THE VICISSITUDES OF THE THEME IN DREAM SERIES

A Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the

Center For Psychological Studies,

Albany, California

In partial fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

By

David Jenkins

May 2001

THE VICISSITUDES OF THE THEME IN DREAM SERIES

copyright © David Jenkins 2001

All Rights Reserved

Abstract

Are dreams connected? If I dream about a dog on Monday and again on Tuesday, is there anything to be learned by looking at the contrast between the two dreams? If, on Monday, the dog bites me and, on Tuesday, I manage to get away, does this represent any kind of improvement?

While groups of dreams are often studied and compared, the development of the theme is a largely neglected topic. This dissertation explores the vicissitudes of the dream theme. What happens to the theme in the course of a number of dreams? Does the theme show development? This dissertation reviews the treatment of dream themes in psychotherapy and dream research. Apart from Jung and his followers, the dream theme receives little attention although it is often used implicitly -- for example in the study of the nightmare. An examination of Jung's work shows how Jung utilized the dream theme. The dissertation uses the dream journal of Emanuel Swedenborg from 1743 to 1744 and examines series of dreams quoted in published papers from the perspective developed in the dissertation.

As your eye moves across the surface of a Canaletto, each area of the painting is a different time; it was done at a different moment. The hand making the marks moves through time and in viewing the picture you feel this, even though you might not be conscious of it.

David Hockney (1983)

 

 

 

 

They say that "Time assuages", -

Time never did assuage;

An actual suffering strengthens,

As sinews do, with Age.

Time is a Test of trouble,

But not a Remedy.

If such it prove, it prove too

There was no Malady.

Emily Dickinson, Fascicle 38, H 163, 942 (J 686)

 

Time and time again, in my professional work,

I have had to repeat the words:

"Let's get back to your dream. What does the dream say"

C. G. Jung. Man and His Symbols

 

Acknowledgments

My thanks go out to everyone who helped me. Mira Zussman pushed, cajoled, informed, taught me and held me to her high standards. Robert Fisher held up the light at the end of the tunnel; He provided support, insight and helped me stick with the process throughout it all. Meredith Sabini took on the task of following this work from the beginning to the end. She brought to it her expertise in Jungian dream work and her acute and remarkable wisdom.

The time has not passed without incident. My life has undergone several major transitions in this period. It began with a melancholy visit to England when a family member passed away. My household has changed as my children passed through important life gates -- Sally into college and Rachel out of it. A grand niece, Charlotte, the first of her generation, arrived on the scene.

It would be nice to include everyone who influenced me, who taught me how to appreciate and wonder at the beauty and creativity of dreaming, not limited to the many therapists who have listened to my own dreams. The distinction, which now seems indispensable, between the facts and the story was drummed into me by the Landmark forum [and my great coach, Deirdre Donovan]. Eric Greenleaf's course on hypnosis at the Center for Psychological Studies used a method of dream work that led me towards my "minimalist" approach to dream work as I would call it.

Margaret Barbee's support and patience was the vital glue that held the dissertation process together and Jeffrey Leroux's ability to recognize necessity in the midst of an abundance of choices was greatly appreciated.

My thanks to the very many people who shared their dreams with me. Thanks for their help in various ways to Dina Glouberman, Tana Lehr, Kerrie Hein, Margaret Warwas, Abbie Warwas and my children, Sally and Rachel. My thanks to Kate Partlan for her editing skills, Taun for her comments on narrative, D. W. Cooper for his painstaking work with the database of Swedenborg's dreams, my assistant Nancy Barba for her assiduous library research, to Michael Schlesinger for his help on 18^th century religious and scientific beliefs.

And the friends who simply listened to me! Saul Korduner followed the saga of this dissertation over coffee on Friday afternoons and Craig DelGaudio heard it at Point Isabel on Saturdays. My thanks to both of them.

Thanks to Joseph Henderson for our discussions of good and evil as I tried to understand Swedenborg. My thanks go to Wilson Van Dusen for his help and advice about Swedenborg's life.

Certain places are indelibly linked to the dissertation -- Rick [McMonagle] and Babette [Lightner]'s garden in River Falls, Wisconsin, the view from the window on the top floor of the Jung Institute, San Francisco. The view from the psychology library in Tolman Hall, and, of course, the view of Bancroft Way from the window by my computer with the teenagers from Berkeley High hurrying past in the morning and traipsing by in the afternoon.

There is some music that will forever be linked to the dissertation -- The Queen of the Night aria made me ponder the Anima as did Mazzy Star, Sandy Rogers and the incomparable Diamanda Galas. Three Dog Night, Norman Greenbaum, Ian Dury, Aaron Copeland, Bob Seger, Mick Jagger, Van Morrison, John Fogerty, Ewan MacColl, Nick Cave, Gene Vincent, Percy Sledge and the Righteous Brothers all added inspiration, humor, soothing or just a hard rocking beat in needed doses. My appreciation goes out to Napster.

In this age of information, the Oxford English Dictionary on CD ROM and Google.com stood out as my constant reference companions.

Contents

Abstract *

Acknowledgments *

Contents *

Chapter 1. Introduction *

The Vicissitudes of a Dream Series *

The Place of Dream Series in Dream Interpretation Systems *

The Dream Series as Subject *

Example of a Dream Series *

Personal Reasons for Studying Dream Series *

Rationale for the Study of Dream Series *

Dissertation thesis *

Chapter 2. Literature Review *

Freud’s Consideration of Dream Series *

Jung's Views on Dream Series *

Comparison of Freud and Jung's Views on Dream Series *

Von Franz: The Dream and Psychic Development as a General Principle *

Mary Ann Mattoon: Dream Series *

Jung's Application of Dream Series Techniques *

Hall's Content Analysis *

Domhoff's Typology of Recurrent Dreams *

Chapter 3. Discussion *

Hillman: How Can Dream Series be Researched? *

The Dream Ego *

The Initial Dream *

The Nightmare *

Chapter 4. Swedenborg's "Female Figure" Dreams *

A Biography of Emanuel Swedenborg and an Introduction to his Dream Journal *

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Swedenborg as a Subject *

William Blake's Assessment of Swedenborg *

Kristine Mann: Swedenborg's Self-Analysis *

Ekstrom's Analysis of Swedenborg's Dream journal *

Van Dusen: Commentary on Swedenborg's Dreams *

An Examination of Swedenborg's Anima Dreams *

Chapter 5: Conclusion *

Quod Erat Demonstratum *

Limits of the Study *

Dream Series as a Paradigmatic Change *

Relationship Between Dream Life and Waking Life *

Analysis of the Individual Dream in the Light of Dream Series *

The Nature of Continuity in Dreams *

Future Research *

References *

Appendix A: The Initial Dreams Discussed in Jung's Individual Dream Symbolism In Relation to Alchemy *

Appendix B: The Four Dreams From Psychology and Religion. *

Appendix C: Yazmajian's Patient's Dreams *

Appendix D. Frequency Count of Swedenborg's Dream Themes *

Appendix E. Swedenborg's Dreams About Female Figures *

Are dreams connected? If I dream about a dog on Monday and I dream about another dog on Tuesday, is there anything to be learned by looking at the contrast between the two dreams? If, on Monday, the dog bites me and, on Tuesday, I manage to get away, does this represent any kind of improvement? Can I expect that the transition, from being bitten to escaping, has significance? Can I expect that the theme of a dog will recur perhaps on Wednesday or Thursday? Is there anything to be gained from looking at the meaning of the "dog" symbol in my psyche? These questions can be extended from a pair of similar dreams to series that spans months and even years: If I sift out all my dreams about dogs, do they, when considered together, tell me anything that is not available from any one dog-dream?

Questions about dream series are not posed in most systems of dream interpretation. For most therapists who use dreams, the sole unit of analysis is the individual dream. In that case, the meaning of the dream relates to other matters in the dreamer's life, to their associations, to the day's residues, to their childhood, but not to their previous dreams. In most theories of dreams: Freud's, Gestalt, Object relations and others, there is no comfortable place for a theory of dream series. There are exceptions: In some fields of work and research, the comparison of one dream with a related dream is relevant. For instance, as will be dealt with in some detail, the study of trauma often focuses on the nightmare and the abatement of that nightmare. To that extent, since a change in the nightmare is a major task of the therapy, there is an implicit concern with dream series. In some somatic studies, the dream can perform a valuable role as an indicator of a condition.

For Jungians, the continuity between dreams is of considerable and explicit significance. Whether an interpretation is correct or not will be reflected in subsequent dreams. Dreams can and do contain archetypal material and a theme can be expected to develop and play out a drama over a period of time. Carl Jung would examine the myriad meanings of a motif from a dreamer and use that to deduce the meaning of the motif.

We have then two common approaches to meaning in dreams. First, the individual dream is the sole subject of study. It is an entity in itself and any similar dreams have no necessary bearing on the meaning of this dream. Second, the individual dream is still the subject of study but our understanding of the dream is enhanced by understanding related dreams.

I wish to propose a variation of the second view in which, instead of the dream series being viewed as background material, the dream series itself is the subject of the study and individual dreams are instances of the dream series. This transposition, apparently small and subtle, can be important. The dream series, I propose, will yield themes that are not available from the analysis of any single dream in the series. The transposition is something of a figure-ground phenomenon in Gestalt terminology . If we make the dream series the central figure, we can see different dynamics than when the individual dream is the foreground issue; the course of the dreams is the subject and we follow the dynamics of particular themes as they arise, develop and resolve themselves. When we consider a dream not so much for its internal meaning but rather as an instance of an unfolding process, the dream illuminates a different narrative from that suggested by the single dream.

