing, but I hoped I could just put enough distance between the tsunami and me to soften its blow. I would not look at it. Suddenly, as I ran I was lifted into the air. There was water beneath my feet, but the water stopped rising, and only I rose, lifted by a current in the air itself. This was an amazing feeling. It was the force of the tsunami. Supposedly this is how it worked. The water opposite the tsunami (somehow behind it but really in front of it [because the tsunami came from land]) thinned as it raced back into the ocean, thus creating a tide that pulled me. The air current that lifted me was a part of the watery mass. It was all part of the same system. The air current was created by the undertow of water. I knew that being lifted into the air was a warning that the tsunami was about to swallow me up from behind. A shadow crept over me. Was I being pulled in under the mass of the tsunami or would I ride on top of it? Would I survive? I do not recall the culmination of this escalating process, or if in fact there was one. Suddenly, the tsunami was over and I survived it.”

The tide in front of me recedes into the ocean. As I chase it, it thins out at my feet. Here I believe a symbolic link is established between this part of the water and the lowest point on my body. I say ‘this part of the water,’ because I believe the tsunami behind me and the ocean in front of me are actually the same body of water. To understand this, you would have to envision that the water actually circles the earth such that the undertow in front of me is actually the back or tail end of a water coil, the front and thickest part of which is the wall of water nipping at my heels. This is an irony of sorts. My back faces the front of the water coil while my front faces the its back. This is a symbol of balance that I may address more extensively later. Never in this dream did I actually gaze out over the ocean. I looked down the whole time at the undertow. This fact in and of itself has meaning. I didn’t see the ocean not only because that vision would have been extraneous or irrelevant data – but because it would have contradicted the motif the dream intended to advance – the coil. I believe the dream intended for me to conceptualize the water as having coil-like properties, which is to say the water curves around the earth from its thinnest point just beneath my feet to its tallest point arching over my back. This water coil extends around the entire Earth, which itself figures prominently into many of my dreams because I believe the coil motif symbolizes a developmental unit that is not only ever-present but cyclic, and not only indivisible but universal. It is a principle of the highest order – the microcosm and macrocosm – that can be said to be both atom and universe at once.

The evidence for the connection between the water in front of me and the water behind me is provided by the wind itself, which is intrinsic to the water. In the wind from the undertow do I ascend, and I ascend to no less and no more than the height of the water behind. This wind is a link between the water in front of me and the water behind me. But the sensation was not one of vertical ascent. Yes, I ascended vertically, but I felt it occurred within a spiral of wind. The shape of this wind I think is suggestive of the coil-like shape of the entire body of water considered as one body – and it is also analogous to the tornado. Perhaps it can be said to be the tornado itself, for in the beginning of this dream I searched the skies in expectation of a tornado before I was surprised to discover the tsunami. The ascent is the experience in flat or two-dimensional space of the curved or three-dimensional reality – the experience by the part of the whole it cannot see -- the immediate experience of a global force. I suppose one can say that the coil itself patterns every level of psychological reality.

Back to the Dream

The entire history of the planet, from prehistoric dinosaurs to future technologies, is being repeated in the present moment. This fact, coupled with the fact the civilization of this planet appears to move forward into the back of Earth history, poses an intriguing distinction between evolution and conflict. Various concepts like -- enantiodromia, dialetics, and the Abraxis principle -- point to a curious relationship between opposites. Perfection means death, and when a thesis attains perfection, it becomes its antithesis. History, or time, frequently documents a gradation of events in which thesis gives way to antithesis as a matter of natural or optimal development. However -- whenever opposites co-exist in the immediate present – we have opposition. And this is what describes life on this planet. On this planet – which I will later argue symbolizes the abhorrent Science and Profession of Psychology – the notion of history and evolution – the natural development of our literature – and perhaps even the maturation of our professionals -- is replaced by an ever-present duality, manifestations of which vary from equivocation and hypocrisy to conflict. The professional neglect by academics of developmental principles in their subject matter and their broader distaste for history may be a cause and/or effect of a personal inability to deal with opposites – such that they have become curiously susceptible and yet blind to expressions of hypocritical and compensatory behaviors in themselves. In many places on this site – but largely in the criticism just beneath the home page – I elaborate on a range of these behaviors.

