Dreams: the royal road to the unconscious - a natural healing system

[The following study notes were sourced from review of Montague Ullman’s papers at http://siivola.org/monte/ ]

1: Aside from the way the personal psychological domain of our lives surfaces in our dreams, our dreams have access at times to three other domains of our existence:

 -     the biological domain where dreams may reflect bodily changes before there is conscious awareness of them;

-     the social domain where the institutions we have created continue to impact our lives and how the imagery we create reflects such influence;

-     and finally, that most mysterious dimension, the one that goes beyond the biological, personal and social. This last has no agreed upon name (cosmic? transcendental? spiritual?). It addresses the most mysterious aspect of our existence -- our role in the universe, how it all got started and where it will end. There are times when our concerns and aspects of our experience seem to touch on this domain.

2: The basic premise of dream work - and this is believed to be true under all circumstances - is that only the dreamer can lower his or her defenses and that this will only occur under circumstances where the dreamer feels both safe and curious about the dream and when help is forthcoming in a non-intrusive way.

What aspects of group dream-work are directly applicable to the one-to-one therapeutic situation? 

The first stage involves framing questions to the dreamer designed to focus his or her recall on the emotion residues of recent experiences and preoccupations leading to the time of the dream. The questions are simple, open-ended and serve as instruments to help the dreamer probe his or her psyche. Examples:

What was in your mind at the time you fell asleep on the night of the dream?

Anything happen recently in your personal or work life that left you with residual feelings?

If necessary, the questions can become more specific, calling attention to responses to telephone calls, books read recently, or to reactions to anything in the press or television that may have had an impact.

The next step, known in the process as the playback, is one where the dream is read back aloud to the dreamer, one scene at a time, in the hope of stimulating further associations and facilitating the dreamer's own insight into the dream. It is an extraordinarily powerful technique but as far as I know, rarely used by therapists. The dreamer brings to this effort all the information he or she spontaneously connected to the dream and the additional information gathered in elaborating the recent context. The result is that, as he or she is confronted with the concrete reality of the dream as it is read aloud by another, a second look is often quite productive. As each succeeding scene is read, more information is forthcoming.

The final stage in the group process and equally applicable in individual therapy is what I have referred to as the orchestrating projections. Here the members of the group offer their own ideas about connections between the imagery and what the dreamer has shared that the dreamer has not yet seen. They are offered as projections by the group's members in the hope they may be of help. In therapy, the more felicitous form "interpretive process" is preferable but the idea is the same. If it doesn't elicit a felt sense of being true, it isn't.

In effect the group process works toward linking the metaphorical power of the imagery to the ongoing emotional current in the life of the dreamer, and does so in a series of logical steps involved in bringing these emotional currents out in the open and thus facilitating the dreamer's grasp of what the dream is saying. To the extent I have noted, the same systematic approach is equally applicable in therapy.

3: Implicate to Explicate

For some time I had been toying with the idea that what we experienced as a dream had an antecedent history in an event that was beyond time and space ordering, and came upon us in something approaching an instantaneous happening at critical moments in the transformation of one form of consciousness to another. The onset of the dreaming mode is one such critical modal point.

The black dot at the left in the figure below represents this event. It may be regarded as a kind of black hole of the psyche containing an enormously condensed information mass. Since this falls completely outside the realm of our ordinary information processing capacities, it is experienced as ineffable. We are forced to let it expand, as it were, or unfold and then deal with it in bits and pieces ---

--- ordered as best we can in time and space. These are the visual images that make up the dream as depicted by the various shapes in the figure. The information is still highly condensed, less so than formerly, and is spread out before us.

A second transformation occurs when we reach the waking state. Here we try to transform this private experience into a public mode. This requires a further unfolding of the information contained in the images and the translation of this information into a public medium of exchange, namely language. Here is where we get into trouble because the information goes beyond what can be conveyed in a discursive mode. Much of the information is more readily felt than described. Moreover, the engagement with the information at a feeling level is an experiment in growth. That black hole contains within it our personal expanding universe and we do both ourselves and the universe an injustice when we try to reduce it to a play of instincts.

[Successive transformations go on between an implicate or hidden order and an explicate or known order of reality. What is implicate at one stage becomes explicate in the next stage through a process of unfolding, and what is explicate at this stage becomes implicate for the next stage.]

4: Our dreams are born out of a phylogenetically ancient genetically driven mechanism that brings dreaming consciousness into being repetitively throughout the night, every night of our existence. This very pointedly suggests that it is part of our survival kit, not only as individuals, but with a greater goal in mind, namely the survival of the species to which we belong.

To edge us closer to this latter goal, our dreaming psyche has taken advantage of these nightly dream bouts of consciousness to confront us with what we have to know about ourselves and our relations with others to ensure the ultimate goal of surviving as a species. That assurance can only come about if each of us struggles to maintain our connectedness to each other, and to learn how to assume responsibility for anything we may be doing unconsciously that undermines the integrity of our connection to others.                         

None of us grows up perfect in this world. We all have in greater or lesser measure a little of this potential for what might be called psychological violence to ourselves or to others, which when consensually reinforced, results in overt violence and the disruption of connectedness.

- - - Collectively our efforts to civilize ourselves have resulted in much that is grand and inspiring, but there are still too many booby traps around that limit our ability to be as fully human as we might otherwise be. Our social facade in that sense is our effort to put our best foot forward, given whatever limitations personal early developmental experiences have imposed on us, as well as whatever constraints we continue to be subjected to by the social milieu in which we function.

Our imperfections are often hidden from us by what are known as mechanisms of defense. We suppress, deny, we rationalize and we rely on other evasive techniques to distance ourselves from certain truths. Such tactics are more apt to be obvious to others than to ourselves. To the extent we rely on them, we are falsifying our relation to the other as well as to ourselves.

Whether we are aware of these disconnects or not, they do resonate in our bodily tissues and surface at night as the triggering focus of our dreaming consciousness. The healing potential of our dreaming psyche lies in its ability to precisely capture the often very subtle felt traces that a disconnect has occurred.

- - - Awake our communication to others or to ourselves is often tinged (sometimes more than tinged) with expediency. Dreams manage to consistently and insistently get at the truth. 

Some dreams are so transparent that we immediately grasp their connection to our waking life. More often the dreamer needs help in working through the differences in form and content of the two states before that connection comes alive. Perhaps a musical analogy can help.

It generally takes two people to write a song, the composer and the lyricist. Let the first be the dream and the latter be the dreamer. The music wells up from some inner creative source in the composer. The lyricist searches for the words that are just the right fit for the feelings conveyed by the music. We end up not just with words and not just with music, but with a song set to music.

For the dreamer, as for the musician, the music comes by itself rising to the surface from that inner creative source. Words have to be formed to fit the music, not the other way around. They, too, have to come from an inner creative source if they are to fit in so natural a way as to make it seem the two were destined to be together from the beginning.

- - - Just as words and music are qualitatively distinct forms of expression that can come together in a unified experience, the nature of this distinction is of great importance in understanding the problem the dreamer has awake in trying to connect with the night time experience of the dream. An analogy with regard to this distinction is from physics - the fact that although the electron is some kind of unified entity, it can only be known to us in one of its two possible manifestations, either as a particle or a wave, depending on the context in which it is observed.