When we analyze a dream, we are trying to find its meaning for the dreamer. We have taken into account the associations to the dream, considered its inner structure, utilized some tools of the trade and arrived at a meaning. The interpretation forms, as it were, an end point at which we say "The dream means X". When we take a series of dreams into consideration, the focus upon the meaning of the individual dream diminishes and attention is directed towards the ways in which the dream itself changes. The plasticity of some elements and the rigidity of others become highlighted by the differences between the dreams. This is readily apparent in the case of the nightmare where it is not the meaning as such of the nightmare but its rigidity that demands attention.

If we are to examine dream series, two particular questions stand out. Firstly, how do we compare two dreams and secondly, what can we see in a series of dreams? I propose to explicate a method of comparing dreams and then to use this method on published sets of dream including the dream journal of Emanuel Swedenborg to see what kind of answers emerge.

Here is an example of three dreams that can be considered as a sequence. They illustrate some of the dynamics that are apparent when we consider a dream series. Even a sequence of two dreams will show more, when taken together, than can be discerned from either dream individually. The first dream in this series was explained by the second dream. The second dream relates to a third dream and shows a theme in process.

The dreamer was a 40-year-old woman who had been divorced for four years (Anonymous personal communication, February - June 2000). At the time of the dreams, she shared a house with two male roommates. In the first dream, the woman is living on an exotic island. Nonetheless, she is in her own home, working in the kitchen. Her ex-husband and her father are sitting idly in the living room. There is a knock on the door. She is too busy and the men are too slothful to answer the door. They hear the knock several times, she asks the men to answer it but they do not move. Eventually, she puts her work down and goes to the door. The person has left. The dream ends with an argument as to who was to blame for not answering the call. The strongest interest of the dreamer was in the mysterious stranger: who knocked on the door, a man or a woman and what did they want? There is no "correct" answer to these questions.

This is a rich dream in that it encompasses many familiar elements of a psychological setting: a woman in a stereotypical role, in the kitchen, it invokes the two most important men in her life, it poses a clear question of an unknown fourth person and much more. There are numerous ways in which we can work with the woman and her dream. One could obtain her associations to the dream. A Gestalt psychotherapist or a Jungian using active imagination might have her go back into the dream and re-enter the scene to find an answer. The situation is certainly not unique. It is what Kate Marcus terms a "Stranger" dream (Marcus, 1956). We might be led, depending on her associations, to Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", John Donne's "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions" or to the prophet Elijah -- all offering different implications about the mysterious knock -- to inform us about this type of situation but we are still left with a mystery: who was that person at that door? The dream poses a direct question to the woman and any attempts to answer the question are guesswork.

Some weeks later, she had dreamed about the same island. This time she is outdoors, in a public place, with her roommates. The two men are approached by a monk who asks them to join the Church of Zen. They try to explain to the monk that there cannot be any such thing as a Church of Zen, that Zen is a state of mind. The monk ignores this and pressures them to sign up for the Church of Zen. Only the woman sees the humor of this situation; the two men treat it very seriously.

The two dreams are related because they take place in the same unusual location. Furthermore, the cast of characters is the same: the woman, two familiar males and a fourth person. There is an argument in both dreams. The one between her and two male figures from her past was bitter. She is not directly involved in the second dream's argument and she sees the humorous aspect. The mysterious person who knocked on the door and left -- so imbued with portent -- has made an appearance and cuts a comical figure. The second dream reverberated with the first one and changed the dreamer's assessment of it. The argument with her ex-husband and her father in the first dream no longer seemed so bitter; she saw a comical side to the situation and also re-assessed it as one in which she expected the men in her life to answer "her" door for her.

Some months later she had another, comparable, dream. Two strangers have suddenly appeared in her home. She asks them who they are but they ignore her. The woman is very uncomfortable and asks them to leave, they continue to ignore her. She is left feeling helpless and with a sense that her private space has been infringed. Again there is the theme of the stranger. This time the interaction is directly with the strangers and is unmediated by any male protectors. We can make an explanation of the three dreams -- for instance that we had the implication of a stranger, we have seen the stranger in an outside environment in which case the woman feels secure and we have seen strangers in her home in which case she feels very disturbed. Whatever we make of the three dreams should be tentative, as Jung so often emphasizes. The tension that is being acted out in these three dreams is clearly unresolved. One would expect more dreams about strangers until something occurred that could be identified as a resolution.

Any of these dreams could be analyzed and the stranger identified in some way. We could look at the woman's waking life and we would almost certainly discover correlates to the dreams. We can round up answers in all the usually suspect places: her childhood, yesterday's events, her free associations and so on but the situation remains that, in her 40s, this is an on-going inquiry in her dream life. A definitive statement as to what one of these dreams "means" will only detract from and tend to foreclose the process. Taken together, the dreams suggest that "strangerness" is a theme for the woman that she is working to comprehend. It seems to me that this theme is not identifiable from any individual dream.

The dreams show a process that we can expect to develop further; I would predict that the dream series will not end until the woman can meet with the stranger and feel comfortable. Perhaps the stranger will turn into someone familiar. We might see the argument progress to a point where people are more in agreement. It might get worse before it gets better. Another possibility is that the dreams are displaying different viewpoints of an argument and, rather than progress, we will see a number of different ways in which arguments can be handled.

It is this use of themes that I will examine in published material -- on initial dreams, nightmares -- and from Swedenborg's dream journal. I hope to show that themes will arise, some will be resolved in one or two dreams and others will take much longer.

Here is a dream of mine that presents insuperable difficulties if it is considered in isolation: "I am suddenly jerked around. I sense that I am in a tank. There is a 'letter box' kind of opening through which I could look but do not.". There is very little to go on in this dream. It is a type of dream we are particularly hampered by because there is no story attached to the dream; we would tend to call it a fragment rather then a complete dream. There are simply have three elements: a jerking around, a sensation of a tank and a letterbox. There is very little to go on: The jerk could quite well have been a physical movement -- the dream happened on a plane; I have a sensation of being in a metal tank but I cannot really tell whether this is a water tank or a military tank. It feels more like the latter, but without any sense of certainty; the letterbox makes me think of the new video format but mostly I am aware, in the aftermath of the dream, that I might have seen through the letterbox but did not. Of course, we could work with day residues or free associations and drift away from the dream into the significance of jerking, or tanks or letterboxes, but we would have lost any connection to the dream. Rather than try to analyze it, or accept it as unanalyzable, I would now tend to treat this as an opening dream. It initiates three elements. Several dreams down the line, the implications of these three elements will become clearer. But, and this is the crux of the matter, it is predictable that its meaning will only become clarified by later dreams. We need a sequence of dreams in order to understand this first one. In fact, the next two were about warfare and only then did the first dream make sense.

Personal Reasons for Studying Dream Series

I started to read Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis when I was 28 at the suggestion of a close friend. My initial reaction was strongly hostile: I was sure this was nonsense but I also couldn't stop reading. At some point I started to write down my dreams. I was amazed and shocked to see a clear meaning in my dreams on the second night. The fact that meaning could be elicited from dreams was, to my non-psychologically oriented mind, a startling revelation that forever separated my life into a 'before' and an 'after' and dreams have been a lifelong passion ever since.

Much later, and quite gradually, my interest changed from thinking about "dreams" to thinking about "dreaming". I believe it stemmed from a frustration that I was not always able to understand or interpret a particular dream. Was this caused by resistance or lack of ability, I wondered? At some point, I began to realize that I simply was not able to analyze every dream. My free associations were not Prufrockian streets that led me to an overwhelming question; they often led me nowhere at all. Travelling along this line of thought, I realized that dreams are, so to speak, like buses: there will always be another one, even if you have to wait all night. To put it even more strongly, I came to the viewpoint that you cannot "miss" a dream; it will be waiting for you until you hear it. The dream comes, so to speak, through a messenger who may talk loudly or softly, but who will not go away until the message has been communicated. Of course, we would like to comprehend every dream but, in practice, that does not happen. Even Freud explains, in The Interpretation of Dreams, that it was only in retrospect that he had completely interpreted a group of dreams; he went back to the earlier ones after grasping the later ones (1900/1953 p. 521). But why is that? Why is it that the dream will not go away, and, what does that imply about dreaming?

The sense that the discarded, uncomprehended dreams were not failures but were paving stones along a path came later. Instead of focussing on "What does this dream mean?", it then becomes possible and fruitful to ask "Where will this dream theme go next?". Thus the continuity between dreams became more valuable to me than the explicit virtue of an interpretation. To put it another way: few dreams are complete -- that is why we talk about them. There is an assumption, or at least a hope, that the talking can complete the dream. My personal sense is that this is rarely the case, there is usually an incompleteness to the interpretation, that is the dream-conversation and, more typically, our dream life consists of one, or even several sagas, woven together and reaching a form of completion only after the working out of many different issues. The incompleteness of the dream and its interpretation rather than being some kind of failure became for me a source of fascination as I waited for the next dream.