Current State of Personality Research

Take as an example the current state of affairs in Personality Psychology. The personality researchers – which is to say the university professors who claim Personality as their specialization – ignore virtually everything they know about the psychodynamic theories – which isn’t much. They believe these old theories are messy – that their developmental propositions and constructs do not readily lend themselves to psychological testing and experimentation. First, to scientifically investigate these principles, one would have to observe one’s subjects over time, which is impractical since the subjects in their experiments typically consist of students who normally donate no more than the hour required for course credit. Secondly, professors are required to publish once a year to remain viable tenure candidates. This fact alone may account for why virtually all psychological research is cross-sectional and not longitudinal, despite the fact the vast majority of professors are already tenured. Thirdly, the most sophisticated statistical techniques – with which these science-minded professors seem to have fallen in love – are designed for cross-sectional data. It is almost as if these statistical techniques are required to provide the sophistication time and intellect themselves would have provided in a longitudinal (i.e., worthwhile) test of a psychodynamic (i.e., worthwhile) theory.

Furthermore, psychologists tend not to read or subscribe to grand theories, like those that describe a personality or psyche. Valid and reliable research demands focus, and it would take years – and perhaps even lifetimes – for any one professor to test all the tenets in a grand theory. One would have to derive from such a theory all the hypotheses (or predictions) necessary for a full and accurate test of the theory, i.e. to say whether this whole theory is supported. So psychologists focus on mini-theories, theories intended to explain this or that behavior – theories often so small as to be synonymous with the hypotheses used to test them. Such “micro-research” tends to produce a mass of findings that in and of themselves cannot be explained – or that hold little interest or meaning for anyone. If the findings themselves could talk, they would cry out in unison for some explanation that can tie them all together, i.e. a grand theory. When I complain that there is no broad theoretical research in personality psychology, I often hear “what about the Big 5?” But the Big 5 is a desert mirage. There does not appear to be – and no one has even attempted to consider – possible relationships among these five statistically derived factors. Even if these factors did somehow form the structure of a generic human psyche, there are no provisions in this theory for dynamics and development. Believe it or not – the biggest factor is extraversion-introversion. That is as far as my interest in this artifice goes – that it lends some support for Jung’s “psychodynamic” theory. But the other factors amount to a dull and useless laundry list. This is a static model that belies the purpose of those who founded it: (1) to catalog people, i.e. to plot them in five-dimensional space; and (2) to rally around a model that was not only tested statistically, but actually built statistically from the ground up. Professors treat this model as the only viable model of personality because it was driven purely by data from the time they plucked the 18,000 qualified trait terms from the dictionary to the time they used factor analysis to group them into a small set of manageable categories. But in my opinion, the Big 5 is a model by and for statistics – it is not about people.

From the very beginning, Big 5 research has meant the death of personality. Everyone in the field of personality even remotely interested in a big question has signed on to this particular effort – but I should remind you here that this is an effort to produce a personality taxonomy. Disenfranchised by the proliferation of trait terms and scales in the 1960’s – when every professor was said to have his own terms or his own definition for common terms -- researchers undertook an effort to develop a manageable taxonomy with enough statistical clout to inspire the field to rally around it and adopt it as a common way of thinking and talking “personality.” And that is exactly what was produced – a consensus around a taxonomy. But it is not a theory. Theory never entered into its development. Theories in psychology are like parties and bills in politics. If we want bipartisanship, we have to remove political affiliations. In psychological research, if we want consensus, we have to remove theory. The dictionary told us where to find the building blocks for our atheoretical taxonomy and the statistics were used to arrange them. Somewhere in between some people filled out some questionnaires rating themselves along bipolar dimensions that refer to pairs of opposite traits, but this is the extent to which people get involved in the creation of a taxonomy that will be used to explain them. But in my opinion, it is a theory of dictionaries -- not psyches. And proponents of this taxonomy need the Big 5 to organize their career more than they need it to organize human nature. Those with no ideas need a program of research to last them forty years. It is a way of passing time until retirement. Now some proponents of the Big 5 tell me it is only a beginning, but I don’t think even they can answer the question: “the beginning of what?” They have reached a state of statistical perfection that can only be violated; it cannot be improved. They have a taxonomy with no functionality – a skeleton with no life. They cannot possibly hope to put on this skeleton any flesh and blood – not even the semblance of life -- let alone vital internal organs. It cannot be done without theory. And the introduction of theory would be perceived as a contamination of a social consensus built on a foundation of math – it is to this consensus and to this mathematics that the taxonomy owes its existence and its significance.