By the same token, waking consciousness experiences the world in its discreteness, while dreaming consciousness experiences this same world in its interconnectedness. The first accepts the world as made up of discrete objects and represents an obligatory way of relating to a world seen as such. The second is not a learned accommodation to such a world, but is there from the beginning as a natural felt sense of the interconnectedness of all that exists. It has the character of a deeper underlying domain registering the subjective rewards and costs of adapting to a world of objects.

5: Our dreams are not bound by the same rules that constrain waking behavior.  They go beyond our I-persona that so often protects us from the full realization of the consequences of our behavior.  Our dreams are truth seekers.  They go by the same rules that apply to animals in the wild:  the more truthful one’s perception of reality, the greater are the chances of survival of the individual and the species.  Our dreams are associated with recurrent arousal periods and speak to us in a primitive imagistic mode.  In contrast to subhuman mammals, who presumably resort in a more concrete literal way to this imagistic mode, we humans call upon our imagination and our capacity for abstraction to put together imagery that speaks to us in a creatively crafted metaphorically expressive imagery about both the good and the bad going on within us at the time.  Our dreams have a no-holds barred policy with regard to revealing the state of our connection to our own past and how connected we really are to others.  We are creatures driven to survive as a species by moving to an ever-expanding state of authentic interconnectedness.

6: Dreaming and the immune system are both built-in biologically rooted survival mechanisms.  Our immune system is activated by intrusive matter foreign to the natural functioning of the organism.  Asleep and dreaming, we cope with any intrusive feelings left over from our recent experience.  How do we do that in a way that might conceivably be connected with survival?  The answer is that while dreaming we are endowed with an innate and insistent capacity to confront ourselves with the truth about feelings that were unable to surface at the time they occurred in waking life.  Recent feeling residues and their connection with remote past experiences gain metaphorical expression in the imagery of the dream.  These images are our T-cells.  They may or may not be successful in mobilizing the resources needed to cope with whatever has been stirred up.  If the feelings are too strong, we awaken.  Whatever function dreaming serves asleep (and this is by no means clear as yet), awake we are the accidental beneficiaries of the information embedded in the imagery we have created.

We are endowed with two naturally recurring interconnected forms of consciousness.  Waking consciousness is necessary to accommodate ourselves to the objective world in which we find ourselves.  Dreaming consciousness informs us of the subjective cost to ourselves of whatever accommodations we have to make.  We might reverse Freud’s dictum and say that dreams are the royal road to the vagaries and self-defeating aspects of waking consciousness as a result of these accommodations.  At this point in our efforts to civilize ourselves, too many of the inhabitants of this planet are far from any satisfactory level of self-fulfillment.

What will it take to build this other road in a way that would ensure the safety of those who embark upon it, and that would open up a new and exciting domain to those who travel it?  Briefly, it would involve the following:

Knowledge:  The knowledge is available.  In the recent past, more and more informative books have appeared, organizations have sprung up to foster interest in dreams (The Association for the Study of Dreams), periodicals encouraging the spread of dream sharing groups (The Dream Network), and for the first time ever, courses on dreams and how to work with them have been included in college curricula.  Some basic knowledge about dreams is essential, but it doesn’t involve any concept more complicated than the concept of metaphor. Dreams start in the present, the so-called day residue Freud referred to.  That residue is significant enough to find a place in the dream because it triggers unfinished emotional business in the past.  It is our own innate creativity that shapes this information into metaphorical imagery that speaks so eloquently to us of a deeper dimension of self-knowledge that escapes us or is only dimly sensed while awake.

Skills:  The skills are identifiable and teachable to anyone interested in satisfying their curiosity about dreams.  There are only two basic skills.  The first and most important is the art of listening to the dreamer, listening to all the dreamer has to say, listening to how he or she says it, and finally listening without any a priori judgment about the meaning of the dream.  The second skill is that of putting questions to the dreamer that are helpful to the dreamer without being invasive.  It takes time to perfect any skill, and these skills are no exception.        

A Group Approach:  The most natural way of introducing people to dream work is in a dream-sharing group.  Our personalities and our problems evolve in a social milieu, and are best explored in the company of others who are also there to explore their dreams and who can offer each other the support and help needed by a dreamer faced with the task of moving into the very private areas that our dreams often touch upon.

Structure:  Successful dream work comes at a price.  That price is self-disclosure.  That in turn involves exposure and vulnerability.  Therein lies the possible danger of dream work.  The danger is not in the dream.  The danger is in the eye of the beholder who approaches the dream clumsily and without respect for the fact that the dreamer is the guardian of his or her unconscious.  To respect that guardianship and at the same time further self-disclosure, a very special structure is needed.  It is a structure that at every step deepens the dreamer’s trust in the group and in the process.  The only foolproof way of ensuring that level of safety is for the dreamer to be in control of the process and the level of self-disclosure.  In the dialogue between the dreamer and the group, the questions are simply instruments to help the dreamer explore the emotional context that led to the dream.  It is the dreamer’s decision to share or not whatever information turns up.  The greater control the dreamer has over the process, the more that control is respected by the group, the greater the trust and with that the greater the level of self-disclosure.  The group members have to keep in mind that they function only as midwives in a safe delivery.  They do not own the baby.  Just as a complicated delivery requires an obstetrician, there are people who drift into a dream group who need more than what a dream group can provide.  A dream sharing group can be enormously therapeutic, but it is not formal therapy.

7: An extraordinary feature of our dreams is the connection of dreams to psi events. I am referring to the way we can play tricks with space while dreaming and pick up information about events that are spatially distant, and also play tricks with time that result in veridical precognitive visions. We seem to be more adept at this while dreaming than while awake. Here, too, it has always been my impression - and it’s only an impression - that psi effects are somehow related to the importance of maintaining our connectedness to our human and natural environment. Speaking from my experience, psi events are the surface outcropping of this underlying sense and need for unity, a kind of deeply hidden connective tissue available when other connective strategies fail.

8: The following imaginary dialogue is offered as an aid to those who wish to get closer to their dreams:

Q. Isn't there some danger in working with dreams without professional help?

A. I think some of the concern with danger is tied to the notion of interpretation which often implies someone telling the dreamer what his dream means. This can be a worrisome thing. When you are helped to appreciate your dreams you can go as far with them as you feel comfortable.

Q. How difficult is such an undertaking?

A. People differ a great deal in the ease with which they get close to their dreams. It involves hard work. Work implies moving against resistance. Dream work leads into unsolved, problematic aspects of our lives. It involves the right combination of persistence, boldness and risk in order to arrive at that wonderful guts level sense of clarity that comes when a lingering image from a dream suddenly comes alive. The mystery and strangeness of that vanishes at the moment it illuminates a particular preoccupation or concern which would otherwise have eluded the dreamer.

Q. How do I go about working with and appreciating my dreams?

A. The first step is to make the dream potentially public by having it clearly established in your own mind. What then would follow can best be described in two stages. I designate the first as gross tuning into the dream and the second as fine tuning into the dream. Gross tuning involves two steps, the first of which is to identify any residual feelings that stem from the dream.