There is, as I have said, a subtle shift between viewing the dream series as background information and viewing the dream series as foreground subject. From that perspective, the dream life has a continuity and validity of its own. The "I" who spends his day time in Berkeley, California has, as a companion, so to speak, a "dream-ego" (Hall, 1982) who spends his dream time in numerous locations and various pursuits, some of them hectic and hair-raising, some of them pleasant and funny. Although the most prevalent use of dreams is to elucidate problems in our waking life, I think that the dream life qualifies as an important part of our life in its own right.

Rationale for the Study of Dream Series

The dynamics of dream series, as we have argued, are a neglected aspect of dream research. William Domhoff (1996) has suggested that recurring dreams are the most important area of research. While the recurring dream, for example, the nightmare, has received a great deal of attention, the recurring elements of a dream are ubiquitous and a greater understanding of them can only increase our understanding of the dream processes.

It might be supposed that the position of a dream in the context of the dream series is of equal importance to all dream theorists. But there is a critical issue of how the theorist sees the relationship of the manifest dream, that is the dream as reported by the dreamer, and its meaning. Depending on this, the dream series can be seen as important or irrelevant. I divide dream theories into three categories: those that consider the manifest dream as void of meaning, those that make a correspondence between a dream aspect and its meaning and those that identify the dream with its meaning.

In the Freudian paradigm the manifest dream is traditionally a barrier to understanding. Freud distinguishes the dream from the real meaning of the dream, the latent content. The manifest dream, from this point of view hides the real meaning of the dream. Laplanche and Pontalis, in their authoritative dictionary of psychoanalytic terms, offer the following contrast: "The latent content means the complete and genuine translation of the dreamer's desire…as such it stands in opposition to the manifest content, which is both incomplete and mendacious" (1973 p. 235 under the definition of "Latent content"). Still animistic but less active is Joseph and Ann-Marie Sandler's characterization that the dream "deceives" (Sandler & Sandler, 1987, p. 280). Leo Rangell's view that is that dreams are "primitive systems of expression … similar to picture writing" and they are characterized by "indefiniteness and ambiguity" (1987, p.9). Inevitably, from any of these perspectives, the manifest dream has little value and therefore there could be no reason to compare dream reports. When Milton Rosenbaum informally surveyed his colleagues and asked if their patients ever dreamed about the analyst, a small number objected to the question on the grounds that there could be no significance to the manifest dream (1965, p. 435).

Not all Freudians would subscribe to such extreme views but they have dominated psychoanalytic theory for a long time and psychoanalytic proponents of the value of the manifest dream are on the defensive: Arnold Rothstein notes several psychoanalytic works that have resisted the devaluation of the manifest dream:(1987, p. xiv). Jacob Spanjaard suggested that Freud's views were not as one-sided as they are now portrayed and argued that there is in fact a lineage in the Freudian tradition for considering the manifest dream (1993 pp. 154-156).

There is another conception of the dream meaning that assumes a direct "translation" system from the manifest dream to its meaning. Angel Garma, a Freudian analyst, implicitly sees parts of the manifest dream as direct indicators in this interpretation: "The building where Martha and her friend go down the steps appears to symbolize the female genital organs" (Fosshage & Loew, p.49). In making an interpretation of a dream, John Padel, an object relations analyst, sees objects in the dream as standing for the meaningful objects. In a dream that involved a razor blade, Padel remarks that the razor blade "can stand for the gums and teeth of the infant, for the fingernails in infantile masturbation and for the vagina when intercourse is envisaged" (Fosshage & Loew, p.139). Theoretically, I think this methodology can accommodate dream series so that the next dream connects to the present dream and the next meaning connects to the present meaning.

Jung held to the view that the dream means what it says. He often cites the Talmudic view that "The dream is its own interpretation" (for example, Jung CW 11 para. 41). There is then no concealed content nor is the dream standing in place of its meaning, the interpretation brings us back to the dream not away from it. Context analysis, since it only concerns itself with the manifest dream also falls into this category.

These three approaches vary in the distance, so to speak, between the dream and its meaning: whether the dream is the meaning, the dream connects to the meaning or the dream is not the meaning. Concomitantly, the three approaches tend to be more or less receptive to the value of the dream series. The strict Freudian view offers no quarter to the manifest dream but the "translation" systems as I would term them, do not prevent the researcher from making use of the series and the dream-as-meaning systems would find it a natural extension.

When we conceptualize a dream series, we are making the assumption that manifest dreams are related. I have argued here that not all schools of dream-thought are equally receptive to the notion of dreams as series

This dissertation examines the dream without any kind of interpretation; Dreams are only compared to other dreams. The dream is taken to be a description of events that occurred to the person while they were asleep and, somewhat like Jung (CW 12) and Hillman (1979), I am taking the characters in the dream as ephemeral representations of on-going themes. For example, I make an assumption that the strangers in the previous dreams can be considered together or that the women in Swedenborg's dreams are manifestations of a common feminine character.

I will argue for making a distinction between the ego while awake and the ego during the dream. When dreams are compared to other dreams, there is only an observation of a change in the dream ego and hence no direct involvement with the waking ego.

The neglect of the dream series is not for lack of data. In the literature about dreams and dream analysis there is an abundance of published series of dreams. Typically, the writer reports several dreams from a client and examines each one individually but does not formally consider the dreams as a series and therefore does not consider the vicissitudes of the theme and what that might imply. There is thus an implicit assumption in much of the literature that there is no useful information to be gained from considering the dreams as a series. This dissertation hopes to show reasons why dream analysts should reconsider that assumption.

The most important reason for pursuing the dream series is the notion that the dream series offers us information that is not available from any one dream. This was illustrated in the example of the stranger dreams. I suggest that the interpretation of an individual dream may not be nearly as important as making the dreamer aware of the themes that are dominating their dream life.

This thesis of this dissertation is that a series of dreams with a common theme can provide meaningful information that is only accessible by considering the vicissitudes of the dream theme.

The neglect of this subject matter by most systems of dream analysis could be interpreted to imply that there is no meaningful information to be gained from an examination of the vicissitudes of the theme in a dream series.

Chapter 2. Literature Review

Sigmund Freud discusses dream series briefly in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/1953). He was aware that a dream will often reproduce some aspect of a previous dream: "In the case of two consecutive dreams it can often be observed that one takes as its central point something that's only on the periphery of the other and vice versa, so that their interpretations too are mutually complementary." (p. 525). Like others, Freud accepts that dreams during the same night should be taken together: "I have already given instances which show that different dreams dreamt on the same night are, as a quite general rule, to be treated in their interpretation as a single whole.".

Freud proposes that a successive dream can act as confirmation of an interpretation. This is partly related to the concept of "overdetermination" by which Freud means that there are multiple layers of meaning and an interpretation, even a "complete" interpretation, one which "makes sense, is coherent and throws light upon every element of the dream’s content" (p. 525) generally uncovers only one of them:

Quite often an immediately succeeding dream allows us to confirm and carry further the interpretation we have tentatively adopted for its predecessor. A whole series of dreams, continuing over a period of weeks or months, is often based upon common ground and must accordingly be interpreted in connection with one another (p.525).

Thus there was, in this seminal work on dreams, a definite place assigned to the use of dream series. Perhaps the generally low esteem in which the manifest dream was held has contributed to the overall neglect of dream series amongst his followers.

Jung emphasized the relevance of the dream series to the understanding of any particular dream. He thought that a dream could not properly be understood except in the context of previous dreams. Indeed, interpretation was prone to error if it did not take them into account. For any dream, an interpretation made would be confirmed or disconfirmed by subsequent dreams. Typically Jung examined the dreams immediately before and after the dream in question and looked for dreams depicting the same motifs.

Although Jung emphasized the dream series more than any other dream theorist, he did not present a formal exposition of his views. In his writings, there are numerous explications of his ideas but there is no single place in which he presented these views. I will firstly examine what he said about dream series and then take examples from his writing to show how he used the methodology in practice.

Jung believed that there were intrinsic weaknesses in attempting to interpret a single dream. An individual interpretation is always speculative: "Every interpretation is an hypothesis; an attempt to read an unknown text. An obscure dream, taken in isolation, can hardly ever be interpreted with any certainty.". In consequence of this, he attached little importance to the interpretation of single dreams. Instead, the dream must be examined in context:

The dreams are comparable to obscure texts whose meaning can only be guessed at. With that analogy, the full meaning of any one dream is not properly available until the dream series has run its course:

The series is the context which the dreamer himself supplies. It is not as if one text but many lay before us, throwing light from all sides on the unknown terms, so that a reading of all the texts is sufficient to elucidate the difficult passages in each individual one. (CW 12 para. 45)

The tentative nature of dream interpretation remains even when the series is taken into consideration, but the overall understanding increases when it is supported by other dreams:

Of course, the interpretation of each individual passage is bound to be largely conjecture, but the series as a whole gives us all the clues we need to correct any possible errors in the preceding passages. (CW 12 para. 45)

For Jung, there is continuity in the unconscious and therefore dreams, so closely connected to the unconscious, tend to express the same concerns:

As a rule a dream belongs in a series. Since there is continuity of consciousness despite the fact that it is regularly interrupted by sleep, there is probably also a continuity of unconscious processes -- perhaps even more than with the events of consciousness….my experience is in favour of the probability that dreams are the visible links in a chain of unconscious events. (CW 16 para. 53)

The fact that the unconscious is largely the same from night to night coupled with the concept that the dream expresses the perspective of the unconscious means that we can expect successive dreams to express related meanings.