I fear that one day the Big 5 will mean for research in the psychology of Personality what the current edition of the DSM (900-page Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association) means for clinical research. Over the course of the years professors have been made to feel by colleagues and administrative officials that they need to seek external funding for their research. In addition to means of augmenting one’s meager salary, grants have come to symbolize public and official approval for one’s ideas and the size of the award has become synonymous with the worth of their research. In fact, professors have been made to feel that not having a grant is tantamount to conducting research without a license or Ph.D. I would be surprised if applications for external funds by professors is not on the rise. Therefore, I worry when granting agencies reward compliance with an industry standard, that is, when they require researchers to use DSM categories as either the subject of their research – as when we test the validity of some aspect of the nomenclature – or as the means by which we conceptualize treatment and control groups. This practice constrains intellectual and independent thought by forcing producers and consumers of research alike to think in terms of what these task forces and committees agreed to be typical symptom clusters (i.e., “disorders”). It is an atheoretical taxonomy designed to help practitioners code for third party reimbursement (i.e., insurance companies) and to provide a common language for professionals. The DSM rests on a foundation of professional dialogue and social consensus, but the DSM itself cites very limited research evidence for the validity of these categories. Unfortunately, this manual fulfills a prophecy of sorts. Because it is so enormous and deemed so professionally valuable, many classes are devoted to it at the expense of theory, such that students have no other terms in which to think of human nature – and they ARE required to master DSM criteria to succeed in their practica and to pass doctoral qualifying examinations (not to mention the licensing exam). I have witnessed the frustration of students and professors alike when they discuss a distressed or maladjusted client who does not meet criteria for a DSM disorder. There is sort of a “how dare you be other…?” tone to many of these discussions. Sure, they pay lip service to the fact human beings are complex cases and the DSM classification scheme cannot account for all this individual variation. But they do not seem to understand that at these DSM symptom-clusters are better conceptualized as expressions of psychiatric disorders rather than psychological problems. There is a world of psychological life – normal and dysfunctional – between the cracks in the DSM such that – in my opinion – the material found in the DSM is better represented by the term ‘crack.’ And yet by requiring so much of our time and energy, the DSM reduces our preparedness to deal with the clients who do not fit. In the meantime, the preponderance of clinical research is oriented toward (or organized by) the DSM. Such research appeals to insurance companies and granting agencies – and also to the practitioners themselves who preside on committees convened to award speaking engagements and poster sessions at regional and national conferences. In brief, clinical research has become a byproduct of social and institutional politics. Researchers do not entertain any ideas they did not get from a focus group (i.e., task force). But the validity and reliability of the DSM is beside the point. Every field should provide for the freedom of its members to exercise their intellect in accordance with their individual strengths and callings, and it is advisable that the field finds a way to tap the diversity and personal best of its members. If the field fails to respect the human potential and diversity of its members, how can it credibly respect that of its human clients or that of its human subjects? I believe psychologists will do unto clients and do with subjects what they do unto themselves – and this belief does not bode well, for it means they will hold human nature accountable to its professional fictions.

I fear that the Big 5, which was developed on the basis of some of the same concerns that inspired the DSM, will corrupt personality research in the same way.

Back to the Dream

This is why I dreamed of a planet where its few “human” inhabitants – four engineers – replicate a civilization with no life. In the dream it was apparent to me that we lacked the people to build and use this technology. Who does the technology serve?

The way the scene unfolds, the order of the events, may have meaning. The earth technology is re-created here from scratch. I say “from scratch” because I was quite taken by the fact they were able to re-create these exotic materials and functions directly from dirt. This thought addresses a kind of revolutionary leap that bucks normal evolutionary principles. It is almost tantamount to a violation of history. What occurs immediately after this thought suggests that perhaps this is indeed a violation and, as such, should be punished – or at least in neutral terms – balanced: the leap forward incurs an equal (and opposite) leap backward in the form of a Brontosaurus, which sticks its neck over the horizon and then destroys the streetlamp. The leap to which the dream is referring is probably the one by which psychological researchers attempt to bypass the human nature of their subjects in the interests of drawing quick scientific conclusions.