This isn't too difficult if you let the dream sink in and try to identify the feelings that are set into motion. The next step is to look at each scene in the dream as a metaphor expressed in visual terms and to speculate on the possible translation of this metaphor. For example, a student described part of a dream by saying she was riding on a unicycle while holding onto a pole to balance herself. This might be a metaphor for trying to maintain her emotional balance, a manifestation of exhibitionistic needs, etc. At this point we are concerned, not with the accuracy of the translation of the metaphor, but with the range of possibilities opened up by the metaphor.

Q. How do you get the hang of translating the metaphors?

A. Simply by trying. They are often more transparent than they seem to the novice. Fine tuning involves arriving at what the dream really means to the dreamer. To discover this, further information is needed that might link any aspect of the dream to some current event in the life of the dreamer. Freud referred to this as the day residue. It helps to establish a bridge between current preoccupations and the theme of the dream. Then go on to associate to the various elements in the dream. In that way you will be gathering up some of the background thoughts that were translated into metaphor. When this process is combined with the identification of the day residue it limits the range of applicable metaphors and helps to select the one that is most relevant to the dream and most congruent with the feelings and thoughts of the dreamer.

Q. Is this all done in a freewheeling way?

A. No. A dream has a well-defined structure and the pursuit of its meaning should take this into account. There is an opening scene or setting. This depicts in metaphorical images both an existing emotional status quo and a hint of what may be disturbing to this status quo. Then follows a middle segment or developmental sequence. This explores the impact of the impinging stimulus on the life of the dreamer and the range of healthy and neurotic defenses that were mobilized to cope with it. The third part, or denouement, is an effort to cope with and remove the tensions and disequilibrium evoked by the emotional residue that triggered the dream.

Q. How can I make headway with this when the real world itself is so demanding?

A. Give the dream its due in terms of time and effort.

9: Emerson described the dream process:

“Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason .

  . . . Their extravagance from nature is yet within a higher nature. They seem to us to suggest an abundance and fluency of thought not familiar to the waking experience. They pique us by independence of us, yet we know ourselves in this mad crowd, and owe to dreams a kind of divination and wisdom.”

10: Ullman suggests that the screening of content for appropriateness for inclusion in the dreaming experience can be understood on the basis of a vigilance hypothesis. This view suggests that dream consciousness is an elaborate form of orienting activity designed to attend to, process and respond to certain aspects of residual experience, with an endpoint being reached in either the continuation of the sleeping state or its interruption and consequent transformation to awakening.

The affective residue which makes its presence felt in the dream operates reflexively or automatically as a scanning mechanism. Ranging over the entire longitudinal history of the person, it exerts a polarizing influence, drawing to itself and mobilizing aspects of past experiences that are related to it in emotionally meaningful ways. More recently, and in a different context, Dewan (1969) has called this "emotional tagging" and has identified it as a device facilitating memory storage and consolidation. Here it is viewed as an energizing or mobilizing effect necessary to help the sleeping organism to fully assess the meaning and implications of the novel or disturbing stimulus and through the participation of a conscious monitoring process either to allow the sleep cycle to remain intact or to engage in an arousal process leading to awakening.

While dreaming, conscious experience is organized along lines of emotional contiguity rather than temporal and spatial contiguity. The affective scanning that takes place while dreaming can, on occasion, bridge a spatial gap and provide us with information independent of any known communication channel. Emotional contiguity, under conditions we know very little about, appears capable of integrating transpersonal as well as personal content into the dream. Anecdotal accounts have for a long time pointed in this direction and the circumstances under which they occur strongly suggest that in matters of life and death the vigilant scanning of one's emotional environment reaches out across spatial boundaries in a manner that has yet to be explained.

11: Psi events seem to break through under conditions making for distance and alienation when such circumstances can no longer be tolerated and where an acute stress arises, necessitating contact. The medium or sensitive is one who has learned to transfer this random and capricious use of emergency into a way of life.

12: An interesting property of imagery as experienced during sleep that may be relevant to psi is the absolute and unquestioning sense of reality associated with it, regardless of how bizarre or unreal it may seem to us from the vantage point of the waking state. All the images we put to use in our dreams are, in a sense, derived primarily from the "outside." That is to say, they are social in origin and exist somewhere external to ourselves as a kind of pool of available social imagery created by the social habits of human beings. While dreaming, we experience these images in their external, real, outside or objective attributes. At the same time, we experience them as internal, inside and subjective. In fact, the distinction between outside and inside, object and subject seems to disappear. Our relation to the image while asleep enables us to experience it as inside and outside at the same time. We have shifted from dualistic outlook to a non-dual level of experience. Once awake, we experience the image as inside only and also less real. We have assumed a dualistic position which removes us from the feeling of reality formerly connected with the image. The image now strikes us as derived from a memory source and seems like a pale reproduction of some former reality.

Perhaps that is not the case at all, but a necessary illusion to maintain our dualistic mode of operating while awake. We drain the images of their objective reality and salvage only those attributes that support our sense of our own discreteness and separateness from the world about us. In our sleep subject-object, observer-observed, inside-outside come together. Perhaps that is a crucial condition for psi effects to occur. Instead of being something mysteriously different from the ordinary imagery that appears in our sleep, these effects may be of the same order and origin as our visual images, but more extended in their spatial and temporal range (as that range is experienced while awake).

In this connection it is of some interest to recall Penfield's experiments in electrical stimulation of the exposed temporal lobe during brain surgery. Under these circumstances there is not simply recall of an earlier memory, but the re-emergence of the memory in its original form as a real experience. It is experienced as "inside" but real ("outside"). A past context reassumes - or perhaps never lost - its realness. It has the flavor of the inside-outside or subject-object unity of the dream, but it occurs while awake and has some of the flavor of the non-dual mode that characterizes dreaming. It is as if the electrical stimulus disrupts the absolute control of the dual mode.

What we are proposing is that the imagery display in our dreams is more complex than the re-emergence of stored memories. The images seem to retain their connection with their source which, in the dual mode, is experienced as external to the bodily boundaries of the individual. They are experienced as real, as existing outside of the dreamer's conception of himself and as defining the relationship independently of the dreamer's wishes. In principle then, psi events would not pose a special problem of transmission or communication, but would simply represent an extension of the imaging process to a larger range of available social imagery than the dreamer usually draws upon. The nature of psi-related imagery suggests that this may occur accidentally or, more often, as a response to considerable emotional turbulence.

There is evidence from clinical and laboratory sources that interest in and a positive orientation to psi interactions favor the occurrence of such events. Our ordinary memory field is also determined by interest and attention. The extension of these attitudes to psi events brings them into what we experience as our memory field. Just as our normal memory is selective for certain events that depend on interest and emotional charge, so is our "memory" for psi events. In both instances an aspect of the source is from outside the self. In a non-dual mode this is not experienced as outside or inside, but as both. In a dual mode memory is experienced as inside and psi events (in the waking state) as outside. Our way of experiencing, of being in the world, is what creates the dilemma that psi poses for our waking orientation. What we experience as a separate and unique kind of event, namely a psi effect, is simply a widening or deepening of an "external" source of available social imagery that can become the building blocks of our dreams. Together they help us confront ourselves during the cyclically recurring periods of dreaming with pictorial renditions of the emotional cross currents of our lives. This suggests the possibility that, through our interest in and involvement with the psi dimension of reality, we increase the likelihood of our encounter with psi under circumstances in which we move closer to a non-dual existence.