The dream series can be used as a means of verifying or correcting a dream interpretation. The interpretation affects the patient and it affects the next dream:

One explains dreams on a certain theory, and if the interpretation is absolutely wrong, the effect on the patient will show it, the unconscious will react in the next dream, and so the interpretation will be corrected. (1984 p. 18)

Furthermore, a dream series can be an indication that the work of a previous dream remains to be completed: "When a subsequent dream takes up the problem of the previous dream it means that the analysis of the previous dream has not been exhaustive" (1984 p. 99). When we examine any dream, its relationship to its predecessors is paramount: "In the interpretation of dreams it is always our first duty to link the dream up to the dream before." (1984 p. 128).

In Principles of Practical Psychotherapy, Jung suggested that continuity within the unconscious is represented by the continuity in dream themes: "The continuity is shown in the repetition of motifs. These may deal with people, animals, objects, or situations." (CW 16 para. 13). He then gave an example of a patient who dreamed about water in each of 26 dreams during a two-month period. Jung listed these instances and summarized his point by saying: "Through numerous comparisons one can find out to what the water-motif is really pointing". After the water motif, there appeared a new motif, that of "the unknown woman". (para. 16). He listed about 50 dream situations in which the unknown woman-motif occurred over a three month period. He then summarized by saying:

The unknown woman, therefore, has an exceedingly contradictory character and cannot be related to any normal woman. She represents some fabulous being, a kind of fairy; and indeed fairies have the most varied characters. (para. 17)

In other words, Jung saw a continuity between these dreams, and he believed that the dreams represented different aspects of the unknown woman's character.

The meaning of the motif can be determined by looking at numerous dream series in which that motif occurs: "the interpretation of motifs follows from a number of similar dream series. Thus the sea always signifies a collecting-place where all psychic life originates, i.e., the collective unconscious." (para. 12) . Jung used the dream series both to assert the continuity of unconscious contents and to identify the motif itself.

Dream Progression.

Sometimes Jung implied that the related dreams offer different views of the same subject, but often he asserted that later dreams in a series represented a clearer view of the dream. In The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis he compared two dreams and noted that "the two dreams make nearly identical statements but, as is usually the case, the second is more specific." (CW 16 para. 349). In another context, he remarked about a set of dreams: "they form a coherent series in the course of which the meaning gradually unfolds". (CW 12 para. 45).

Other statements suggested a neutral view to progression. In discussing the unknown-woman motif mentioned above, it is noteworthy that Jung simply listed the dream situations. This emphasizes them as empirical data and suggests to me that he did not place particular importance on their internal sequence (at least in the context in which he was writing). In Psychology and Religion Jung described two dreams of a woman patient that, he suggested, expressed opposite views of religion: "one could have aided her understanding by the simple device of prefacing her second dream with the words "'on the contrary'" (CW 11 para. 162). Again, there is no implication of a progression, simply of alternate views. At one point, in the Seminar On Dream Analysis, Jung summarized his patient's dream series in a way that does not suggest a progression. He described one dream as "one of the dreams on his way that shows him his lack or mistake." whereas the previous dream "showed him that he was not up to his goal." In comparing the dreams, Jung remarks "He has been in Africa, in the hot sun of the South; now he goes north." (1984 p. 316). In this instance, the patient experiences different views; he is literally and symbolically encompassing the problem.

Clearly then, some dream series show progression and some do not. However, even when a series of dreams does show a progression, that does not, by itself, indicate a change in consciousness. If consciousness fails to integrate the contents of the sequence then the dream series can becomes a cycle that will repeat. With an insane person, the dreams might show progress then deterioration and then repeat:

These dreams reach a certain summit and then begin to go down, all the symbols become destructive; and you see that everything is going dead wrong. If a normal person had such dreams you would say "This is very bad." But with the insane, after a while it begins over again. It is just a process of nature, with no intervention on the part of consciousness. (1984 p. 225)

This is evident in a paper discussed later; Sabini and Maffly (1981) comment about a set of dreams which the patient appeared not to integrate into consciousness: "Because the series shows a condensed but full circle of movement toward wholeness, we can see what kinds of changes that [the individuation] process would involve." (p.123).

While there are many differences between Freud and Jung on dreams, in regard to dream series, three observations seem worth making. Firstly, although Freud's description of dream series is sketchy, it is not, in substance, in disagreement with Jung's views. Second, Freud held that dream interpretation could be made with certainty whereas Jung maintained that the dream interpretation was tentative. The repercussions of this second difference are considerable for dream series, because, for Freud, the dream interpretation can stand alone and as I have already argued, the Freudian split between the manifest dream and its latent content is not conducive to studying dream series. Third, the difference between their views can be characterized as the difference between the causality and the intent of a dream:

The most important question Freud would ask himself when interpreting the dream is: What is the cause of this dream? On the other hand, Jung preferred questions such as: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? (Remec 1998).

Subsequent dreams would have little bearing on the cause of the dream but they do shed light on the purpose; it is quite common for later dreams to clarify and explain in detail aspects of a dream that are puzzling .

For Jung, the dream interpretation must be consistent with previous and future dreams. For all the importance of the series, Jung nevertheless regarded the single dream as the meaningful unit and used dream series analysis as a tool to augment and verify the meaning of a particular dream. My thesis will emphasize a different aspect of the continuity by examining the dynamics of the on-going theme.

The perception of the dream as part of a series seems fundamental to a Jungian perspective and many, but not all, Jungian analysts use and comment upon it. For Marie Louise von Franz, it is virtually axiomatic that the unconscious develops and that these changes in the unconscious are observable in the world of dreams.

The view that dream life is interesting in itself is often remarked upon. While other methods of dream analysis value the dream as a tool to shed light upon our waking life, for Jungians, rather than the dream being seen as a moon-like body simply reflecting light upon reality, the life of the dream is seen as a valid, parallel process. "What is the purpose of the total dream life of the individual?" asks von Franz (1964 p.160). There is at issue here much more than the therapeutic utility of dream analysis: "What roles do dreams play, not only in the immediate psychic economy of the human being, but in his life as a whole?"

For von Franz, one of the most significant contributors to Jungian thought, dreams will show the psychological developments that happen in adulthood, known to Jungians as "individuation" although, she says, the process is not easy to see. There may not be an obvious and visible sequence of changes because "dreams produce different scenes and images every night" and therefore "people who are not careful observers will probably be unaware of any pattern." Nonetheless, development is present: "If one watches one's own dreams over a period of years and studies the entire sequence, one will see that certain contents emerge, disappear, and then turn up again." (pp. 160-161)

The dream series is where these changes make an appearance:

Many people even dream repeatedly of the same figures, landscapes, or situations; and if one follows these through a whole series, one will see that they change slowly but perceptibly. These changes can be accelerated if the dreamer's conscious attitude is influenced by appropriate interpretation of the dreams and their symbolic contents. (p.161)

Thus the continuity within our dream life is less visible than the continuities of our waking life:

Our dream life creates a meandering pattern in which individual strands or tendencies become visible, then vanish, then return again. If one watches this meandering design over a long period of time, one can observe a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency at work, creating a slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth -- the process of individuation. (p.161)

Mary Ann Mattoon, in an overview of Jung's views on dream series, emphasized Jung's contention that each dream should be considered along with preceding dreams, especially if the other dreams have common motifs. Succeeding dreams would then act as a test of the interpretation of the dream, but she does not specify what would constitute a confirmation or disconfirmation of an interpretation. For Mattoon, series have value because fragments of dreams can be pieced together and amount to something interpretable where none of the fragments may make sense in isolation. For longer dream series, the series establishes which are the major motifs for the dreamer since these will stand out in the series.

While any group of successive dreams can be considered a series, Mattoon thinks that Jung was most interested in dreams with a common theme. There was no specific minimum number of dreams that were needed. She suggests that if someone remembers only a few dreams, all the dreams can be included in the series. If the dreamer is involved in an important transition, such as marriage or divorce, all the dreams of that period may be relevant. She notes that it is a common, if unproven assumption of many dream analysts that all the dreams from the same night are related: "This is a useful hypothesis in interpretation" (p. 82).

She points out that the dream series is not necessarily chronological. The dreams may be related by a common theme but they might "radiate out from a psychic center in a spiral or circular fashion." (p.83). The dreams may be commenting on a problem from different perspectives in the unconscious.

Mattoon sees the utility of twenty or more dreams as a kind of background resource to amplify those dreams examined in detail. However this has practical drawbacks in therapy since there may not be time to discuss or even remember all the connected dreams. She speculates that Hall & Van de Castle’s method of content analysis might be used to show the frequencies of specific categories and thus indicate psychological change.

She distinguishes three types of recurring dreams. One is described by Jung as a recurring dream of special importance for the integration of the psyche referring to "something that has been in existence for a long time and is particularly characteristic of the mental attitude of the individual’" (p.84). The second is a traumatic dream that will cease when the trauma has been assimilated. The third type may anticipate an important development in the dreamer’s psyche.

Mattoon thinks that most people have experienced a recurring dream or recurring motif during childhood: "Sometimes the major purpose of the repetition of a motif seems to be emphasis: the motif appears repeatedly in approximately the same context and with the same meaning for the dreamer" (p. 85). A dream that is at first incomprehensible may become clearer in the light of later dreams.

