The New York Times recently published an article in their online edition about a sleep clinic in Albuquerque that works with nightmares, where people create scripts to help “change” their nightmares. As part of the discussion of this subject as well as about dreams in general, the editors asked Rodger Kamenetz, author of The History of Last Night’s Dreams: Discovering the Hidden Life of the Soul and Archetypal Dreamwork Therapist, to respond to the article.
Rodger has written a beautiful response called Don’t Fear Vulnerability in the Times’ online section called Room for Debate, where he refers to North of Eden and Archetypal Dreamwork. Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/30/should-we-manipulate-our-...
In the article, Rodger writes:
But the question under discussion really is, what are dreams for? If they have no real use, then why not change them? In the ancient view dreams take us to the deepest knowledge of ourselves. In learning to work with dreams from my colleagues at North of Eden, I’ve found that their difficult trail can move us through our fear and pain to an experience of our own essence.
That use of dreams is not prevalent today, for the world teaches us to be terrified of our vulnerability, to seek control and power in every sphere, and avoid all pain. From that point of view, why not extend our control even into our sleep and rewrite our painful dreams in a general program of nightmare eradication?
But the basic intuition of the ancient world is that dreams can awaken us to a deeper sense of ourselves. The literary prototype for all such dreams is Jacob’s dream of the ladder. He wakes in awe, which is a feeling for the sacred. But such transcendent awe has roots in the feelings all our nightmares lead us to, the feelings of fear and pain. Such dream feelings are incredibly intense, and we may need the support of a guide or therapist to face them. But if instead, we try to control or even eliminate the feelings in our dreams, we risk choking off an ancient and natural resource of our inner world.