Imagery then appears to be more than a mode of registering, incorporating and recalling new data. Our images never seem to lose their linkage to the outside. Playback during dreams and electrical stimulation of the brain calls our attention to these "outside" or real connections. It is this sense of reality in the dream, for example, that rivets our attention on them and enables them to serve as expressive self-confrontations. While dreaming we are concerned with issues of connection, continuity, affinity and wholeness. The creation and deployment of the visual metaphor is a remarkably powerful way of revealing, at a feeling level, just where we are in relation to these issues and the impact of recent events in our lives upon them. In our dreams we give visibility to the emotional components of the interpersonal fields of greatest importance to us. The potential for psi events is probably intrinsic to this field but hardly ever actualized because of our underdeveloped sense of the reality of psi.

(source - Psi Communication thru dream sharing -79)

13: J. Eccles (1977) suggested that mind is a separate entity that acts on the brain through PK.

LeShan (1974) wrote of different realities and postulated that psi effects fall into place once a shift occurs from involvement in the sensory reality of everyday life to the experience of a clairvoyant reality. The latter mode of apprehending reality dissolves the subject-object dichotomy, resulting in the merger of all events into the same unitary pattern. It is this merging that is experienced as the unmediated effects referred to as psi.

Ian Stevenson (1970) suggested that obscure physical symptoms and psychosomatic syndromes may, on the basis of well-validated anecdotal evidence, come about as physical analogues of a telepathic message.

Rogo (1974a) noted that not only do psi factors emerge initially in the early stages of illness but genuine psi ability is often seen to emerge after recovery. (Ullman –Parapsychology –80)

14: At a theoretical level, the study of psi events may have a bearing on the understanding of altered states of consciousness, particularly those states, like dreaming, in which attention is withdrawn from the outside world. The evidence now suggests that such states favor and facilitate psi and mediate transpersonal information gathering. Dreaming, as prototypical of such states, has to be viewed as a state of openness not only to intrapsychic affective residues arising during sleep but to heteropsychic or transpersonal sources as well. Transpersonal information gathering is apt to occur when significant relations are threatened, impaired, or destroyed. The existence of a relationship between dreams and psi events presents an opportunity to learn more about both. (ibid)

15: Several (Kelman/ Ullman, etc) therapists say that dreaming is not possible while sleeping and only happens on becoming sleeping [hypnogogic] and becoming waking [hypnopmpic], mostly during the latter. Kleitman has confirmed this viewpoint in his studies on sleeping and dreaming although Kelman feels that he inaccurately refers to inferred psychic activity while sleeping as dreaming. Dreaming while becoming sleeping was drawn to my attention by one patient whose only dreams occurred falling asleep. However, even with resolving the psychically determined forgetting of such dreams on the part of many other patients, the number of falling asleep dreamers as compared to waking up dreamers was still very small. (Ullman –The Social Roots of the Dream)

16: Dreaming appears to be an intrinsic part of normal sleep and, as such, although the dreams are not usually recalled, occurs every night in every sleeping person . . . . There appear to be no exceptions . . . . Total sleep time, six hours fifty minutes; total dream time, eighty minutes; percentage of dream time, nineteen point five .... A certain amount of dreaming each night is a necessity. It is as though a pressure to dream builds up with accruing dream deficit during successive dream-deprivation nights .... There is a more or less quantitative compensation for the deficit . . . . It is possible that if the dream suppression were carried on long enough, a serious disruption of personality would result .... Psychological disturbances such as anxiety, irritability, and difficulty in concentrating developed during the period of dream deprivation, but these were not catastrophic .... The most important fact was that none of the observed changes were seen during periods of control awakenings.

(From Dement, W.: The Effect of Dream Deprivation, Science, Vol. 131 as quoted by KELMAN in ibid)

The above quotes point at something quite crucial about the nature and fact of creative, curative, and life-affirming and maintaining processes in the psychic activity going on during sleep, which they call dreaming. The psychological disturbances they find on dream, but not sleep, deprivation with the suggested possibility of serious personality disruption if "dream suppression were carried on long enough" is valid. It is suggested evidence that where the growth possibilities and the creative potentialities present in all human beings are interfered with they become mentally ill and, I would say, eventually they die psychically, spiritually, and - even - physically. (DEMENT commentary in ibid)

17: Whenever the level of sleep is sufficiently light, whether as a result of external or internal stimuli or both, for the brain to be activated sufficiently, consciousness may appear in the form of a dream. This consciousness does not evoke voluntary behavior. But there is an indirect effect on behavior, for the dream can influence the level of sleep. The person is not prepared to deal with stimuli experienced in this transitional stage, whether from without or within, in the manner in which he would if he were awake - that is, through thought and action in the waking sense. He is involved at the moment in an involuntary process, the movement and change in the level of sleep. All that he can do is to reflect the stimuli in their relationship to these circumstances and through this reflection continue the awakening process if the tissue needs governing the depth of sleep are diminishing, or pave the way to a return to deep sleep if the tissue needs for sleep prove stronger than the arousing stimuli. In other words, the dream in its inception is potentially capable of facing in either of two directions. It is no more the guardian of sleep than it is the precursor of awakening. It may play a role in either process. (Ullman - Dreams and Arousal)

18: Susanne Langer pointed out that the work of art which corresponds most closely to the process of dreaming in its formal attributes is the cinema, where the individual, seated in a darkened room, forgets himself while participating in all the various roles portrayed on the screen, responding to them and to the scenery and background music as a totality.

The most noteworthy formal characteristic of a dream is that the dreamer is always at the center of it. Places shift, persons act and speak, or change or fade - facts emerge, situations grow, objects come into view with strange importance, ordinary things infinitely valuable or horrible, and they may be superseded by others that are related to them essentially by feeling, not by natural proximity. But the dreamer is always "there," his relation is, so to speak, equidistant from all events. Things may occur around him or unroll before his eves; he may act or want to act, or suffer or contemplate; but the immediacy of everything in a dream is the same for him.

 This aesthetic peculiarity, this relation to things perceived, characterizes the dream mode: it is this that the moving picture takes over, and whereby it creates a virtual present. In its relation to the images, actions, events that constitute the story, the camera is in the place of the dreamer.

19: Dorothy Eggan provides many clear examples both of the general cultural referents of the dream and the specific dynamic interaction between manifest content and the Hopi myth and folklore. On the question of the general cultural referents of the dream Eggan writes:

"The answer to the question of whether dreams can be used cross-culturally lies in part in the degree to which dreams can be considered both a projection of the personality and a reflection of the culture. On these points there is much affirmative evidence, both experimental and ethnographic."