The meaning is amplified by the numerous views obtained from the different dreams. She quotes an example of two dreams that were used by Jung: "The dreamer is at a social gathering. On leaving he puts on a stranger’s hat instead of his own" and "An actor smashes his hat against the wall". It was not until Jung heard the second dream that he was able to give an interpretation. To summarize, both hats represent the self. When the hat/Self is considered from the viewpoint of the real owner, then the hat/self feels estranged; When the owner of the hat wears his own hat he feels he is playing a fictitious role. The attempt to smash the hat produces an even clearer expression of a mandala. In other words, we can look at the dreamer’s relationship to his hat/self either from the point of view of the dream-ego – in which case the hat feels strange, or from the point of view of the hat, in which case the ego is acting and would disown the hat.

What are the consequences when an interpretation is incorrect? Mattoon expects that any interpretation will have an effect upon subsequent dreams. An incorrect dream will elicit a dream that corrects the invalid interpretation although she does not say how or offer an example. It is worth asking what is the consequence of the ego’s correctly understanding a dream? How might a correct interpretation of a dream affect subsequent dreams?

The following are two examinations of how Jung actually utilized the dream series in his writings. In Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, Jung considers a series of dreams and makes comparisons between the dreams and alchemical texts (CW 12). In Psychology and Religion, Jung uses four of these same dreams as a basis for analysis of the dreamer's unconscious understanding of religion (CW 11). The examples are taken from a ten-month series of dreams by Wolfgang Pauli, the scientist who was also a lapsed Catholic. Jung himself was the analyst during the latter part of this series, after about three hundred and fifty dreams. In the two papers he extracts different information from the dreams and points to a different perspective, but what is notable is that he utilizes the dream series as the tool for his analyses. From the point of view of this dissertation, the important issue is to show the techniques Jung uses as he examines a series of dreams.

In Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, Jung tends to confine his remarks to simple comments on how particular dreams link together. In Psychology and Religion, he offers more complex comments. I will use his remarks in Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy as an introduction to the material, and then turn to Psychology and Religion.

Table 1 shows a summary of the salient dreams in the initial series, the first 22 dreams. I have provided Jung's detailed comments in Appendix A.

In Individual Dream Symbolism In Relation to Alchemy, Jung's intention is to show how the mandala is naturally expressed in the course of the dream series as the dreamer's individuation process develops. He tends to simply make comments about the particular dreams so that the references gather momentum by his repeatedly pointing out what they have in common . One value, to Jung, of examining a series of dreams is that the different forms of the symbol can all be considered. As we will see, the mandala can be expressed by a hat, the sun, a ball, a globe or any object that suggests wholeness and completeness. Circularity can be implied in other ways, for example, by a dreamer walking in a circle. In addition to the mandala, Jung notes the recurrence of the anima (the contrasexual archetype), the temenos (an enclosed space).

Table 1. Summary of the Initial 22 Dreams

In Psychology and Religion, Jung chose four of Pauli's dreams to illustrate what he called the "religious tendencies of the unconscious" (Jung CW 11 par. 39). The complete dreams are shown in Appendix B. Even though the dreamer had no conscious interest in religion, two of the dreams are manifestly about religion and this suggests to Jung that the unconscious has an opinion on the matter. As we have already seen in the initial dreams, the religious implications of these symbols, for example of the temenos, are considerable. Jung seems to be using this material to illustrate his own philosophical approach to religion.

In the first dream a group of people are in a square. A gibbon is to be "reconstructed".

The second dream (a long involved dream) has the dreamer and his friend go into a church. The dreamer defends the church. For complex reasons a woman protests and then vanishes. The scene in the church becomes convivial with wine and music.

The third dream is similar to the first. It is about "the magical transformation of animals into human beings".

The fourth dream happens in a strange, solemn house. The dreamer hears a voice say "What you are doing is dangerous. Religion is not a tax to be paid so that you can rid yourself of the woman's image, for this image cannot be got rid of."

Jung sees the first dream as a message that the dreamer needs to make some conscious changes because he has been neglecting his own instinctual personality (in the form of the gibbon). The second dream offers the dreamer another solution as to how to deal with his instinctuality: the dream represents "an attempt to seek refuge from this fear in the shelter of a church religion" (par. 56). The third dream is about transformation and, to Jung, "the patient has to undergo an important change through the reintegration of his hitherto split-off instinctuality and is thus to be made over into a new man" (par. 54). Thus we see here a series of three dreams unified by a common theme: how to integrate instinct into the psyche. The first and third point to important, magical transformations; the second dream, as we will see, indicates a compromise. The fourth dream, much later, revisits the issues in the compromise with a far preferable depiction of the problem in Jung's opinion.

Jung divides the second dream, the Church dream, into two parts. There is the part in which the dreamer defends the Catholic Church, and there is the later part in which a gregarious time is had in the church. Jung regards this as two statements: one in favor of the Catholic Church and therefore in favor of an ascetic approach to religion, and the other a view of religion as something to enjoy and not treat too seriously. Taking the dream as two statements about religion, he then judges both as though they were coherent, conscious statements. He sums up the dream with:

Thus the Catholic Church, though highly recommended, appears coupled with a strange pagan point of view which is irreconcilable with a fundamentally Christian attitude. The actual irreconciliability does not appear in the dream. It is hushed up, as it were, by a cosy ('gemütlich') atmosphere in which dangerous contrasts are blurred and blended (CW 11, par. 44).

Jung sees the dream as an argument in favor of making a compromise between Christian and pagan principles. "Spiritualization and sublimation are essentially Christian principles and any insistence upon the contrary would amount to blasphemous paganism" (para. 43). The anima, in the form of the woman who protests and disappears, represents the voice of dissent. "I must confess," says Jung, "I find myself in sympathy with the anima. Obviously the compromise is too cheap" (para. 51). I understand Jung to be saying that the first and third dreams indicate a need for an important transformation whereas the second dream suggests that the two conflicting views, spirituality and paganism, can comfortably co-exist without any major changes. It is noteworthy that Jung tends to judge the actions within the dream by standards similar to those by which one would judge everyday behavior.

Of the fourth dream, much later in the series, Jung says that it produced a "far-reaching change in his [the dreamer's] attitude to life and humanity" (para. 59). Jung draws parallels between this dream and the Church dream. The church has become the strange, solemn house. The references to the Catholic Church are gone, except for the burning candles, derived, possibly, from certain kinds of Mass. Jung argues that, in the fourth dream, the voice has taken the place of the anima in the Church dream. He reasons that, in the Church dream, the dreamer makes a "cheap compromise," and this meets with the disapproval of the anima, who protests and then vanishes. The disembodied voice also makes a protest, and therefore occupies the same position as the anima, but it makes "not a merely emotional protest but a masterful statement on two kinds of religion" (para. 71). He sums the dream up thus:

You try religion in order to escape from your unconscious. You use it as a substitute for a part of your soul's life. But religion is the fruit and culmination of the completeness of life, that is, of a life that contains both sides (par. 72).

So the fourth dream is a variation on the Church dream. The Church dream seems to suggest that there is no conflict between Christianity and what Jung terms paganism, but this logic occurs at the cost of losing the anima, whereas in this dream, the pagan "statement" is omitted and thereby the position of the anima/voice aspect is strengthened and elaborated.

Much of Jung's argument hinges on a structural comparison of these dreams rather than on the techniques of single-dream analysis:

Content analysis began with research by Calvin Hall, Robert Van de Castle and their associates (Hall & Van De Castle, 1966). In contrast to psychoanalysis in which the focus is on individual dreams and their interpretation, Hall examined large numbers of dreams, sometimes thousands. Eventually he had amassed a collection of over 50,000 dreams (Schneider & Domhoff, 1995). The focus of Content analysis is to find the statistical features that can be identified rather than the meaning of any particular theme or symbol.

Each dream is "scored" for content on a variety of measures, rather like an individual test. For example, the researcher computes the number of male and female characters, quantifies the friendliness of the interchange, notes whether the setting is indoors or outdoors and so on. Totals for the entire group of dreams can than be computed. After correcting for the length of the dream, the researcher adds up the number of occurrences of the variable, for example, the number men in the dreams, the number of occurrences of females and then calculates a ratio.

Content analysis has proved to be an excellent way to compare groups of people. For example, differences exist between the dreams of men and women: men dream mostly about men, women dream approximately evenly about men and women; men register more aggression in their dreams and so on. It is known that children dream proportionately more about animals than adults. In addition to comparing groups, longitudinal studies of individuals have proved fruitful: "Our analyses of lengthy dream journals reveal that there is an astonishing degree of consistency in what a person dreams about over several months or years, even 40 or 50 years" (Domhoff, 1966). This research suggests that the main characteristics in our dreams remain much the same over very long periods of time.

Content analysis has helped establish the relationship between dreams and daily life: "There are also striking continuities between our dream findings and waking life, making possible accurate predictions about the concerns and interests of the dreamers. These findings suggest that dreams have ‘meaning.’" (Schneider & Domhoff, 1999). To that extent, content analysis can be used to make predictions about the dreamer.