I even wonder whether there isn’t another opposition intimated here: one between the artificial light ‘manufactured’ in the streetlamp, and the Sun itself, the original and timeless source of light represented in the larger and older Brontosaurus, which appears over the horizon and places its head in the sky where the sun would be to cast the kind of light that bathed the earth at the time. When I ran from the dinosaur into a small clay house, it was as if I caused the dinosaur to shrink in size and change shape, i.e. so that it exhibited a size and shape appropriate for the setting that had been reduced in size from the vast expanse of the outdoors to a small cottage-size structure. The dinosaur was now what I call a “small, yellow Gingerbread man.” The descriptor “Gingerbread” may underscore the size reduction, and the color and location of the creature, which now sat in the only window, may refer to the sunlight. A Gingerbread man also refers to something we can make or mold in the image of man. It may refer to what we do to human nature with our science. In exchanging the vast expanse of the outdoors for a small cottage, I turned the dinosaur into a humanoid (removed the developmental implications and reduced a rich and wonderful human nature into what can fit into a manageable but unimpressive mini-theory). By “mini-theory,” I mean a form of human nature small enough for us to consume or manipulate.

Also, by using the image of a dinosaur to refer to the Sun, the dream may have intended to indicate how the streetlamp mimicked a much older source of light. In the dream, the older and timeless source of light sought to destroy half the new source. Its incarnation as a dinosaur – and the fact we have to live with dinosaurs – suggests that the dream wants to punish psychological researchers for short-circuiting the regressive phase of development. The hollow scientism and inhumanity in their work betokens an exclusive emphasis on values associated with the progressive phase of development. The dinosaur suggests that if psychological researchers do not return “home,” that “home” will return to them with destructive consequences. And “home” is what we may very well see in the childish attitudes and behavior of many of these professors. The childishness is aided and abetted by the university environment – very possibly symbolized in the dream as the barren undeveloped surface of this planet.

However, the cottage-size refuge may have another meaning. The house was modest. It was bare and clearly built from clay so that its ties to the earth are obvious, unlike the ‘manufactured’ streetlamp, which puzzled me with an exotic technology that seemed to exceed what was needed. I wonder whether I was meant to infer from this contrast a fundamental truth about professors. Perhaps in professors we see a group of insipid and undeveloped personalities that attempt to find in a hyper-technical reliance on scientific formalities the sophistication they otherwise lack in their work. They are drawn to the level of development they lack in themselves. Moreover, many professors do not know how to relate to others, especially to the opposite sex. Thus it is also possible that their insistence on consensus within their profession is an unconscious attempt to compensate for an undeveloped, possibly even infantile, relational style. It is not as obvious to them as it should be that consensus is the death and not the birth of relationships. But then professors seem to lack the same dynamics and differences that are missing from their “theories” of human nature. Oddly enough – professors rhapsodize “diversity” – diversity in race and diversity in learning styles. But, and this is usually an indication of compensatory behavior, they cannot practice what they preach. They cannot tolerate students and peers with diverse politics and ideas. They invent departmental policies that put the force of law behind THEIR view of diversity so that their peers and students are required to behave in ways consistent with this particular view on differences.

I would not be surprised to find an object relations theory that could be used to explain the behavior of psychologists. Object relations theories are theories in which adult interpersonal relationships – and pathological variations of them – are explained in terms of early childhood development. While I personally find the emphasis on early childhood to be a form of historical reductionism, the object-relations theorists prove they are capable of an interesting idea every now and then. (Most psychological approaches are designed to exclude laypeople from Psychology by isolating – as the most important aspects of mental life – causes that cannot be accessed through normal introspection. The physiological psychologists would have us believe we need access to animals and their brains; the trait theorists would have us believe, only somewhat more so than the rest of psychologists, that we need to be statisticians; and the Freudian and object relations theorists would have us believe we need a time machine. In a field to which all people belong by virtue of being human and being capable of self-reflection, these power-starved professionals search for resources THEY can control. So they invent units of scientific and professional value – like so much fake Monopoly money – that they broker and divvy as their egos and wallets see fit. In all fairness to these [insert politically correct euphemism here], this stultifying behemoth may have been motivated by a fear of an inability to meet intellectual standards. It remains a question whether these academics and professionals lack the intellectual skills, whether they are intellectually lazy, or whether their values are inconsistent with the demands of the intellect, which requires flexibility, independence, and patience. Most professors prefer to work and think as a unit, which would explain their wistful and cataclysmic policy-WONKING and their penchant for co-authoring publications with three to five colleagues. The only fact of which I can be reasonably certain is that at some point over the past forty years, the intellectual cobwebs were cleaned out and replaced by smoke and mirrors.