On the specific relation to myth she notes that in a series of 310 dreams from a single informant gathered over a twenty-year period, fully one-third reveal the use of specific folklore characters or themes in the manifest content and these are effectively applied to the solution of personal problems. Referring to this informant, she writes:

". . . in the absence of an acceptable reality solution, we find an interesting interaction between the problem solving quality in tribal myths and his dreams, so that through the fusion of personal and tribal fantasy he is able to deal with anxiety in a somewhat impersonal manner, a device which gives him a reassuring sense of identity with his people, even during periods of conflict with them."

Concerning the personal use of myth in dreams, Eggan writes:

"Clearly, then, there is an interaction between Sam's (an informant) dreams and Hopi folklore. He not only uses folklore in dreams, but his dreams in turn modify the way in which he interprets folklore situations. By manipulating the problem-solving quality both of myths and his dreams, his fantasies not only give a sense of reality to his desire to be wise, strong, courageous, a good runner, and a good hunter who is honored by his people, and pleasing to and protected by supernaturals: but he is also frequently able through fantasy to operate within the cultural stock of imaginative happenings - elaborated or distorted to be sure - but still familiar enough to give him a reassuring sense of identity with his people, even when rejected by them."

In a quantitative analysis she found that "one-third of these 310 dreams use specific folklore characters or themes, many combining several of these, and all applied effectively to Sam's (pseudonym) personal problems."

{This point of view reminds one of Fromm's notion of a social unconscious, which is something currently recreated for each individual as he participates in the cultural matrix long before there is any clear registration in awareness of the nature of the acculturating process. It is essentially a unitary view of man's nature and predicated on the view that where pathology exists in the psychic sphere, as well as in the physical sphere, our first task is to gain an accurate knowledge of the exact nature of the noxious agents at work. When functional alterations in consciousness occur, as in states of dreaming, the key to their understanding lies not in such dualistic concepts as the return of the repressed and the corollary concepts of wish fulfillment and disguise, but in the basic notion that an individual is struggling to express under conditions of altered brain function the totality of factors, some known, some unknown, governing his reactions to a specific life experience. While dreaming, no less that while awake, we are dealing with the same unitary structure, capable of the same logical incisiveness, but functioning under different conditions of afferent input, internal organization, and behavioral effect. We are dealing not with a fragmentation or compartmentalization of the psyche, but rather with the relative dominance of a concrete and experiential mode of expression over an abstract and referential mode.}

[Discussion with Marnie – Eggan’s findings re accessing of the ‘social unconscious’ so as to solve present existential problems, brings to mind

1. Joseph Campbell’s book ‘Creative Mythology’ wherein Campbell observed that one’s existence occurs within the dual fields of two mythologies: firstly the one of our personal ‘story’ in this present life; secondly, this personal mythology is staged within the cultural/social ‘mythology’ of the world and times in which we find ourselves. We are trying to understand ourselves while, at the same time, trying to understand the world about us. And should this world itself be pathological, and the individual keep trying to align himself to it – on the mistaken assumption that one’s environment is a sane refuge – then the individual and his otherwise ‘sane’ myth is imperiled.

2. Metaphorically, pre-literate societies may actually be closer to reality than ourselves, in their beliefs that one’s ancestors communicate their wisdom into one’s own present life – i.e. the ‘spirit continuum’ of the species has a vested interest in ongoing survival of the species members, and helps those in the present with ancestral/cultural findings from the past. Even here, though, one has a responsibility to critically evaluate urges from the instinctive/intuitive ‘spirit continuum’ – one must deeply test everything from the here-and-now base of one’s own reason and experience – for all one knows, earlier life itself could have been based on partial truths or cultural lies.

3. In Ullman’s view, in our dreams we in effect compare our current conduct with a benchmark comprising more essential, instilled truth. ‘Our dreams do not lie.’ Yet from the above one can see that even this supposedly essential truth is but an internalized base inserted into us by society (in its own interests) through our earlier training and education, and on an ongoing basis by the ‘memes’ of our current environment. At best these social interests may be well-meaning and well-intentioned; at worst the individual may be a pawn of agendas of which his functional blindness or ignorance allows but temporary bliss.

4. Tentatively, one should listen to all (teachings, opinions, feelings, urges, dreams, meditations, etc), weigh all, and then decide for oneself what is true and best in one’s own time. Influences from any orders – whether ancestral, social or personal/egoic – must be opened to challenge.

5. The tendency conditioned into us by ‘professionals’ is for one to subjectively see oneself as the ‘patient’ or dependent person requiring adjustment – and to this end we flog ourselves, with the help of others. The reality process may be much more dynamic than that. In humility, there may well be transpersonal communication going on in many directions – one’s own ‘truer’ truth radiating out inter-psychically to inform not only the present social environment, but backward intra-personally and ancestrally, and forward into one’s future life and that of posterity. In a timeless sense, truth is our perennial quest, however-whenever-whatever its source.]

(Concerning the above social environment) some dreams contain images that are taken from social experience and carry a congruent, social meaning. This generally escapes notice, because we're not in the habit of extrapolating from the image to the social reality that lies beyond. The dreamer pauses nightly to assess these influences, particularly in regard to their capacity to upset any preconditioned, pre-existing equilibrium. Our dreams remind us that we are part of a larger whole, and just as the dreams are carriers of the potential for personal change, they are also carriers of the potential for social change to the extent that social factors become visible in our dreams. They reveal the content of our social unconscious, that is, what we allow ourselves to remain unconscious of with regard to what is going on in society. Nazi Germany is an outstanding example. Much that was evil was going on at the time and gained expression in dreams. When the dreamer remains unaware of the message of the dream the opportunity for deeper social insight is lost. No room is left for any challenge to the social order. There is room only for personal demons and the transformation of social demons into personal demons. Dream consciousness may, indeed, pose a danger to a technologically supercharged, mechanically-oriented society. ( Ullman - Dreams as Exceptional Human Experiences – 93)

20: Discussion (addendum to A Theory of Vigilance and Dreaming)

Evans: In 1964 Newman and I first put forward the idea of the dream as being a process comparable to the rewriting, up-dating and clearing of old programs ‑ operations that must be performed with modern computers. The brain is obviously a computer of a special kind and as with other computers must be controlled by sets of programs. We feel that it is exceedingly likely that the brain would need to set time aside with the system 'off-line' when existing programs are updated and rewritten in the light of information fed in the course of the day. As the system is off-line (a condition which human beings have come to call sleep) these programming operations are carried out at an unconscious level. Interruption of the sleep state will cause conscious mind to 'catch the system at work' and a 'dream' will be reported. Incidentally, Dr. Ullman while I am very dubious about telepathy and kindred phenomena, I don't see in principle that these ideas of ours conflict in any way with your own notions about sleep.

Ullman: I did not mean to imply that computer analogies were incompatible with the point of view expressed, but that they were limited in that they seemed to be exclusively concerned with either a storage function or the processing of information for use in the subsequent waking state. The emphasis then, is on a point of view about dreaming taken from the waking state. I believe the emphasis should be a more phenomenological one which would shift the focus to a concern with the needs of the sleeping human organism. These needs involve decision making during states of consciousness that differ qualitatively from waking consciousness. The processing of information at this time has to be oriented to such immediate needs as the question of relative safety in remaining asleep as well as the longer range needs of the waking state.

