|
A description of an online group approach to dream
work that can give deep insight into the unconscious. Use of the
Internet can add a dimension to dream work that was not possible
without it. The Internet presents us with features that
enhance and reveal the psychological depth of the work. The
DreamEvents are private and confidential so publicly available and
generalised material are used in this
article.
Introduction
Charles, HipBone Games, and Magister-L
Walter,
Psybernet and Psyber-L
Confluence of Psybernet
and HipBone
DreamEvents
Invitations and Description of the Events
Basics of the HipBone Game
Psybernet
Groups
Dream
moves on a WaterBird Board.
My
experience of the DreamEvents
Features
of the DreamEvent
Twin
Aspects
Imaginally
Evocative
Solitary Reflection in a
Group
Patterns and the
Psyche
Temenos
Enactment
Mediated
Acknowledments
Version
History
DreamEvents as I call this approach to online dream work has many
streams of influence, I'll mention the two most important ones:
One influence is from group psychotherapy. I have learnt through
many and workshops using Psychodrama and other modalities to have a
thorough respect for the group as a window to the soul. A group,
when it is consciously shaped through shared purpose and commitment
forms a container in which the alchemy of soul work can happen.
The second influence is Charles Cameron's Hipbone
Games. The games can be used to inter-relate and comment on group
members' dreams. The HipBone games are natural to the medium of the
Net. In 1996 I was fortunate to co-facilitate a Dream Event with
Charles Cameron.
The DreamEvent approach grew out of the affinity between Charles
and my self.
Charles, HipBone Games, and Magister-L
Charles,
a poet and professional writer in the USA, developed the HipBone
Games: a family of games inspired by the fictitious"Glass Bead Game"
described in Hermann Hesse's Nobel Prize winning novel, *Magister
Ludi*. In Charles' own words:
"These games explore "associative" or "lateral"
thinking -- a style of thinking which is of great importance in
creativity-- and provide a number of boards which allow players to
"map" ideas in such a way that the links between them can be seen
and articulated. Purely verbal associative thinking has a long
history within psychology: Sigmund Freud's system of psychoanalysis
makes use of it, for instance, and Carl Jung wrote a book on Word
Associations, while the "amplification" of dream symbols by chasing
down their associations and noting symbolic parallels within such
realms as mythology and alchemy is an important part of the Jungian
approach to "dreaming the dream forward"... The HipBone Games offer
a means for the notation of these associations and parallels,while
focusing them down into a "tight" form -- and thus offer an
innovative tool for dreamwork." Charles has an
internet mailing list, MAGISTER-L, not just for the discussion of
HipBone Games, but to address the wider issues of spirituality in
games.
At about the time of our first Dream event there was an article in
the Washington Post about the Glass bead Games and
Charles describes his game and uses the beautiful phase: "a
virtual music of ideas."
Walter, Psybernet and Psyber-L
I have
been working on the Psybernet project for some
years, exploring the psyche and cyberspace. This has included
providing psychological professional services on the net.
I am the host of a mailing list, Psyber-L .
The aim of the discussions in this group is to help us become
conscious of the effects of cyberspaces on the psyche. The group is a
starting point for professional depth psychological work on the Net.
The explorations can be deeply personal and group membership is by
application and has closed archives.
Confluence of Psybernet and HipBone
Charles
and I first met as a result of a conference to which we both submitted
papers, the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research, EMCSR , one theme in 1996
was "Theories and Metaphors of Cyberspace". Each of us submitted
papers involving metaphor and the Internet. Coming from different
backgrounds we had a similar feel for the psyche that enabled us to
work together easily. Our projects formed the basis for the 1996
DreamEvent and for the development of this approach to dream work.
There have been two full DreamEvents. The first was in 1996
and another event took place at the turn of the millennium. We
used an Internet mailing list for the group, and also made extensive
use of the Web, especially in the second event. Each group had
about sixteen participants each who had subscribed to the group via a
listserver.
Listservers are computer programs located on computers scattered
across the Internet, which take email sent to a "list address" by a
"subscriber" and repost it automatically to all the other subscribers
to that particular "list". The second DreamEvent used a free
service called eGroups, funded by ads on each posting. Thus a
dozen or five hundred people who share a common interest in a
particular topic area can "post" messages to others who share their
interests -- and when those others respond, the ensuing
dialogues
can themselves spark further responses, and open up new topics within
the list's area of interest. Each new topic is called a
"thread"...
The DreamEvent, then, "consists" of the hundreds of messages posted
to a server which distributes these emails to the sixteen
participants, over the course of a couple of months.