But I digress. The point I started to make was that object relations theorists have their fingers on the pulse of a pathology shared by most members of their field – including most of themselves. While I have not read extensively into any one object-relations theory, I have taken note of such constructs as “separateness” and “individuation” as well as some observations as “a person can exhibit separateness without individuation.” I wonder what childhood ingredients are specified by a recipe for professors who exhibit “communalism without relationships.”

Case in Point: The Student-Teacher

Take for example the supervised teaching practica in which many professors clone – or experiment with -- their graduate students. The student-teachers are told that they are supposed to cater to the diverse learning styles of their students. They are required to supplement lecture with various types of multimedia equipment (overheads, computer projection equipment, VCRs). They are required to supplement lecture with various types of interaction (discussion groups, demonstration experiments). Their syllabus is required to equally distribute lecture time across all the branches of psychology. They are expected to incorporate various item forms on their tests (multiple choice, short answers, fill-in-the-blank). Once the student-teachers account for all the requirements, they quickly realize that nothing is left to discretion. All these departmental teaching policies – all so that the professor or student-professor respects the diversity of his or her students. And yet no one thinks to ask: “What about the diversity of the student-teachers?” “Don’t their teaching styles reflect learning styles of their own?” “How are they expected to learn to teach when they are not permitted to develop their own style?” “Will classroom instruction be adversely affected when teachers are required to play to their weaknesses rather than to their strengths?” “And what will happen to the diverse experiences of the students when differences in the style of their teachers are required to vary within courses rather than be free to vary across courses?” There are basic freedoms being lost here. Professors who do not understand relationships establish a consensus that constrains the relationships of those who do. Insipid professors who do not understand differences legislate a form of diversity that stifles individual freedom.

Back to the Dream

The dream is also telling me that Psychologists are doing work they think is exotic with their science but end up mimicking surface features of the generic human being. And not knowing that, they keep reinventing the wheel. New forms of science provide new ways to re-create old forms, and what we end up with are hundreds of new bottles containing old wine. Also implicit in the invention of the streetlamp is the notion that these psychological researchers are attempting to re-create the Sun from the Earth. But, as the dream points out, no true path to human nature circumvents people.

I disable the figure – which I continue to think of as a giant Brontosaurus incidentally – by twist-tying its legs together. Legs themselves describe the relationship between the pairs of objects – the dinosaur and the streetlamp for example -- I have described thus far. Legs have a similar shape but are oriented in an opposite direction at the point at which they bud into a protrusion, i.e. at the feet. This twist-tying motion – and the resulting shape – points to a relationship in which the paired objects are intertwined. (This reminds me a great deal of the double-helical structure of DNA, the source and material of human life which when flattened in textbook diagrams, resemble ladders, which are also featured in this dream. In fact, the ladder portrayed in the dream has a curve at the end of it so it can grapple the wall. This ladder may thus represent the basic structural elements of a relationship. In any event, you can only get over the top by reaching the curve). You have two slender vertical objects that curve at the top and that are joined by a series of intermittent horizontal objects called “rungs.” The paired objects depicted in this dream are the same, yet opposite and – as such – are intrinsically tied as two aspects of the same whole. For development to occur – and where life, i.e. consciousness, can exist – there must be a balance between the two. The balance itself results from respecting the full nature of their relationship, i.e. not just its sameness -- not just its opposition.

After I escaped, I ran into some other kind of structure. It had a sliding glass window proportionate in size to the square hole that served as a window in the clay structure. The relationship between the clay structure and this one is unclear. On the one hand, the increase in size and the presence of the glass indicates a promotion to the next level of consciousness, one that continues to respect the sunlight. But on the other hand, the glass may imply a distance from the elements. The window in the second structure, unlike the first, was lower on the wall and did not directly face the Sun. One possible interpretation that respects both sets of facts would be that the second house – as a higher form of civilization -- is intended to represent a higher level of development within person and within the profession.

Here I confronted not a dinosaur, but a man who resembles a primitive. Here in a slightly more advanced house, I confront a slightly more advanced and more HUMAN evolutionary figure. I am somehow aware of the fact the man is a professional wrestler, which calls to mind the move in which I twist-tied the legs of the Gingerbread man. The professional wrestler role is key here, as I realize now that I cast much the same aspersions on Psychology that people cast on professional wrestling – namely that it is not the real deal despite the fact it refers to itself as “professional.” No one pays much attention to the authentic wrestling – simply called “wrestling” – while people tune in to the histrionic televised wrestling that uses the label “professional” – and the association name “WWF” -- as product frills. I am anxious about having to wrestle the man who calls himself a “professional.” Presumably, I am now facing a man who embodies the skills I displayed when I twist-tied the Gingerbread man. There is a sense that this man does this for a living. There is a sense this is all he knew – that it was his function in life to wrestle – that is all he did. The “techniq-al” training and the professionalism remind me of the streetlamp scientism. But unlike engineers, who molded dirt into streetlamps, this man molds men (i.e., psychologist?). As such, there is an air about him -- a pretentiousness – a bellicosity. And when I ran into him, I was required to wrestle him, which is to say he imposed his sole nature and function on me.

