Analyzing Chronic Responses
in Co-creative Dream Analysis
Abstract
With the advent
of the co-creative dream paradigm, which is based on the principle that dreams
are indeterminate from the outset, and co-created through the reciprocal
exchanges between the ego and emergent dream content, the analysis of the dreamer’s
responses becomes an important new dimension in dream analysis. In this paper,
the author develops the hypothesis that chronic dream ego responses can be
traced to two sources in the individual’s prior experience: 1) trauma and loss,
and 2) introjected parental and cultural ideals. The individual’s efforts to
prevent trauma and loss from recurring accounts for “reactive adaptive
responses,” and attempts to emulate introjected ideals results in “compliant
adaptive responses.” Both of these types of chronic responses can be identified
with the dreamer’s help in dream analysis, and facilitative alternatives can be
formulated in dialogue with the dreamer. The author presents a sequence of
steps that can be used as a standalone method, or incorporated into existing
dream work methods.
Keywords:
co-creative dream analysis, lucid dreaming, adaptive response, dreamer response
analysis, imagery change analysis
Analyzing Chronic Responses in
Co-creative Dream Analysis
Introduction
In The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions,
Kuhn says that “when paradigms change, the world itself changes with
them," and that "scientists see new and different things when
looking...in places they have looked before” (1962, p. 110). Thus, operating
from within a new paradigm, a researcher will become aware of new phenomena,
raise new questions, and be able to solve problems that have remained
heretofore unsolved.
Co-creative dream theory (Rossi,
1972, 2000; Sparrow, 2013; Sparrow and Thurston, 2010) represents a paradigm
that accounts for the formation, development, and outcome of the dream
experience. It posits that the dream
experience is indeterminate from the outset, and unfolds according to the
real-time reciprocal interplay between the dream ego and the dream
content. Rossi captured the essence of
this relationship when he stated, “there is "a continuum of all possible
balances of control between the autonomous process and the dreamer’s
self-awareness and consciously directed effort" (1972, p. 163). As for the
purpose that this interactive process fulfills, Rossi (1972; 2000) anticipated
Hartmann (1998) by suggesting that it serves an integrative function, but went
further to assert that the dreamer-dream interactive process either facilitates
or retards that aim.
The Emerging Importance of Dreamer Response Style
In co-creative dream theory, it
follows that the dream ego’s style of relating becomes an important new
dimension in dream analysis. When analyzing the interactive process, the dream
ego’s responses can be viewed as either facilitative or obstructive in an
unfolding relationship with the dream content. LaBerge uses the term
“adaptive response” to denote when dreamers respond in ways that facilitate
psychological integration and overall health within the dream.
In
general terms, health can be conceived of as a condition of adaptive
responsiveness to the challenges of life. For responses to be adaptive, they
must at least favorably resolve the situation in a way that does not disrupt
the individual’s integrity or wholeness. Adaptive responses also improve the
individual’s relationship with the environment. There are degrees of
adaptiveness, with the optimum being what we have defined as health. (LaBerge,
2009)
Having
returned from a journey, I am carrying a bundle of bedding and clothes down the
street when a taxi pulls up and blocks my way. Two men in the taxi and one
outside it are threatening me with robbery and violence. . . . Somehow I
realize that I’m dreaming and at this I attack the three muggers, heaping them
in a formless pile and setting fire to them. Then out of the ashes I arrange
for flowers to grow. My body is filled with vibrant energy as I awaken. (La
Berge, 2014)
While the lucid dreamer seems to have asserted
his or her own power, such “success” begs the question of whether true growth
can proceed for long on the basis of merely destroying dream characters, and by
implication suppressing whatever the dream imagery represented. Commenting on the futility of destroying
dream characters, Rossi flatly states, “Kill a man once and his physical body
remains permanently dead; kill a fantasy image once and the battle has just
begun” (1972, p. 47). LaBerge acknowledges
that while attacking threatening dream characters may be therapeutic for
dreamers who have suffered at the hands of abusers, in most cases a more
conciliatory, engaging response effects a positive, and perhaps more lasting
transformation of the dream character. Drawing on Tholey’s (1983) work, LaBerge
suggests that ”when
the dream ego looks courageously and openly at hostile dream figures, their
appearance often becomes less threatening” (LaBerge, 2014). Citing Rossi (1972; 2000),
I have suggested that the dream ego’s responses can be viewed on a
developmental continuum, whereby flight, expressing power, or even destroying
dream characters, can serve as interim achievements that may progress
eventually to dialogue and reconciliation (Sparrow, 2014). Clearly, one’s attempts to identify adaptive
and maladaptive dream ego responses should proceed on the basis of a careful
and sensitive consideration of the dreamer’s psychodynamic and interpersonal
history. In practice, a dream worker can
assist a dreamer in discriminating between adaptive and maladaptive responses
by determining whether a specific response represents a habitual response, or a
creative departure from the status quo, and
“at least favorably resolve[s] the situation in a way that does not disrupt
the individual’s integrity or wholeness.” (LaBerge, 2009, p.107-108).