Individual
threads include the members introducing themselves and making
contact with each other, dreams and the participants' comments on
them, the nature of dreams in general, discussions of the HipBone
games which will be played on the list, the function of form in
relation to dreams and the arts, and more...
Crucial to the success of any group is the "warm-up" created by the
initial invitation. Also important is the framework and
guidelines for the group that participants agree to by joining.
For groups going deeply into the psyche the container for the
unconscious processes is important. The descriptions of the
group are the foundation of the "space" for the dream
work. Invitations and Description of the
Events
The invitation to the first
event, cooperatively written by Charles and myself, formed the
basis for this way of working. It described our roles as
facilitator, the place and purpose of the HipBone Game and the
three main phases of the group; preparation, linking dreams and
closure. It concluded with a statement of intent as well as a
disclaimer:
"We intend to use this process as a vehicle for honoring the
dreams and the dreamers. We look to making this event a celebration.
There will be a place to attend to feelings as they arise in the
work. These are our aims -- this dream event is the first of its
kind, and we are in the hands of the gods as to how things will turn
out."
The invitation to the second event , which I facilitated on my own, is
based on the first. It has a new way of looking at the
overall duration of the group based less on chronological time, but
more on the group reaching of certain mileposts.
"As facilitator, I will structure the phases according to the
group's life and the completion of each phase and not according to
chronological time. Bearing in mind that times are a rough
guide, three months is offered for the three phases. The times to
guide the phases are 3, 6 and 3 weeks, respectively.
It is important that there is no rush and also that we do not
have unhelpful pauses. Some periods of silence may well be part of
the natural flow of the group."
We used the Web to record the game, and this involved the role of
an editor:
"The discussions will be in a mailing list using plain text and
here will also be a place to post graphics or other multimedia files.
A hypertext "Dreamevent Document" will be created as part of the
group's work."
Psybernet Groups
The Net is a vast interlinking
not only of machines, but of people. It has become a cliche to note
that the net is not about "information" but about people, knowledge,
relationships and conversations. When people link and connect in any
group, psychological dynamics manifest. The Psybernet Groups make
that aspect a conscious feature and we consistently address the art
and science of approaching the collective psyche in cyberspace.
Basics of the HipBone Game
Early on in these
games we describe how the game works. Instructions describing
how to play the game and make moves are posted to the list by the
facilitator. Important in this process are the resources on the HipBone
website and the game that Charles wrote to demonstrate the game to
the Psyber-L
group; the Bear Madonna Game.
Each game uses a board on which to place the moves. In both
the DreamEvents we used the WaterBird Board. I see a similarity
between the Hipbone games, using a board such as the Waterbird board
and the Psychodrama stage as developed by J. L. Moreno. Both the empty
board and the empty stage give impetus to our creative drive, and
provide a medium, a form for a performance of the groups underlying
hidden cohesion.
Fig.1 WaterBird Board
The HipBone game can be used to link dreams. Here is an
example of some moves in a DreamEvent. I will show just two
moves here, though the game can be seen on the
Web where it will be played on to completion.
Imagine I am in a DreamEvent with all the writers who ever
lived. We will use a dream for the content of each move and then
the next move, also a dream, will describe the associations to the
moves that it links to. A writer or I can make a move any
time, it is a cooperative game, we use the WaterBird
board. I make the first move, and use the format that is used in
the DreamEvents:
Moved By: Walter Logeman
Content:
A Dream: Thu, 22 Jul 1999
I make my
way up to the fourth or fifth level of an old building, a hotel.
There is a conference, of elite people, some in tuxedos, others in
hi-tech mountain fashion clothes - beards. I am being chased, or
simply wanting to get out of the room and climb out of a window into
the night, the window then shuts, so it can't be opened again. I
don't want to get back in anyway.
I am on an iron ladder of a fire escape, two or three lengths are
folded together and impossible to untangle while I am on them, but
even if they were unfolded, they lead nowhere, there is only a 5 story
drop. I am content enough on the ladder, but also unable to go
anywhere.
Comment:
This dream was important to me at the time. I felt
stuck. It also has a part to play in the story of the Dreamevent
that was to follow the following December.
Links to
other positions:
None, as this is the first move on
the board.
Top
Added:
Sunday, April 02, 2000
Move Two: Tempted to die, Isabel Allende
Position: Eight
Content:
Isabel Allende describes a dream her mother had, and how
she later also had that dream.
"She would dream that she was in a boat in the middle of the ocean
and there was a tempest. The boat sank and she had to save the kids.