So in this man we have an opposition between primitive and professional elements. Even his face seems to conform to the theme. He has little if any hair on his head, but he has a beard around his mouth. There are no sideburns to bridge what little hair he has on his head with all the hair he has around his mouth. This indicates that the man is a blow-hole, someone with little brains but a lot to say or someone whose brain and mouth are unconnected. The hair-down-below (but not up top) also indicates the so-called “bottom-up” approach of the psychological researcher – the practice and prejudice by which facts are allowed to speak for themselves (mouth) without the intervention or inspiration of theory (head). I even told the wrestler that while he was trained in technique, I had only raw strength. Despite my apprehension, it would soon become apparent that his technique was no match for my inherent strength. This was a battle between someone constituted from external data, i.e. learned techniques, and someone constituted from internal proficiency or from internal values grounded in the human subject matter. In the battle, I stand the man upside down on his head. This action may represent a protest on my part. I do not think professionals are ‘upright.’ I’d like to ‘stand them all on their heads’ – ‘overturn’ them – possibly so the blood flows to their head. Clearly the wrestler is overmatched, but I am frustrated because I can never be declared the winner unless I follow the ridiculous rules of wrestling, i.e. unless I pin his shoulders to the floor. This is a clear reference to my frustration that despite having the better qualities and the better arguments, I can never prevail in a professional world. Despite all my strength, I did not possess the strength needed to pin him because the rules of professional wrestling have primed in the wrestler an expectation that I will attempt such a move and; because he is expecting it, he will be trained and mentally prepared to resist it. So here we will have a stalemate. The opposition between technique – owned wholly by him – and inherent strength – owned wholly by me – resulted in a set of circumstances that could not be resolved, i.e. lack of development. An upside-down man is opposite to my orientation, but what is required for development is a balance, i.e. a horizontal man.

Ladders

The budding curvature at the top of the ladder creates an overall shape that bares some resemblance to the dinosaur and the streetlamp. As previously mentioned, the ladder could even be related to the legs of the Gingerbread man. But the reference that most interests me is the one to the coil motif. Here we see the opposition built into the ladder, which combines vertical and horizontal elements, and which also consists of a curve that points back in the same direction from which the ladder came. When I near the top of the ladder and the next level (i.e. home?), I could fall backward to the previous level by mistaking the hook on the ladder for the wall. By mistaking the two, I could pull on the hook, dislodging it from the wall. (The fact the hook and the wall are painted the same color suggests this relationship. The hook belongs as much to the wall as to the ladder. It is the point of contact between the two – a piece of shared material. And if I didn’t understand that, I would fall backward). This reminds me of the water-coil, where I could rise above the wall of water behind me by stepping into the shallow undertow in front of me.

The hook is needed to keep the ladder secured to the wall so it can sustain human weight. This suggests that even while a ladder can be said to ascend and descend in the vertical plane, its grounding in the horizontal plane is also vital. I am reminded of the importance of the horizontal plane in the case of the wrestler. Clearly the message seems to be that a mastery of the vertical plane is not sufficient. What that means phenomenologically is still unclear.

The ladder reminds me of the baseball diamond in that it depicts a relationship between old and new levels. The ladder is internally connected at the rungs until we reach the hook, where the ladder connects externally to the wall. Like the relationship between the streetlamp and the dinosaur-symbolized Sun, the ladder – with the horizontal rungs -- mimics the brick wall with its horizontal rows of mortar. The opposition between the two rests in the fact that one is built to accommodate and the other to repel.

At the bottom of the ladder, the climb is stable. I am able to move quickly, because the movements of the climber do not affect the ladder. But the properties of the ladder – namely its stability – changed as I ascend it. The ladder grows unstable and susceptible to my movements and my weight, for which reason it needs a hook at its topmost end, where I imagine the slightest movement would unseat it. This probably explains why I am not permitted to touch the hook. The hook is the extreme end of the ladder where it is so susceptible to weight and movement that it in effect ceases to remain a ladder. It is where the ladder reverses direction – pointing toward the bottom as if to counterbalance the addition of the climber to the top.