21: There are only a limited number of dilemmas which people find themselves in that preoccupy them while dreaming. Some of the more frequent ones include:

Authenticity vs. sham
Activity vs. passivity
Dependency vs. self-reliance
Defiance vs. compliance in relation to authority
Adequacy vs. inadequacy
Confrontation vs. denial
Self-definition vs. definition by others
Being vs. having
Being for oneself vs. being for others

Defining the dilemma in relation to the specific predicament that the dreamer is in at the moment is helpful in extending the range of meaning of the dream. (Source: The Experiential Dream Group –79)

22: Fromm - The Forgotten Language:

While we sleep we are not concerned with bending the outside world to our purposes. We are helpless and sleep therefore, has rightly been called the 'brother of death.' But we are also free, freer that awake. We are free from the burden of work, from the task of attack or defense, from watching and mastering reality. We need not look at the outside world; we look at our inner world, are concerned exclusively with ourselves. When asleep we may be likened to a fetus or a corpse; we may also be likened to angels who are not subject to the laws of 'reality.' In sleep the realm of necessity has given way to the realm of freedom in which 'I am' is the only system to which thoughts and feelings refer.

23: There is a tendency, active or potential, for people to seek out emotionally healing experiences. Emotional healing, in contrast to physiological healing, takes place outside of the skin or physically defined limits of the person. It takes place as a consequence of changes that occur in an interpersonal field. Other people and our relationship to them is a prerequisite for emotional healing. Emotional difficulties start with human beings and are resolved through human beings. (Group Dream Work and Healing –1984)

24:  (From Vigilance Theory and Psi. Part I: Ethological and Phylogenetic Aspects by Jon Tolaas):

In the 1960s, Snyder advanced the so-called sentinel thesis of REM sleep function. Whereas the emphasis of Ullman's thesis is on dreaming as a human phenomenon, Snyder's closely related thesis stressed REM sleep as a mammalian phenomenon. According to Snyder, the cyclically appearing bouts of arousal (REM) interspersed in the sleep of all mammals and birds studied to date, provide the animal with an anticipatory warning system so that it may wake up and cope with approaching danger (e.g., predators). The beauty of the mechanism lies in the fact that the critical reactivity of the animal is enhanced during REM sleep, so that if it wakes up, it is readily able to flee or fight. Thus, even very vulnerable animals may obtain a certain minimum amount of sleep because they are able to put out "sentinels" to warn them of approaching predators.

{Jon Tolaas - All mammals must dream because dreaming is a biologically triggered state. But in giving itself over to dreaming, any animal becomes more vulnerable to external threats than it is in any other state for two main reasons. First, it must attend to the unfolding dream imagery, and second, in doing so, the tone in skeletal muscles drops to extremely low levels, which makes fight or flight impossible even if it should wake up in time to counter an attack. The drop in muscle tone is understandable in light of the fact that the drama (in the Greek root sense: action) is removed from the outer stage of goal-directed and tone-dependent actions to the inner stage of absorbing, visualized actions that the dreamer has to live through. As a consequence of this, two closely related survival needs arise: need for "sentinels" scrutinizing the environment for potential dangers while at the same time shutting out irrelevant stimuli, and a need for an inherent anticipatory arousal mechanism providing the dreamer with the necessary critical reactivity immediately on awakening. This is precisely what REM sleep and dreaming appear to do.- -The most helpless species at birth are also the ones with the most developed, mature brains. They are also the greatest dreamers, presumably because dreaming is linked to adaptive learning needs. The species most vulnerable to attack also spend the least amount of time in dreaming sleep, and are typically prey animals such as antelopes, rabbits, and guinea pigs, who have little developed brains.}

25: Tolaas - Many researchers (Friedman & Fisher, 1967; Globus, 1966; Hartmann,1968; Kleitman, 1963; Kripke & O'Donoghue, 1968) have suggested that the REM sleep cycle continues throughout the 24 hours and is part of a basic rest-activity cycle. Similarly, Kripke and Sonnenschein (1978) have noted a biological rhythm in waking fantasy occurring cyclically with a 70-120 minute periodicity. Testing this hypothesis, Manseau and Broughton (1981) found a similar cyclic daydreaming rhythm based on left and right frontal and parietal referential EEG recordings. (ibid)

Jones, 1970 observes: The stars are always in the sky but first become visible in the night, like dreams, when we can give ourselves over to our private images. This finding may be of special interest for our topic because reverie states and daydreaming states associated with spontaneous psi experiences (Rhine, 1962) may be peaks of the basic "image tide" that is flowing through our whole existence. Could such basic shifts also account for some of the elusiveness of psi? Could Ehrenwald's existential shifts be ripples on that same biorhythmic tide? It is important to remember that in ontogeny, REM periods are parts of a circadian sleep-waking pattern and only gradually come to be entrained to the nighttime. However, the basic rhythm may persist. Similarly, we may imagine that psi experiences generally come to be associated with REM periods during the night. Rather than REM sleep, we might speak of the dreaming state as a "third state" along with waking and sleeping. (ibid)

In a comprehensive analysis of telepathic/clairvoyant experiences, Persinger (1974) found characteristic patterns. Marked increases were reported to appear between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. (local time) with a major peak between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., that is, at a time of the night when we would likely find many people in the second REM period.

All these fairly well-established characteristics of telepathic/ clairvoyant experiences may be seen as reflecting the matrix in which they originated: the intrauterine and early extrauterine period 'of mother-fetus/newborn communication. (ibid)

26: Tolaas further observes that, enveloped in the womb, the fetus is apparently completely safe and carefree as food needs and protection are taken care of by the mother. Viewed thus, it should need no REM sentinel, particularly as it could do nothing if a predator attacks. Its life may be described as pure ingestion of food and psychic stimuli. However, it shares the endocrine milieu of a vulnerable organism. Thus, we may say that it is constantly exposed to the mother's mood shifts and more persistent emotional states during a period that is known to be stressful. Due to the shared hormonal stream, the fetus is bound to learn the "emotional alphabet" of the mother organism.

Verny and Kelly (1981) present a host of recent findings on the mother-fetus relationship that all point to the fact that the emotional dialogue between mother and fetus is far more subtle and complex than we may have tended to think, and it is not at all explainable in terms of orthodox physiology. They postulate some kind of extrasensory perception to explain the direct and immediate exchange of emotions between mother and fetus.