The problem of reconciling a meaning-oriented approach to dreams, for example that of Freud or Jung, and the statistically oriented approach of Content analysis is considerable. A mutual disrespect seems inevitable since the two approaches use the same data in very different ways and either approach could be interpreted as undermining the other. For example, content analysis typically rejects dream reports that are less than 30 words in length, a condition which is incomprehensible from a meaning-oriented approach. Content analysis focuses on making objective definitions for the purpose of rigorously quantifying data whereas a Jungian analysis, for example, will generally incorporate all data that is deemed relevant. Nonetheless, rather like the wave theory and the particle theory of light, both appear workable methodologies in their own context. Content analysis does offer some support for a meaning-oriented analysis since it shows that dreams reflect meaningful issues about the dreamer. Certain statistics, for example the gender differences, indicate the psychological importance of the empirical categories they are measuring.

Hall and Van De Castle were well aware of the criticisms leveled at content analysis by their contemporary opponents. They characterized the debate as "a seemingly endless dialogue between those who prefer words (qualitative description) and those who prefer numbers (quantitative description)" (1966 p.3) and dryly list the pros and cons of both approaches. Without trying to straddle this debate -- indeed, this study falls clearly within the qualitative sphere -- it seems valuable for qualitative research to be at least informed by the taxonomic landscape described by the quantitative research.

The Hall/Van De Castle system in effect treats a dream report as a story or play in which there are a cast of characters (animals, men and women, friends, strangers), a series of social interactions (aggression, friendliness, sexuality) and other dimensions that can be counted and assessed. Thus virtually any identifiable content of the manifest dream can be quantified and compared. The reliability of this system and its clarity and relative ease of use have made it a valuable research tool.

Within the constraint that the intent in content analysis is to produce meaning via numbers, content analysis has proved very informative. Partly this seems to hinge on the indisputable evidence it provides that dreams reflect daily concerns.

Starting from a quantitative analysis, William Domhoff (1996) examines dream themes under the rubric of "repetition". It is an "overlooked dimension, underlying much of our dreaming". (p.191). Domhoff divides "the repetition dimension" as he calls it into four categories: traumatic, recurrent, typical dreams and dreams with a repetitive themes. A traumatic dream will "reproduce overwhelmingly negative experiences…to the great discomfort of the dreamers"; A recurrent dreams will "puzzle or frighten many people"; A typical dream might include "flying or appearing inappropriately dressed in public"; A repetitive theme is simply one that in which "characters, interactions, activities and objects … appear in ordinary dreams consistently in long dream series " (pp. 191-192).

Domhoff's interest in this repetition dimension is that it "offers support for the idea that people dream about ongoing personal concerns and interests, whether pleasant or unpleasant, trivial or profound, past or future" and that this "makes dream life similar to much of waking cognition" (p.192). This is in contrast to Jung who saw dream life as a compensation for waking cognition. In much the same fashion as Jung, he argues that "no theory of dreams [should] be taken seriously if it cannot deal with the repetition dimension" (p 192).

For Domhoff, traumatic dreams are notable because they "tend to repeat the traumatic event in all its emotional detail and horror". Thus Domhoff's "trauma" dream appears to be a particular case of the nightmare in which a waking life event is re-experienced.

Domhoff suggests that trauma dreams have been neglected and that they are seen as "atypical and peripheral" (p.192). He notes that Freud "began his theoretical argument … by pointing to the most simple of dreams" (p. 193). The concept of wish fulfillment was the cornerstone of the Freudian method of dream analysis but trauma and nightmare dreams could not be viewed as wish fulfillments. Although Freud later modified this view, Domhoff says that trauma dreams were excluded from Freud's theory of dreams because Freud explained the trauma dream separately as an experience in which "a more basic mechanism aimed at mastering overwhelming stimuli took control of psychic functioning in rare situations".

In contrast to this "we should begin with the most difficult of dreams, traumatic dreams, and, search for a theory encompassing them as well as wish fulfillment dreams". Thus Domhoff rejects the notion that the traumatic dream is operating under a different mechanism from the "ordinary" dream. Domhoff notes, from Hartmann's research, that trauma dreams change slightly over time as the patient recovers. The fact that a trauma dream can gradually becomes an "ordinary" dream argues against Freud's idea of a separate explanation for trauma dreams.

Domhoff points to research that shows that 50-80% of college students report having had a recurrent dream at some point during their lifetime although this can take place over months or even decades and can occur weekly or only once or twice a year. A recurrent dream usually has a negative affect (60-70%). He quotes research that shows that the recurrent dream is more likely to involve only the dreamer and that the most frequent theme is of being chased or attacked. A recurrent dream tends to begin during a time of stress but not to reflect that situation directly.

Dreams such as the loss of teeth, flying, or finding money, crop up for most people. Typical dreams, even if remembered by most people are nevertheless not common occurrences. They do not constitute the majority of dreams. Domhoff quotes the Barrett study of deceased loved ones (discussed below) as one specific dream that appears to show a developmental sequence. As such it is of especial interest to this dissertation because it addresses the issue of the dynamics of dream series.

Other dream studies suggest a certain regularity within the dream that is predictive. For instance, in a study by Domhoff of students at Santa Cruz University, he observed that, if, in her dream, a woman is marrying a stranger, then there is more likelihood of something unfortunate happening during the dream.

Domhoff uses the analysis of especially long series of dreams to show that some themes are constant throughout the entire series. He quotes from a 17 year set of dreams from "Jason", a 53 year span from "Dorothea" and a 40 year series from "Marie". In addition, he considers the prolific "Engine Man" who wrote down 234 dreams in a 3 month period. Domhoff shows strong evidence that themes endure, core themes recur with statistical regularity throughout the entire set of dreams.

In Dorothea's dreams, food is a frequent theme. In roughly one out of every four dreams, she mentions food in some way: "Dorothea is eating, preparing to eat, preparing a meal, buying or seeing food, watching someone eat, or mentioning that she is hungry in 128 of the 600 dream reports" (p.148). She later sent in another 304 dreams of which 85 referred to food. Food is not usually such an important topic, Domhoff says her proportion of food dreams was three times higher than the female norm.

There is the loss of an object in about one in six of Dorothea's dreams. Other frequently occurring themes for her included: being in a small, disorderly room, being with her mother, trying to go to the toilet and being late.

These six themes together account for the content of about 75% of the Dorothea's dreams. Not only are these themes the preponderant ones but they recur throughout the entire series: the themes that are present in the first 100 dreams are also found in the last 100 dreams. Domhoff suggests that this repetition is reminiscent of the traumatic and recurrent dreams. Furthermore, these were not typical dream themes so that it might be suggested that all dreams contain these themes. Thus Domhoff forms the tentative conclusion that "at least some themes in dreams may be residues of difficult relationships or painful experiences, thereby linking repetitive dream themes with traumatic dreams and recurrent dreams" (p. 206).

The idea of a "constant" theme underscores this dissertation's question: what are the vicissitudes of the theme? Any theme is actually replete with variations and developments. I would speculate that, if we examined Dorothea's food dreams we would see dramatic tensions that would then unfold over the course of a number of dreams: Who does she eat with? Who does she eat with? How is the food? If we looked at her object loss dreams, they would not all be equal: How do the objects that are lost vary in importance? In there difficulty of retrieving them?

Often dream studies have, in effect, looked for a typology of dreams. For example, Kate Marcus considers The Stranger in Women's Dreams (1956) in which she examined the varieties of ways in which a male stranger makes an appearance in a woman's dream. The study is a classification of stranger dreams. Leone Terr (1980) examined child victims of a kidnapping and reported the most common dreams. She thought that most repeated dreams eventually become modified through new elaborations but that the modified dream "carries a traumatic nucleus", she distinguished "modified playback" dreams and "deeply disguised dreams" (p. 210). Other studies have used two populations and considered their dreams for example Latta compared premenarcheal and postmenarcheal girls (1998) and Smith-Marder compared the dreams of adolescent and mature women during menstruation (1978).

Deirdre Barrett (1991) studied dreams about a recently deceased loved one. She discerned four types of dreams about deceased loved ones: "back-to-life" dreams in which the dead person was still alive; "advice" dreams where the dead person offered advice; "leave-taking" or "resolution" dreams in which the deceased explained the circumstances of the death and assured the dreamer that everything was all right and finally, what might be called philosophical dreams in which the nature of death was discussed with the deceased. Barrett's study showed that the dreams often occurred in a prescribed sequence: "All of the series of dreams about a departed loved one began with disturbing dreams from the back-to-life category, usually progressed through advice dreams and then concluded with a leave-taking one" (p 105).

In the following remarkable example, the dreams acted as a direct indicator of a physical condition. Urticaria is the medical term for Hives, pale red swellings of skin weals; it is a symptom with both emotional and physiological components. Saul, a psychiatrist and Bernstein, an allergist (1940) worked with several urticaria patients and followed their dreams. In some cases, they discovered that an outbreak could be predicted by the previous night's dream. They quote an instance: "She awoke with hives from a dream that another girl's work was in a basket with the patient's and the patient could not tell which was which" (p. 356). In another incident: "The patient awoke with a few hives widely distributed. That night she had dreamed that Miss A. … had invited her to visit her and her father in a neighboring town.. The patient was very anxious to go but on the way to the station remembered an engagement with an elderly woman and at the very last minute did not go and the girl was angry" (p.357).