In other words, the climber himself becomes a hindrance to the climb as he ascends the ladder. It is analogous to gravity. It is as if the ladder becomes lighter or the climber heavier, threatening to pull the ladder to the ground. Here I will offer a number of possible interpretations of this catch-22. But I should bear in mind that this aspect of the dream remains one of the most elusive. First of all, while we are between levels, it is important to remain connected to the wall at the top (hook) and the earth at the bottom (ladder). This depicts a curve. At the inception of the scene, the feet are the most critical limbs, as I rush the ladder with time a crucial factor. When I reach the top of the ladder, the arms are the most critical limbs: where and how I place them. At this point, time becomes unimportant to me, and I slow to near stillness in my circumspection. I also have to wonder whether the words I use – presumably inadvertently – to describe the process are also interpretable. “Circum-” means round or around – which applies here to the top of the ladder – which is contrary to the directness with which I rushed the ladder at its base. But these facts inspire no insights, so I am forced to table them for now.

What if the climber symbolized Human Nature and the ladder the tool of inquiry, i.e. Science? The conclusions drawn would be vastly different from those drawn if the climber symbolized Human Nature and the ladder the path of psychological development.

The conclusions would also be vastly different if my hunch is correct. It occurs to me now that the ladder resembles the human form. It does not look exactly like the human form – and it is not a human – but it is built by humans to be used by humans, specifically by the human limbs. Now if my intuition is correct, perhaps a day or a week prior to this dream, I spoke in my interview about how the scientific methodology reveals a great deal about human nature, but not in the way scientists would appreciate. I do not remember exactly what these thoughts were on the subject, but they probably had something to do with the fact I believed the tools of psychological inquiry bore a metaphorical relationship to their users. Oh yes – now I remember – I was referring to analysis of variance and the fact that some researchers actually love their tools so much as to use them as models of their subject matter. Here is the excerpt from the interview:

EHRENFELS: “…I suspect that on the spiritual side, scientists feel in their hearts – that if the universe is orderly – which is to say – if it IS an order – that it can only be uncovered by the most orderly method. The scientists confound the method with the theory so that they imbue subject matter they study with the properties of the method they use to study it. I have heard one theory in which a psychologist actually compared human thinking to the set of mathematical procedures that make up the statistical technique known as ‘analysis-of-variance.’ Now I suppose if Science were God, I should perhaps allow for the Biblical statement that ‘man is created in God’s Image.’ I have to allow for the fact the method itself is a portal into the human mind – but not in the way the scientists would like to think. But there is something to be said for the fact method is a product of human thinking and, as such, is subject to observation and analysis itself as an illustration of the nature under study. But I reiterate – that is not how scientists choose to think of their methods – and I certainly would want to find better examples of human thought – since the scientific method – as a highly directed and differentiated form of human thinking – does not embody its fullest aspects – its capacity to draw meaning from relationships, for example. Now such a method – if but a tool in the hands of scientists capable of broader intellectual reasoning – can be instrumental. It can be like a chisel or conversely putty in the hands of a sculptor. But in the hands of psychologists today who are disposed to treat their science not as a science of human nature but as a science of method, the chisel seeks only to cut away just those chunks of marble that conceal a larger monument to the chisel itself. As thinking, the method is capable only of re-affirming itself and is not a suitable tool from which to draw inferences about the broader human nature of which it is a highly specialized aspect.”

I believe the ladder scene may refer to this thought here. I believe that the ladder refers to the tools of scientific inquiry and that while appropriate in the study of rational – or what I call “lower” psychological functions – that it is likely to distort the meaning and function of more complex or “higher” human processes. This is why the ladder is able to sustain the climber at lower levels, but that at higher levels the climber becomes too heavy – too “much” – for the ladder. Scientific thinking is rational thinking and – as such – while it is successful when directly applied to certain rational human functions, it tends to distort phenomena best understood in nonlinear (or “circum-”) terms. The hook portion of the ladder – which is not painted the same color as the ladder and thus was mistaken for the wall – may symbolize the need to understand the phenomenon on its own non-linear terms rather than attempting to squeeze it into our rational buckets.