{For instance, they found that the unborn child seems to be aware of the mother's persistent feelings toward it during pregnancy. But what is more, it also seems able to pick up ambivalent and largely unconscious feelings directed toward it. Thus, the newborn baby may refuse to suck the mother's breast, but be willing to suck someone else's breast or drink from a feeding bottle. If the mother in question is in good health, has had no diseases during pregnancy, and has sound and well-tasting milk, the only apparent reason for the baby's refusal to suck her breast is the fact that it has somehow picked up her ambivalence towards it, which was confirmed in subsequent interviews.} (ibid)

27: There are two important features of the content of dreaming consciousness. (a) A dream starts in the present in the sense that some residue of our recent experience remains unresolved and acts as the triggering focus that orients the dreamer to the issue, situation, or predicament that will be the subject of the dream. Dream images have relevance to our current life situation. (b) This residue plays a significant role because it resonates with older issues in our life either not yet recognized or not yet resolved. We seem able to lay open our memory bank and pull out of it bits and pieces of past experience that are emotionally related to our present predicament. In other words, we are able, while dreaming, to mobilize more information that focused around a specific issue in our life than we are ordinarily able to do while awake.

 In my opinion, there is a third and, perhaps, most significant aspect to the message embedded in the imagery. Alone and dreaming, we have temporarily suspended our role as actors in the social scene. We drop our social facade, our social defenses. Under these circumstances, we risk taking a profoundly honest look at ourselves in relation to what we are dreaming about. We get information that can be relied upon: the actual felt imprint of our unique life history as it pertains to an immediate issue. Our assets as well as our deceits are displayed for what they are. To the extent that they are at odds with a waking vision of ourselves, our dreams have something to teach us. (Ullman – Vigilance Theory and Psi – Part II)

28: These external or social referents are not only of theoretical interest. They play a powerful role in maintaining a behavioral status quo. A dream may expose a particular behavioral trend that the dreamer may wish to change. He or she finds that change is not easy and is pulled back not only by the weight of his or her own past experiences but also by the external reinforcement that is always on hand in the surrounding social milieu. Stated another way, the trend pays off, that is, it has pragmatic value in a society that bathes and nurtures that particular behavior.

In order to understand the possible connection between social forces and our dream life, we have to map our efforts along at least four dimensions:

1. What we know about our own life history, the kind of person we see ourselves as - our personal consciousness.

2. All that we do not know about our idiosyncratic life history and its impact on us - our personal unconscious.

3. What we know about the nature and operation of the world about us - our social consciousness.

4. All that we don't know about the laws and operations of the social system of which we are a part - our social unconscious.

Although these categories can be discretely defined, in practice there is much blurring and overlap. What it comes down to is that we know and don't know certain things about ourselves and the world about us. Growth is contingent upon experience that exposes areas of ignorance in either the personal or social sphere, providing we are ready for the changes that have to be made. Anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings arise when unconscious areas are intruded upon or gaps in our mastery are exposed. When we feel unable to deal with the issues raised by the gap, we try to brush it aside, deal with it in fantasy, or seek other solutions. Our dreams reflect whichever path we choose. What we come up with may be the precursor to a healthy solution or may represent an attempt to sidestep a healthy solution. (Dreams, the Dreamer, and Society)

29: The onset of dreaming is heralded by the involuntary appearance of imagery. As the dream progresses, "voluntary" elements, i. e. the dreamer's sense of himself in the dream, may enter the picture in an effort to respond to the predicament defined by the unfolding imagery. This occasionally can go on to the point of lucidity where there is an awareness that one is dreaming and voluntary elements take over. At this point one can shape the remaining course of the dream. (Dreaming Consciousness: More Than a Bit Player in the Search for Answers to the Mind/Body Problem - 99)

30: There is an extended and suggestive manifestation of subjective nonlocality when psi effects appear in dreams. Where an action or event at a distance carries an emotional valence for the dreamer, it appears to be possible to gain simultaneous awareness of that event and have it influence the course of the dream much as any ordinary day residue might. What is even more challenging is the fact that our vulnerability to the possibility of unpredictable events threatening existing emotional bonds, seems to be associated in dreaming with a scanning process that picks up non-inferential future events that pose such a danger. Nonlocality seems to be a feature of the dream in the way we bring together in our dream, both actual experiences in space and time and paranormally apprehended experiences in space and time. The psi effects that gain access to the dream influence the course of the dream much as any ordinary day residue might. Just as in an ordinary dream the psi event might present in a highly symbolic way or be more literally accurate. (ibid)

31: The theoretical contributions of Jahn and Dunne (1987) to psi research are unique to the extent that they arise out of a long-term research program devoted to the study of anomalous phenomena (PEAR, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) and have led to an elaborate exploration of the metaphorical relevance of the generic features of quantum mechanics such as the wave/particle duality, complementarity, uncertainty, indistinguishability and the exclusion principle to "consciousness conjugates". Their experimental work has involved the attempt to explore the influence of consciousness on a variety of mechanical and electronic devices, and on remote viewing in which a subject attempts to describe a randomly selected scene at a distance witnessed by someone else. The model Jahn (1994) offers to account for the anomalous, seemingly non-local effects of these experiments has as one of its basic tenets the idea that consciousness has a proactive component and that -

Like physical light (energy) and elementary particles (mass), consciousness (information) enjoys a wave/particle duality which allows it to circumvent and penetrate barriers, and to resonate with other consciousnesses and with appropriate aspects of its environment. Thereby it can both acquire and insert information, both objective and subjective, from and to its resonant partners. (ibid)

32: I don't think the truths that emerge in the dream spring de novo at the time of dreaming. I think that we are sensitive at all times to the truth but that awake we have learned how to use a number of defensive maneuvers (the mechanisms of defense) to play games with it. Whatever emotional dissonance is set up by these maneuvers is brushed aside but never quite disappears. It remains as background noise, hardly audible during the day, but loud and clear in the imagery of the dream. As members of the animal species we are sensitive to what is real. In the case of our own species, that means registering the truth when we are confronted by it, registering it not necessarily consciously, but somewhere in our bodily tissues. (A Note on the Social Referents of Dreams – 2001)

Psi addendum

It was F.W.H. Myers who coined the term telepathy. His mapping of this psychic underworld led him to what James referred to as an "evolutive" concept of the unconscious realm. The subliminal self, according to Myers, served a higher, regenerative, inspirational function in contrast to the prevailing "dissolutive" point of view of neurologists that these unconscious manifestations were regressive and degenerative in nature.

Myers concluded that the various states alluded to above could be best linked together and explained in terms of a subliminal self that constituted an unconscious, but organized, agency, one that was active at all times but that only under special circumstances could break through into consciousness. Hypnotic phenomena, for example, occurred as a consequence of a successful appeal to the subliminal self through suggestion. More esoteric phenomena such as phantasms of the living and dead, bilocation, or traveling clairvoyance suggested that the subliminal self could establish independent relations with space as well as with other minds. Mediumistic trances, hypnosis, and reverie were all states favorable for the breakthrough of sensory (hallucinatory experiences) and motor automatisms (automatic writing, etc.). Viewed from the waking state these various properties of the subliminal self appeared discontinuous. Myers sought to establish them in their unity and continuity, suggesting that each merged imperceptibly into the next. Thus, hyperesthesia or increased sensory acuity merged into telepathy. This in turn merged into phantasmogenetic telepathy in which the phantasm of a living person might appear to a percipient and, finally, the phantasmogenetic space invasion by a dead person, or - in more common parlance - a ghost.

While William James was a keen admirer of Myers, he took issue with his particular formulation of survival, preferring his own transmission theory, namely, that individual consciousness flowed from, and back to, a universal stream.