She could only save one. And she had three. She would be swimming from
one kid to the other trying to keep them above the water. But she knew
that she would have to make up her mind and save only one. That was
her recurrent dream.
"I had a similar dream for a while that I had to save one of my two
kids. Fortunately the dream is gone. The worst year in my life was
probably 1978. I usually say that it was I973, because that was the
year of the military coup but the consequences of that event were
apparent to me only in 1978. In I978 I realized that all my life had
been destroyed. I thought at that time that I wouldn't have another
opportunity. I'd been struggling all those years to survive and then,
in 1978, I gave up.
"I wanted to die. And so I started having that dream my mother's
dream the dream that I had to save one of my kids. I had to make a
choice. And in the dream I was tempted to die in order not to make
that choice. I would rather drown myself and let everybody drown so
that I wouldn't be forced to make the choice of saving one of
them.
Comment:
This dream is from the marvelous book of interviews by
Naomi Epel, Writers Dreaming. Bookman Press 1993,
Melbourne. Pages 17 - 18.
Isabel Allende goes on to say:
"By thinking about the dream and writing about the dream I realized
that I was escaping from them and from everything. It helped me a lot.
I could start again. I got a job and I started working because I'd
decided that my only goal was to educate my children."
Links to other positions:
Move
One, Hanging Ladders:While the Hanging Ladders dream does not have
the life and death choices of the Isabel Allende's dream it also a
dream about a dead end, about having nowhere to go. Death is an
option in both dreams.
Top
Added: Monday, April 03, 2000
Move Three: Sophie's Choice, William
Styron
Position: Two
Content:
The obvious move to link with Isabel Allende's dream is
this dream or vision from William Styron. The dream is from the
same book of interviews by Naomi Epel, pages 272 -273.
I'd been working on a book that was not coming together
for me at all. I had been slaving away at it and was getting very
upset over the fact that it wasn't proceeding well. And one morning
I woke up with this lingering vision. I don't like to characterize
it as a dream, although I think it had the aspects of the remnant of
a dream. I think there was a merging from the dream to a conscious
vision and memory of this girl named Sophie. And it was powerful
because I lay there in bed with the abrupt knowledge that I was
going to deal with this as a work of fiction. That I had to abandon
the other book I was trying to do and, because of her, because of
all of the resonance surrounding her story, I was suddenly going to
have to write the book which later became Sophie's Choice. That very
morning, I remember I walked over to my studio and wrote down the
first words just as they are in the book, and went from there to the
end without any deviation to speak of. So, in a sense, you could say
that the whole concept of the book was, if not the product of a
dream itself, the product of some resonance that a dream had given
me.
Links to other positions:
Move
One, Hanging Ladders: The dead end of the book that was being
written at the time of the dream, the abandoned project has a similar
feel to the dead end at the end of the chase.
Move
Two: Tempted to die, Isabel Allende: Isabel Allede and her
mother before her dreamt she had a Sophie's Choice.
Top
Added:
Monday, April 03, 2000
Move Four : A Glass in Each
Hand
Position: Three
Moved by: Walter Logeman
Content:
A dream: Tue, 21 Sep 1999
I've not had dreams I'd call prescient. I
sometimes have dreams that I seem to give me advance notice of my own
direction and where I am at in myself. For example I had a lot
of dreams for a while where I was hanging in a stuck place. No
way out except for a big drop. Then I dreamt:
I slipped on a wet, natural, rounded stone floor,
landed on my side, quite gently, and was holding a glass in each
hand. I looked at the glasses with surprise; I had not dropped
them in the fall, or used my hands to break the
fall.
Comment:
I had no idea what the dream was about, until I realised
it was on river bed rock. I was no longer hanging. I'd
made a shift. I felt the shift then in many ways in my life. One
of the results of that dream was to set up the DreamEvent!
Links to other positions:
Move
One, Hanging Ladders: This dream was in my mind the resolution of
the earlier dream. What seemed an impossible state in the other
dream has an almost miraculous outcome.
Move
Two: Tempted to die, Isabel Allende: I saved both the
glasses. They represent two of my creations, if not my children.
In both dreams there is an emphasis on the number two. I have a sense
of saving the two offspring in my dream and no longer being stuck.
Isabel Allende also moves in a flash from being in the impossible
situation, to "educating her children"... which again relates to
nurturing the creations I associated with my two glasses.
Move
Three: Sophie's Choice, William Styron: My sense of
clarity and creativity as a result of my dream is well summed up in
William Styron's words:
So, in a sense, you could say that the whole concept of the book
was, if not the product of a dream itself, the product of some
resonance that a dream had given me.