The Development of the Theory of Chronic Adaptive Responses
It
is useful, in and of itself, to help dreamers identify chronic responses and to
encourage the formulation of new ones. However, such efforts are even more
useful if the origins of the chronic responses can be understood,
as well. By tracing the dream ego’s responses to their origins, and developing
an empathic understanding of how such feelings, thoughts, and behaviors may
have once fulfilled an adaptive function in earlier contexts we can conceivably
assist the dreamer in considering whether such responses are still useful in
contemporary contexts.
Specifically, it is widely accepted
that therapy groups pass through an unstable stage of adjustment immediately
following the initial meetings. This stage is called by various terms,
including the "storming" stage (Bormann, 1975) and the
"transitional" stage (Corey, Corey, and Corey, 2014; Gladding, 2012).
Lasting until the group achieves sufficient cohesion to enable passage into
deeper work, this problematic stage is characterized by an array of behaviors
that come about, according to most theorists, as a way to resist the growing
intimacy and interpersonal risks inherent in group work. Most of these
behaviors are not disruptive in and of themselves, but become problematic over
time as members resort to them again and again as idiosyncratic and predictable
ways of responding to interpersonal challenges. For instance, a member may
initially receive accolades for asking incisive questions of other members, but
this same behavior may eventually provoke the group’s annoyance as they become
aware of how the questioning behavior hides the questioner’s own feelings and
thoughts. Behaviors that are cited in
the literature (Corey, Corey, & Corey, 2014) as resistive or disruptive
include excessive questioning, advice giving, storytelling, hostility,
peacemaking, silence, rescuing, monopolization, dependency, and superiority.
But virtually any behavior that becomes repetitive over time can serve to veil
a person’s authentic feelings and wider potentialities, and thus prevent
greater intimacy.
Two Categories of Chronic Adaptive Responses
In teaching group therapy to
counselors in training, I was dissatisfied with the traditional view that
“resistive” behaviors arise only in reaction to the group’s transitional stage.
Not only did I notice members resorting to such behaviors from the outset, but
I also observed the same behaviors occurring beyond the transitional stage,
albeit in muted and more functional ways. On the basis of these observations, I
concluded that individuals have stable, idiosyncratic responses to perceived
interpersonal stress. The traditional
belief that these behaviors are uniquely tied to the group’s transitional stage
obscured, in my opinion, the possibility that these behaviors have always been
there, and have possibly served positive, adaptive functions in earlier life
contexts. Given my observation that the responses were stable and evident
throughout the group’s development, I began to examine the sources of these
chronic behaviors by interrupting group members who were exhibiting them, and
asking them simply to get in touch with the underlying emotions. To facilitate
the exploration, I used an “affect bridge” (Christiansen, Barabasz,
and Barabasz, 2009) to help members get
in touch with the source of the emotions. That is, I asked them to get in touch with the feelings
prompting the behavior as a
bridge to its original context.
