Dreams: are they personal or social?
Abstract
The history and lineage of dreams is ancient, mysterious and revelatory. Dreams have been used for prophecy, fortune-telling, for access to the spirit world and for extending our vision beyond our diurnal limits. Ancient Greece sought healing through sleep and dreams; Bion asserts the psychotic hallucinates because he cannot dream, cannot use normal dream work; Kohut and self psychologists also see dreams as revealing the unconscious state of the self and giving the therapist an opportunity to aid in self-healing. In my experience, group members are soon able to feel themselves into the expressed dream of one of their members and to relate both to the dreams, to the group situation and to their own participation. Dreams are therefore both individual and social anddreamtime is a valuable time in which we can reconnect to ourselves and to the group matrix and through this to society of which each one of us is but a fragment.