There is a level at which human nature becomes too complicated and too irrational to be fully and accurately grasped by the conscious rational mind. At this level we need to proceed very slowly so that we can monitor our movements and estimate their effects on the portrayal of the object of study. I am reminded here of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that the nature of the observer can alter the nature of what is observed at subatomic levels; specifically that certain natural oppositions are embedded in nature – for example position and direction -- such that by measuring one you alter the other so that it becomes immeasurable. In the case of Psychology, I believe that the conscious mind will never be able to appreciate fully and accurately the nature of the unconscious. However -- that being said – by respecting the phenomenon under study we can minimize the distortion to the point where some inferences – some progress – can be made.

Dreams & Neurons (An Example of Junk Science)

Excerpt from Prior Interview

EHRENFELS: “The students certainly fall hook, line, and sinker. Discovery.com reported a scientific study published in the journal NEURON in which a researcher claimed to know not only that rats dream but also claimed to know WHAT they dreamed – that they were dreaming of mazes. He even presumed to know at exactly what point the rat was located in the maze in its dream on the basis of correlations between brain scans during REM sleep and brain scans during the waking maze task. He then leapt to the conclusion that the function of dreams is the production of long-term memories. All the technology in the world – the sophisticated brain imaging devices – the wires and electrodes – cannot cover the gaping holes in the logic. The Discovery.com report also references a study in which this memory consolidation function of dreams was inferred from the fact college students who played Tetris before sleep dreamed of Tetris. Dream research as bland and simplistic as that reported by Discovery.com is designed to close our mind to other possibilities. The structure, dynamics, and purpose of processes that transpire in an unconscious state are much more complex than those processes over which we consciously preside. The word ‘complex’ may not even do justice to the process by which we unconsciously weave patterns of thought. (Pause) I view the unconscious as one would a whole other culture. It has not only its own language, but its own rituals and beliefs. To understand this world, we must seek to understand its ways on its own terms – not simply to see our reflection in its mirror. The scientific experts in the Discovery.com report drop their needles – and by that I mean rat maze and Tetris -- in the haystack – and by that I mean dreams -- and then expect to be patted on the back when they find them – when they find references to mazes in the dreams. Their fast food research never really tends to the dreams themselves – and you know why? Because they know they can’t dirty their hands if they want awards for ‘clean scientific research.’ To truly understand dreams, you have to work WITH DREAMS – not with brain waves as recorded by an EEG. And you can’t hope to understand dreams purely on the basis of their correlation with the familiar waking world. This is just another form of reductionism that warps dreams in translation. If the unconscious were truly a frontier – if it is truly another culture – we would never know it from this research whose claims are no more scrupulous than the claim that aliens created Stonehenge. And the truth about dreams may be difficult for some researchers to grasp. The truth may be that dreams are akin to a translator, speaking in images we can understand, so that we can draw inferences about a reality we can never fully understand. Even the purveyors of this nickel-and-dime research -- funded probably by hundreds of thousands in grant dollars -- may be moved to agree with this fact if I phrase it in their ‘brain-ese.’ Can the 3-or-so percent of our brain which is active in conscious thinking really understand the 50-plus percent of our brain which is active when we are dreaming? Trying to understand dreams may be like trying to fit an elephant through the eye of a needle. Call dreaming ‘bizarre’ if you will, but do not call it ‘random,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘nonsense,’ because it is based on a cerebral collaboration you cannot possibly replicate during a waking state. I would rather spend the rest of my life producing unpublishable works that do justice to dreams than to litter volumes of NEURON and web pages of Discovery.com with work tantamount to graffiti. The truth is – we do some harm to dreams just by referring to them as ‘thoughts.’ As the possible foundation and source of conscious awareness, dreams may be structural units of unconscious activity, and as such, their nature transcends what we think of when we think of ‘thought.’ We distort the dream and bias the translation of its reality when we refer to it in terms this narrow -- this simplistic – this familiar. I even have difficulty using the word ‘complex’ to describe a pattern that is qualitatively as well as quantitatively distinguishable from whatever we entertain in our conscious mind. Researchers like the ones quoted in Discovery.com – when they claim that dreams consolidate memories – portray dreams as passive reactions to experiences that have come and gone. More than a widow presiding over a casket, dreams may actually prove to be the dynamic and vital source of psychological life. Has it ever occurred to these lab technicians that dreams may be the foundation of (future) conscious awareness – anticipating – even predisposing – waking perceptions, criteria, values, and decisions. I am puzzled that such a hypothesis should strike some researchers as bizarre. Dreams are

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