Reactive
Adaptive Response. When
group members were given a chance to explore the origins, they typically
discovered one of two underlying causes. First, some members traced their
repetitive behaviors to past trauma or loss. When this was true, then such
behavior represented a strategy for preventing similar painful interpersonal
experiences from recurring. For instance, a 50-year old male client, whose
alcoholic stepfather would periodically beat his frail mother, developed a
tendency to crack jokes in order to defuse the tension at home. While the
behavior worked in that particular context to distract his stepfather, it
proved disruptive in later relationships––including his involvement in a therapeutic
group where he would resort to humor without remaining sensitive to the unique
demands of the moment. I began to refer to any interpersonal behavior, which is
designed to prevent trauma and loss from recurring, as a “reactive adaptive
response” (Sparrow, 2010; Sparrow and Alvarado, 2006). This type of adaptive
response has a way of suppressing one’s direct expression of feeling and need
in favor of protecting oneself from real or imagined interpersonal threats.
Compliant
Adaptive Response. In other cases,group members revealed that a particular
chronic response could be traced to a desire to gain acceptance within one's
family and culture. Instead of
preventing something terrible from happening again, this type of behavior was
designed to win approval by emulating some introjected ideal. For instance, a 31-year-old Hispanic male who
wanted to gain his father's respect and win approval from others, grew up
imitating his father's quiet, strong, and unrevealing personality, thinking
that to do otherwise would render him less of a man. Or a woman, who always offered to help others
in the group even when it wasn't needed, was able to trace her reflexive caring
responses to her mother, who gave herself tirelessly to her family's needs. To
distinguish this type of behavior from the reactive type, I termed it
"compliant adaptive response" (Sparrow, 2010; Sparrow and Alvarado,
2006). The consequence of the early parental/cultural programming results in a
splitting of the self into acceptable and unacceptable aspects, thereby giving
rise to what Jung has called the persona and the shadow split.
After working with these concepts
for several years as a counselor educator, I began to see that reactive and
compliant adaptive responses occur in dreams, as well in the waking state, and
become especially evident over the course of analyzing multiple dreams from the
same client, or sometimes in single dreams with heightened affect. For
instance, a 34-year married teacher and mother reported the following brief dream:
I
am standing on the street outside a movie theater with my sister and a friend
of hers. My sister is dressed in a beautiful blue outfit. I want to go into the movie with them, but I
recall that I have some school work that I need to attend to. My sister and her
friend get in line to buy tickets. Meanwhile, I wait for a school bus to pass
before crossing the street.
When the dreamer shared this dream
in my group counseling class, we focused principally on her decision not to
join her sister and friend, since the dreamer's response is the centerpiece of
co-creative dream work. At first, we did not know if the dreamer’s behavior was
a chronic response, or a creative departure from her usual habit patterns. When
she reflected on her pivotal decision to leave the other women and return to
work, she said that when given a choice she almost always chose to work,
because she felt that her family expected her to be successful and to do the
responsible thing. She said that she had reaped a great deal of praise from
having an especially beautiful home and a well-organized classroom, but that
she often longed for more relaxation and enjoyment in her life. She said that
her mother had been the same way, and was now regarded as a veritable saint by
her husband, children, and friends. Her sister, however, had always put fun and
self-interest on an equal footing with work. She realized that her sister and
the unknown friend represented her repressed and unexplored shadow self, who
was willing to put personal enjoyment first. So the dreamer helped us to
identify the dream ego’s decision to choose work over play as a compliant
adaptive response.
Another dream of a 27-year-old man
shows the impact of an internalized “vow of poverty” that the dreamer had
learned from his father.