A second trend evolved as psychiatrists attempted to come to terms with the challenge of psi. Here the concern was not with how to fit psi into the existing order but how to reshape the existing order so as to accommodate psi as an intrinsic and necessary feature. Two qualitatively divergent approaches evolved. Ehrenwald felt that this accommodation could come about if personality theory were to undergo the same transformation that took place in modern physics as discoveries in quantum physics and relativity theory expanded and enriched our understanding of the physical world. He likened current personality theory to Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics in its rigid adherence to outworn Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions. An open model based on field theory interconnecting the world of the living and the world of the nonliving would accommodate psi on its own terms. Buttressing this point of view, Ehrenwald developed a model based on the operation of psi in the early mother-child symbiotic relationship, followed by the gradual submergence of psi potential as the evolving human organism learned to adapt to the external forces about it, this in turn followed by its occasional emergence in later life under special circumstances. Linking the mystery of psi to the more familiar, but still mysterious, operation of mind on the body, Ehrenwald formulated the concept of the symbiotic gradient to depict the decline, but not total loss, of ego control over the events to be influenced as these events begin to extend beyond the physical and neurological limits of the body proper. Paranormal abilities first cradled in the early mother-child relationship later impinge as a manifestation of the symbolic gradient upon the extended family and finally society at large.

Ehrenwald defines the conditions under which these later manifestations occur as an "existential shift," meaning by this any major change in state (i.e., from waking to sleeping).

The thread that runs through Ehrenwald's writings over the three decades spanned by his writings in the field is his search for a neurobiological model to account for psi. From the time his attention was drawn to the paranormal abilities of a retarded dyslexic girl, to his most recent reports, he has drawn attention to certain similarities between psi effects and deficit states, the so-called minus function. More specifically, he has noted the resemblance between the fragmentation and displacement effects apparent as percipients attempt to reproduce the target picture to the productions of brain-damaged patients. He has evolved a theoretical model based on these considerations, containing four major premises: (a) the extension hypothesis, whereby psi effects are seen as compensatory extensions of normal sensory and motor abilities; (b) the hypothesis of a symbiotic gradient, whereby the range of abilities, normal and functional in early childhood, are in time both extended in range but become more sporadic in their manifestation; (c) to account for precognitive and PK effects he links these phenomena to ESP, noting that they are simply different aspects of the same psi syndrome; and (d) he identifies the existential shift as the circumstance that facilitates a psi event.

Ehrenwald has had a knack of coining rather felicitous terms to designate one or another aspect of telepathy as he has observed its operation clinically. The terms minus function, existential shift, and symbiotic gradient have already been mentioned. He spoke of manifest correspondences, particularly in dreams, between an element in the dream of the percipient and the actual occurrence as tracer effects, drawing an analogy to bodily substances that, when radioactively tagged, become more readily identifiable. He spoke of telepathic leakage as psi induction in connection with the spread of telepathic effects from one patient to another. He noted that patients under analysis by analysts of different schools often tended to employ dream symbols characteristic and supportive of the particular theoretical orientation of the analyst. He referred to this as doctrinal compliance and felt that unconscious telepathic exchanges between analyst and patient may play a role in bringing it about.

He spoke of the scatter effect to denote the fact that telepathic communications often tend to be approximate, fragmented, and scattered both spatially and temporally. To account for the fact that occasionally the percipient has an accurate and detailed vision of the distant target or scene, he regarded telepathy as "biphasic" involving at first a "catapsychic," or fragmentation, effect, followed in some cases, presumably when the affective changes are great enough, by an "anapsychic" phase, where the picture comes together in an accurate presentation.

- - - - - -

The theory of dreaming which Ullman developed is based on the vigilance hypothesis. This view suggests that dream consciousness is an elaborate form of orienting activity designed to attend to, process, and respond to certain aspects of our residual experience, with an endpoint being reached in either the continuation of the sleeping state or its interruption and consequent transformation to awakening. While dreaming, conscious experience is organized along lines of emotional contiguity rather than temporal and spatial contiguity. The affective or feeling residue that makes its presence felt in the dream operates reflexively or automatically as a scanning mechanism. Ranging over the entire longitudinal history of the person, it exerts a polarizing influence, drawing to itself aspects of past experiences that are related to it in emotionally meaningful ways. This enables the sleeping organism to assess fully the meaning and implications of the novel or disturbing stimulus and, through the development of the ensuing dream, either allows sleep to continue or helps bring about awakening.

The affective scanning that takes place while dreaming can, on occasion, bridge a spatial gap and provide us with information independent of any known communication channel. Emotional contiguity, under conditions we know very little about, appears capable of integrating transpersonal, as well as personal, content into the dream. Anecdotal accounts have for a long time pointed in this direction, and the circumstances under which they occur strongly suggest that in matters of life and death the vigilant scanning of one's emotional environment reaches out across spatial boundaries in a manner that has yet to be explained.

- - - - - - - -

A largely unexplored area having implications for our understanding of the interplay between psychopathology and bodily change has to do with the type of case where psi communications seem to take the form of transient somatic manifestations. Eisenbud (1970) describes several cases of what seemed to be psychosomatic symptoms initiated as psi-conditioned responses. Other observers, notably Schwarz (1967) and Stevenson (1970), suggest that the effect is more frequent than is generally suspected. Based on his studies of telepathic impressions, Stevenson feels it is reasonable to assume that somatic symptomatology ranging from obscure physical symptoms to identifiable psychosomatic syndromes may come about as physical analogies of a telepathic message. Schwarz coined the term telesomatic reactions for responses of this nature and reported on a number of illustrative cases drawn from his own practice as well as self-observation. He points out that, since reactions of this kind evolve unconsciously, they are apt to go unnoticed unless the telepathy hypothesis is kept in mind. He cites the work on the plethysmographic registration of ESP effects as suggestive of the possible mechanism responsible for physiological changes and somatic symptomatology.

- - - - - - -

Two types of reported experience are worth noting in their possible bearing on the problem of remotely induced bodily changes. One is a well-documented report of the extraordinary circumstances attending the unexpected simultaneous deaths of 32-year-old schizophrenic twins (Wilson and Reece, 1964) who were under observation at the time on different wards of a psychiatric hospital. They died at approximately the same time and for causes that could not be determined at autopsy. In the analysis of the various factors that might have accounted for the simultaneity of death the authors included a "psychic" determinant.

Another kind of remotely induced organismic change is reported by Paul (1966) in her description of how two of her patients reacted during a period of time when she was under the influence of an hallucinogenic mushroom taken for experimental purposes. In each instance the patient went through a period of upset and disturbance followed by an amnesia of several hours duration correlating with the time the therapist herself was experiencing an altered state of consciousness. Temporary psychotic-like symptoms appeared to have been remotely induced, followed by a near total memory loss. Here again the question arises: if incidents of this kind do occur, how often do they go, if not unnoticed, then unrecognized as telepathically induced? (source – Ullman – psychopathology and psi phenomena)

[The above sourced from review of Montague Ullman’s papers at http://siivola.org/monte/ ]

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