Top
Added:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000
These four moves are by way of example of the Moves on the
board. The example, though it alludes to my process in deciding
to conduct the DreamEvent later that year, can only show us the Game
aspect of the DreamEvent not the actual life of a group. In the
privacy of the group the process can be intense, complex, personal and
immediate. Those dramas should remain private. It is only
in the privacy of a group that they can actually occur in their
fullness.
It was a delight to meet the other "dreamers
and players", knowing that even as we met we were sharing thoughts
feelings and images that might return in our descent into the dream
world. The dreams flowed in, major archetypal dreams with glowing
biblical association as well as single humble images. Rapidly we
learnt to make links. The groups were lively and
spontaneous. On each occasion more than a hundred dreams were
posted and as many poems, some original and some chosen because they
amplified our themes.
In both events the group life, as group life does, became more
complex. Difficult for most of us at times, and almost
impossible for some. The complexities in our histories and
our psyches made a potent mix! I noticed that the drama
enacted on the board as moves were made in the HipBone game spoke
directly to the dynamics of the group. If the group was slow and
heavy, the dreams shared with the group had slow and heavy images, and
the game's progress itself was slow and heavy. Or it could
be that floods of email mirrored by dreams of floods.
From the first event I learnt that the process takes more time than
the six weeks we allocated. The group closed after a full and
thoughtful sharing, six months or so after we started.
After the first event I had a sense of psychological overuse. It
took a while before I wanted to submerge into the psyche like that. I
also knew that we were on the edge of something new. The medium
of the Internet was enabling us to explore the psyche in a new and
revealing way. The DreamEvent, I can see has a format that can be
developed to be as exciting and fruitful as that first event.
Features of the DreamEvent
The DreamEvents bring a freshness to the exploration of the psyche
that I think is as exciting as the introduction of the couch or the 50
minute hour. The features of these events are in themselves
simple facts. Each of these facts has a profound
consequence. I will conclude this article with a summation of
those features.
Twin aspects
There is the
Game and the Group. The DreamEvent combines a cooperative form
of the HipBone game with the psychological depth approach from
Psybernet groups. I think of them as twin aspects of the DreamEvent,
twins that work together.
Imaginally Evocative
We operate on the Net with
some of our faculties maximized, such as writing and seeing our inner
thoughts on a screen in words. We are already in a place where
we are with people who we partially construct out of our
imagination. We meet the dreams in a place that is close to
where they come from.
Solitary Reflection in a Group
The
contradiction that is inherent in the life of some monks in
monasteries is that they are hermits in a commune. Being in a group on
the Internet is like that. The writing up of our dreams and
contemplation of them in silence, a natural and traditional way to
explore dreams is not forsaken as we are at the same time in a lively
and busy group.
Patterns and the Psyche
The very stuff of the
psyche: associations, the naming of themes and patterns, the naming
parallel processes are present in the play of the HipBone game which
uses these very things that are traditional in psychotherapy.
Temenos
We do our dream work within
form: within the form and containment of a closed and private group,
within the form of the HipBone Game and the structure of the WaterBird
board. There is also the definite, though mysterious containment that
comes from the contours provided from dreamworld
itself.
Enactment
Joseph
Campbell described ritual as the enactment of myth. Dreams
may not be myth. but they are close. They have been called the
dreams of a culture. Through learning to use the precise form of
the Games and honoring the purposeful act of making moves we are in
the process of finding a new ritual that opens the doors into the
imaginal and sacred places that older rituals opened in a past
era.
Mediated
The psyche is invisible without a
medium. The psyche comes to life or some would say only exists
once it is reflected. The DreamEvent is a medium.
Participation in these events has made it clear that such structures
as the "50 minute hour" of psychotherapy are forms of media that
enable the psyche to manifest.
My thanks go firstly to Charles Cameron for being a
friend, for his work on creating the HipBone Game, for his involvement
in the first DreamEvent and for his work on the initial drafts of this
article, which originally we thought we might write together and which
has phrases throughout that originated in his mind and came from his
keyboard. Thanks to Richard Wilkerson the editor, for persisting in
extracting this article from me. I need a deadline to get these things
done, and he provided several! Warmest thanks to the participants in
the DreamEvents I hop this article does the process justice, though I
know it is barren compared to the riches of the experience. To all in
Psyber-L to whom I feel bound by the contours of that container as
well as the bonds we make.
Version 0.9 Monday, April 03, 2000 revised
for ASD Dream
Time
|