I
am at my childhood home, and a pickup truck full of gifts––outdoor sports
items, in particular––pulls up in the driveway. A man whom I know to be God
gets out and walks up to me. He says, "This is all yours." I
struggle, feeling unsure of what to say. I then say, "I am not sure I can
accept it." He then says, "Will you accept it for me?" I reply,
"I don't know." I then sit down on the ground, struggling with the
decision, and wake up before I can decide what to do.
When I asked the dreamer to use the
affect bridge to get in touch with the original conviction that he couldn't
accept such generosity, he remembered countless times when his father, who grew
up during the American Great Depression, would tell him stories of how hardship
brought people together. His father was always mistrustful––even subtly
contemptuous––of wealthy people, and he missed several opportunities to greatly
increase his net worth over the course of his life by reflexively clinging to
the “virtue” of self-denial. The dreamer realized that he had unwittingly
emulated his father’s ideal of poverty, and had often failed to seize the
moment when wondrous opportunities had presented themselves. So, in this case,
the dreamer was also exhibiting a chronic, compliant adaptive response.
Lucid Dreamers Exhibit Chronic Responses
Reactive and compliant adaptive
responses can be observed in lucid dreams, as well as in non-lucid dreams.
While lucidity may seem to free the dream ego from reflexive responses, even
lucid dreamers may be governed by unexamined reactions. Take, for instance, the
case of a young female client, who would become lucid in her dreams almost
every night. I was impressed by the frequency of her lucid dreams, but then I
observed over the course of our work that she would almost always fly away from
any stressful event. While she thought nothing of her reflexive response at
first, she began to realize that flight was her primary strategy to prevent the
kind of wounding experiences she had incurred at the hands of her parents.
Flight had become her reactive adaptive response to waking and dream
situations, alike.
I
am getting ready to lead the congregation in singing a new song when I realize
that I don’t have the sheet music for the hymn. I rush to the back of the
church and rummage through a sheaf of music, hoping to find the correct song
before the pastor calls for it. Suddenly, I look to the front of the church and
see that C.––the previous song leader––had returned and taken over my position
at the microphone. Without hesitation, I hurry to the front of the church, and
say, “This is my job now! You need to sit down!” I become aware that I have asserted
myself in front of the entire congregation, and I’m aware of how they are
seeing me in a different light than before.
This dream is
good example of how a chronic adaptive response can change abruptly in the
context of a dream, and usher the dreamer into a new view of herself. Such
pivotal moments can become the proof positive that a client is making
significant progress in overcoming lifelong habit patterns.
The Same Response Can be Either Type
I have found that the same behavior can
be reactive or compliant, or a combination of both. For instance, a 35-year old
group member would reflexively offer verbal reassurance to anyone who was in
distress. When another group member finally blew up at her for trying to rescue
her when she didn’t need it nor want it, the helper tearfully admitted that her
mother was dying of diabetes, and that she felt powerless to help her. Thus,
what appeared on the surface to be a compliant adaptive response––rescuing––was
actually a reactive adaptive response. That is, by trying to helping others,
she hoped to mitigate the impact of her helplessness in the face of her
mother’s decline. Such examples should caution a therapist, once again, not to
make assumptions about the origins or the function of chronic waking and dream responses.
A single dramatic dream will often signify the
resolution of a lifelong chronic response. For example, I worked with
26-year-old woman, who had been abused as a young child by her mother, who
would sometimes nearly suffocate her with a pillow in anger. Her mother had
also done everything to prevent my client’s father from visiting her, and her
father, in turn, had effectively deserted her by giving up trying to have a
relationship with her. My client grew up expressing a firm resolve never to have
children out of a fear of becoming like her mother, and would also abruptly cut
off relationships with men for fear of betrayal. After two abortions, she
turned to cocaine and alcohol abuse, and then entered therapy. At the end of
two years of sobriety and three years of individual and group therapy, she had
the following dream in which her chronic reactive adaptive responses gave way
to a facilitative, integrative response. Her dream is as follows:
Once
this client’s reactive responses had been identified and traced to earlier
abuse from her mother and desertion from her father, it was easy for her to
recognize these behaviors operating in her contemporary waking and dream relationships.