The dreams could predict the location of the urticaria. After dreaming that her father had slit her throat, the patient had urticarial swelling in her throat; Dream material about weeping and kissing was followed by urticaria of the eyes and lips. Frustration in the dream was linked to urticaria but not in a simple manner:

Of a total of 94 dreams during her analysis, the non-urticaria dreams were either not frustration dreams or else the frustration was not in just this status. She did not have a single reported dream of just this type which was not associated with either urticaria or weeping. Conversely, she never reported urticaria associated with a different type of dream. (p.360)

They continue "The critical point is the status of the frustration, if present, at the ending of the dream" (p.360).

E. Caroppo, G. G. Dimaggio, R. Popolo, G. Salvatore and G. Ruggeri, examined the development of themes in four patients in the course of psychotherapy, Caroppo and his colleagues detected a narrative in the way in which a dream theme, they use the term R.O.T. for Recurrent Oneiric Theme -- develops. For them, "the clinical interest in the analysis of these R.O.T. is … in investigating if there is an order, a figurative evolution of the themes in the progressive series of dreams" (p.276). They want to know if the progress of the theme at all parallels the progress of the treatment. They then describe, very briefly, the patients and the vicissitudes of their dream themes. One patient had recurring dreams about Vampires. They detected a change from very archaic, destructive Vampires to more humanized versions and eventually to Vampires with whom the dreamer can cooperate: "We consider these monsters as figurative representatives of levels of a substantially 'psychotic' quality … these levels undergo a progressive reduction of their …destroying capacity" (p.276). They offer three more studies, with themes of animals, earthquakes and tunnels in which they detect similar progressions. Unfortunately, the paper is only a brief overview of their work. It is not clear how many dreams were examined, over what period of time, nor do they offer any sample dreams to understand their method of assessment.

While Caroppo's ideas seem very close to those of this dissertation, their conclusions seems more definitive than can be justified from the published information. Whether Swedenborg's themes will show such clear progressions remains to be seem.

Chapter 3. Discussion

The problems of dream research are the subject of a brief but highly relevant paper by James Hillman, Methodological Problems in Dream Research (1975). Hillman discusses sleep research, dream research, and laments the influence of the Freudian paradigm. In the course of his paper, he makes some observations about dream research which are particularly relevant to this dissertation.

How can dreams be compared? The dream must first be classified in some way. Every person's dreams display certain elements and many of these will recur in other dreams. Hillman points out that we can look at specific dream elements, such as "river" or "older woman" or "gun". We can also create wider categories. "Rather than river we might use Water, Older Woman rather than mother, or weapon rather than Gun (p 201). In this way, we might eventually arrive at fundamental classes of dreams: 'parental dreams', 'aggression dreams', 'anxiety dreams'…" (p.201). But as we conceptualize categories, we move away from the raw data: "the move from 'gun' to 'Weapon' to 'aggression' is actually a move away from the specifics of the dream, its actual imagery, into concepts and categories". This might be acceptable in other fields but, if one accepts that the dream meaning is specific to this dreamer, then "in regard to dream images, this ordering may distort the fundamental reality of the dream, each one is a unique presentation" (p.201).

I understand Hillman to have two objections to this kind of classification. Firstly, it takes liberties with the dream; and secondly, we may be missing the point anyway. The transition from individual unit to larger category, for example, from "gun" to "weapon", is a conceptual product of the researcher's thoughts and predispositions, and might not be warranted. If, however, each dream is unique and its meaning is located in the time and place and person of the dreamer, then any classification may be meaningless. To a butcher, the meaning of "knife" may be quite different than the meaning of "gun" is to a soldier. An apple may mean one thing to a greengrocer and another thing to a child. This problem is inherent in the methodology; content analysis that compares different dreamers always runs this risk. Indeed, an apple in one dream might be quite different from an apple in another dream dreamed by the same person. Dream elements can, and usually do, have a layer of meaning that is quite specific to the individual dreamer.

Hillman then makes a point relevant to my research. Grouping dream elements may often make sense and may allow for a sense of the change in the dream. Any category can be expanded: we can generalize about weapons and then look at the change in weapons. If we consider "water" as the theme, we will encompass ponds, rivers oceans and more. .For Hillman, these categorizations "provide a framework within which to chart transformations". The following statement directly addresses the main points of this dissertation:

Within the class of Weapon, there might be – as therapeutic work proceeds – quantitative as well as qualitative changes. There might be an increase or decrease in the frequency of Weapon dreams in proportion to other dreams, or there might be changes within the sort of weapons: bare fists, medieval lances, H-Bombs.(p. 202)

By grouping particular elements of the dreams into categories, we can examine changes in the dream.

Hillman asks another question that is pertinent to this dissertation: what methods can be used to determine qualitative change? He suggests that the many rules of thumb used by practicing therapists might be formulated as hypotheses and then tested in dream research. The difficulties in this area are manifold. To suggest that a change in a dream element indicates a qualitative improvement inevitably raises the question of how improvement is judged: the therapist and the client need not agree that improvement has been made, researchers may have entirely different ideas of what constitutes improvement, and so on. The problem does not end even there. Would a change in a dream element or theme from less-valued to more-valued within a dream series always indicate improvement? Would it indicate the same improvement in the dreamer's waking life? This takes us back to the uniqueness of each individual dream. For Hillman, any element is always a symbol and therefore "since any element may take on symbolic significance, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to draw objective scales for content values from dream research" (p. 202).

Hillman makes two criticisms of any methodology that separates the elements of a dream from the dream as a whole/from each other: firstly, the dream is a Gestalt, and therefore inherently damaged by the separation of elements. Secondly, this methodology ignores dream meaning as a whole. While these criticisms appear to me to be valid vis-à-vis quantitative research, I hope to show that this research will proceed in a manner to which such criticisms would not apply.

In a complicated sentence, Hillman links dreams, drama and action together: "Jung's emphasis upon the dramatic structure of the dream points out that the dream, like a drama, is always an action, a dramatic performance" (p.204). Therefore, the action of the dream is a major focus; but action is not something easily analyzed. Again, context is paramount, and content analysis therefore difficult. "Action sequences are not reducible to simple actions like running, fighting, eating which some studies use as their categories for content analysis" (p. 204). He gives an example from a research project at the Jung Institute: "A classification of dreams according to animal images – dog dreams, tiger dreams, etc. – does not lead to understanding the actual processes taking place." I understand this to mean that, for example, tiger dreams cannot meaningfully be compared to lion dreams. In other words, any two elements of a set of dreams offer no particular information when simply contrasted.

He then goes on to say that "action sequences are best grasped as mythologems":

The task of dream research becomes one of extracting these motifs, comparing them among different dreamers in different analyses, or the same dreamer across a span of time, investigating the motifs to find if there is a sequential order or perhaps a development process (according to standards of qualitative change), relating them to age, sex, level of psychological culture, symptomatology, and the like, of the dreamer (p.205).

This leads Hillman to the conclusion that "The primary unit is not a static element. It is rather a mythological action sequence which is always meaningful.".

Consider these two early dreams of Swedenborg's: in the first dream, Swedenborg meets a woman who tells him that he smells. In the next dream, he meets a woman and is concerned because he is wearing rags. There is no action in the dream but there is a tension in both dreams that could be construed as a precursor to action.There is a shift in the locus of the tension between them from the woman to Swedenborg.

The number of similarities between the two dreams is considerable. Both involve obstacles to successful meetings with the woman (or women -- they may not be the same woman). The obstacles, "smelling" and "wearing rags," both pertain to the body. In both cases, they are attributes of Swedenborg, and serve to isolate him.

The important difference between the two dreams seems to be the question of who voices the concern. In the first dream, it is the woman; in the second dream, it is Swedenborg. We can hypothesize that this is an improvement in the sense that Swedenborg himself, or more precisely, his "dream-ego" (Hall, 1982) now takes responsibility for noticing some deficiency in interchanges between himself and women. We can imagine a therapist who considers it an improvement when a badly dressed and smelly client realizes this is an impediment to his relationship with women.

It is perhaps worth noting that every classification involves some conceptualization that moves away from the individual dreams. Even if we make a very small assumption, for example, that every stranger in a dream is the same stranger, this involves an imposition on each dream. I will assert that Swedenborg's dreams about women can all be grouped under the category of "Female figure" dreams. This is certainly in line with Jungian thinking. It is also in accord with content analysis of dreams, which finds consistent statistics about the occurrence of women in men's dreams, but it is nonetheless an imposition from outside the dream.

While my object of study is not identical to Hillman's, in other respects the methodology used in analyzing these two Swedenborg dreams avoids Hillmans major complaints. The two dreams were classified as belonging together because they both involve the same theme: an interaction with a woman. The idea of the dream as a Gestalt is kept in tact by comparing dreams rather than dream parts: the female characters were not prised out of their context, but instead considered in structurally similar dreams. This is a way of comparing dreams that, as we will show later, Jung uses frequently. We have made a value judgement that there is progress between the two dreams because, in the second dream, Swedenborg is aware of his own shortcomings. We have not said, or considered, whether the change in the dreams might represent any change in Swedenborg's consciousness or behavior.

The distinction between the ego in waking life and the ego in the dream is particularly important to this dissertation. When I take a series of dreams and examine the possible changes taking place in the theme, those changes typically involve the relationship between another dream figure and what is termed the "dream ego". For example, Swedenborg dreams about a dog biting him, a dog licking his face and a dog talking to him. From an examination of this, I might draw inferences about his dream ego's relationship with the "dog" symbol, but I am not, in this process, making any statements about Swedenborg's waking ego.