Such a framework provided the basis for her striving to do differently, which
ultimately enabled her to enact new adaptive responses in her dream with the
whale––that is, standing her ground in the face of the overwhelming motherly
presence, and accepting the responsibility for parenting its offspring. She
terminated counseling shortly after having this dream, got engaged a few months
later, and eventually married and gave birth to her first child. Indeed,
whenever a dreamer identifies and overcomes such lifelong tendencies, it
becomes immediately evident in such dreams as the whale dream. While powerful
imagery may indicate a momentous shift,co-creative
dream analysis places the greater emphasis on the dreamer’s life-altering
responses.
Putting the Theory into Practice
I have described elsewhere (Sparrow,
2013) a systematic, five-step approach to dream analysis––the FiveStar
Method––that makes the dreamer’s responses to the dream content the centerpiece in a comprehensive
approach to dream work. While one can adopt the FiveStar Method, one can also
use dreamer response analysis as a standalone intervention, or as a step in any other
systematic dream work methodology. Regardless, in order to remain true to the
co-creative paradigm, one should also incorporate imagery
change analysis (Sparrow,
2013) with dreamer response analysis, in order to explore the way that the dream ego and the
dream imagery unfold dynamically in real time. This interventional
framework––which is an elaboration of Steps 3-5 of the FiveStar Method
(Sparrow, 2013; Sparrow & Thurston, 2010)–– can be used as a standalone
intervention, or incorporated into existing systems. The steps are as follows:
•
Identify Responses––Locate
the pivotal moments in the dream where the dreamer responded––emotionally,
cognitively, and/or behaviorally––to the dream imagery.
•
Evaluate Impact––Engage
the dreamer in considering how the dream ego’s responses impacted the dream
imagery and the course of the dream, and vice versa.
•
Determine Effectiveness––Engage the dreamer in ascertaining whether the dream ego’s
responses facilitated or thwarted the process of integration.
•
Explore Origins––If
a response thwarted the process of integration, explore the origins of the
response, by using an “affect bridge” (Christiansen et. al, 2009) to
earlier experiences in the waking life.
•
Assess Type––Discuss
whether the response is a reactive adaptive response or a compliant adaptive
response, or both; and then assess what undesirable experience the response is
designed to avoid, or what implicit ideal it serves.
•
Discuss Alternatives––Discuss
alternative responses based on the dreamer’s ideals and preferences, and ask
the dreamer to imagine how the new responses will affect the dream imagery
during similar dream encounters in the future.
•
Relive the Dream––Engage
the dreamer in reliving the dream in fantasy, in which he or she imagines
enacting new responses to a similar dream scenario. Discuss the imagined new
dream outcome.
•
Apply Dream Work––Consider
parallel waking scenarios, and discuss whether the same new responses might be
useful in those contexts, or whether they need to be modified to conform to
waking rules and contexts.
Summary
In summary, the co-creative paradigm
shifts dream work to include an analysis of the dream ego’s responses; the
impact of dream ego’s responses on the dream imagery; and the integrative
process that is served or thwarted by these exchanges. Over time, dream
analysis may reveal repetitive patterns of responding, the origins of which may
be traced to two types of prior experiences: 1) exposure to trauma and loss,
giving rise to chronic reactive responses, and 2) internalization of parental
and cultural ideals, prompting chronic compliant responses. While this
conceptual framework initially grew out of working with therapeutic groups, it
becomes useful in analyzing chronic relational patterns in dreams, as
well. Taken together, dreamer
response analysis (DRI) and imagery
change analysis (ICA) can
assist non-lucid and lucid dreamers, alike, who may wish to examine their
characteristic style of responding in dreams in light of past, unexamined
influences. Ultimately, troubleshooting and modifying chronic dreamer responses
may accelerate the process of integration that is evident in dreams.
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