The two analysts who have considered the concept of the dream ego, Sonja Marjasch and James Hall, are both Jungians. Psychoanalysts do not distinguish between the waking and the dream ego. They tend to view the ego during a dream as the same ego of waking life working under different conditions, in particular the unconscious forces that are stronger during sleep. Ralph Greenson argues that the dream state "allows for a reduction and regression of conscious ego activities and of the censorship function of the superego" (1993, p. 66). Charles Brenner contends that there is a "regressive alteration in many of the functions of the ego during dreaming" (1993, p. 53). He lists the ego-functions that regress during the sleep state as including "reality testing, thinking, language, defenses, integrative ability, sensory perception and motor control" (p.55). Both Greenson, a supporter of the idea that dreams should occupy a privileged position in psychoanalysis and Brenner, an opponent, hold a clear position of the privileged position of the waking ego.

Jung had a completely different assessment of the relationship of dream life to waking life. He held the view that there was a wholeness to the human psyche and a natural inclination towards self-regulation. The unconscious tended to compensate for excesses of the conscious part of the psyche: "The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic balance" (Jung et al, 1964, p. 34). Rather than considering the dream situation as a distorted waking situation, the dream is an appropriate representation of a different situation: "the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious" (CW 8, p. 505). While he did not, to my knowledge, use the term "dream-I", it is consistent with his outlook. We would, to extend Jung's thinking, conceive of the "dream-I" as a counterbalance to the waking ego, it is the ego in relationship to the internal unconscious where the waking ego confronts external reality.

Sonja Marjasch was apparently the first person to write specifically about the dream "I" (Hall, 1977, p.150). A patient once told her a dream and she noticed that there was simply a description of a scene of which the dreamer was an observer but there was no "I" in the dream report (1966). The dream was about a fight between pairs of birds, which the dreamer associated to a conflict with a woman friend of hers. The dream was about conflict, but what was the dreamer's connection to that conflict? That question led Marjasch to consider that there was, by its absence, a question of ambiguity about the position of the dream "I":

…the dream symbolizes universal human conflict, a particular portion of which belonged at that time to the dreamer. But what was she doing about it? Was she trying to avoid her modest share and thereby becoming more forcibly involved in the struggle? Or was it the other way: Did the universal image -- in which her personal problem was contained -- emerge first from the depths of the psyche, and did she now need to become conscious of her personal participation in it and her attitude toward it? (p. 61)

In addressing this conception of the "dream-I", Marjasch explored the issue of those dreams in which the ego encounters itself: looking in a mirror, for example. She argues that two possible positions should be considered: that the mirror image is an "inferior ego component"; or, that, like the wicked witch's mirror in the story of Snow White, "the magic mirror represents a higher consciousness: it knows more than the questioner consulting it." (p. 66).

She sees the relationship between the waking "I" and the "dream-I" as raising moral issues and offers St. Augustine's dreams as an example. After his religious conversion, St. Augustine had overtly sexual dreams which he took literally. He asked himself whether or not he was responsible for these acts. Marjasch quotes:

the false persuade me, when sleeping, to that which the true are not able when waking. Am I not myself at that time, O lord my God? And there is yet so much difference between myself and myself, in that instant when I pass back from waking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to waking! Where then is the reason which when waking resists such suggestions. (p. 72)

Marjasch sees in this two issues: what is the relationship of the waking ego to the dream ego ("myself to myself"), and what is the responsibility of the waking ego for the "acts" of the dream ego? She argues that the "dream-I" appears as inferior when certain tendencies, above all sexual and aggressive ones, are repressed by the dreamer and it is the repression for which he or she is responsible. Marjasch quotes an example of a young man, bullied at work, who dreams of murdering his boss. She considers that this occurred because he failed to stand up for himself in reality: "His bad conscience the following day does not refer to the dream act but to his own action". In general, she adds: "it is an advantage for the dreamer to assume whatever indirect responsibility he can" (p. 73).

Marjasch felt that we should only think of a "dream-I" as separate from the ego when a particular therapeutic situation demanded it. Her motivation was to preserve the sense of responsibility that the waking ego should feel for the actions of the ego in the dream. The term "dream-'I'" should therefore, according to Marjasch, be reserved for "those cases in which the dreamer's level of consciousness is transcended in the dream". In that context, the "dream-I" "refers essentially to a factor outside the scope of consciousness, its significance is symbolic" (p.75).

James Hall (1977) starts by considering the relativity of the ego. For example, in Chuang Tzu's classic Taoist tale of the man and the butterfly, the "I" is unsure of its position and considers both, is it a butterfly dreaming it is a person or a person dreaming it is a butterfly? If, to take another example, a person dreams of seeing themself lying in the gutter, the person can "be" either the observing ego or the one in the gutter. To Hall, the problem and importance of the relationship between the "dream-I" and the "waking-I" exists because we are totally dependent on the ego as our organ of consciousness. It is our point of reference for everything we know and yet, at the same time, the ego is not some absolute given but is itself in flux

With this in mind, Hall takes the term dream ego as a simple and direct description of the way the dream is experienced by the dream ego; it is the "phenomenological way to designate the point of view from which the dream is perceived" (p.151). This seems to be different, he acknowledges, from the meaning Marjasch intended in which the dream "I" is primarily identified with the waking "I" and only under certain circumstances should be distinguished from it.

Hall alludes to another conceptual dilemma that seems best managed with the use of the dream-ego: he points out that certain aspects of a dream bear a direct connection to aspects of the dreamer's waking life and, in that case, we can discuss their relationship to the waking ego. However, there are other aspects of the dream that have no clear connection to the waking ego and, in that case, what is their relationship to the waking I? His answer is complicated: "they would be taken, I believe, as representatives of the deeper part of his [the dreamer's] personality, the transpersonal not-I of the objective psyche." (p.145). That is a complex answer to a problem that is simplified when we accept the actuality of the dream ego. The dream ego clearly relates to the waking ego and it clearly relates to any and all the dream contents.

Hall's definition will be more useful to this dissertation in that we experience an "I" in the dream that, while seemingly identical to the waking "I", nevertheless finds itself in such different circumstances that a distinction is warranted. It is these circumstances that are followed in a dream series: I observe the changes that take place within the dream life but these changes are considered in relationship to the dream ego, not to the waking ego. They do not, of necessity, imply anything changed in the waking ego. This leaves Marjasch's issue of the responsibility of the waking ego for the dream ego to a separate examination.

The concept of the initial dream exists in both Freudian and Jungian theory. Simply put, it considers that there is a dream, early in the treatment that contains a quintessential description of the patient's issues. The dream might occur before, or just after, the first meeting; it might involve the therapist or some similar figure, but it depicts the patient's crucial issues and is therefore of diagnostic and therapeutic importance: "It frequently happens at the very beginning a treatment that a dream reveals to the doctor, in a wide perspective, the general direction in which the unconscious is moving" (Jung, translated and quoted in Marcus, 1954). Similarly, Wilhelm Stekel:

The first dream already contains the important secret around which the neurosis is crystallized, revealed in symbolic language. It is often impossible for us to understand this first dream, and only in the course of the analysis will it become clear to us what the analysand wanted to say with the first dream. (quoted by Rappaport: 1958, p.240)

Donald Winnicott takes a dream before the first meeting as important: "Often a child will dream of the psychiatrist the night before the day of the interview so that in fact the psychiatrist is fitting into the patient's preconceived notion." (1993 p. 96). Kate Marcus, a Jungian analyst, saw the initial dream as occurring at a pivotal moment and therefore as being a special attempt to communicate:

As the analysis starts, two persons who may never have met before are trying to find rapport from conscious to conscious mind and from unconscious to unconscious….What they [the patient] cannot verbalize or otherwise convey to the analyst may stimulate those creations of the unconscious sphere that we call initial dreams. In this way the initial dream compensates for the inability of the analysand to reveal what is happening to him. … It is bound to echo back from the unconscious, and it actually does so in the form of initial dreams and other manifestations of the unconscious. (1954, p.1)

Marcus remarks that initial dreams often picture a transition experience such as coming to a frontier or a bridge, arriving at a cross-roads or a street-intersection (p. 5).

The subsequent dreams that relate to the initial dream ought to be considered important. Jungians tend to follow this line of thought as a matter of course, while Freudians tend not to do so. Rovner (1992), in a survey of 96 Freudian psychoanalysts, found that the analysts were in close agreement that the initial dream was useful because it provides an indication of the patient's defenses and resistances. But Rovner makes no mention of successive dreams. However, in a dissertation on the initial dream in Jungian analysis, Roth (1994) commented that he had not found in Jung's writings how he used the initial dream after its first report, but he cites Freud as remarking that "'in the course of treatment the first dream returned in innumerable variations and new editions'" (p.28).

With the study of dream series in view, my approach is to consider the initial dream as the start of a theme: I would expect that future dreams would resonate with the initial dream. I take examples from Jungian and psychoanalytic case studies. The Jungian studies consider, to different extents, the further developments the initial dream undergoes. The psychoanalytic studies typically mention subsequent dreams but do not connect them to the initial dream.

Meredith Sabini and Valerie Hone Maffly (1981) discuss the dreams of two people with cancer. One set of dreams comes from And a time to die, the journal of Mark Pelgrin, who wrote it while he was dying of liver cancer. The other set of dreams comes from a patient of Maffly's who died of bowel cancer, David. The authors' purpose is to give an outline of a failed individuation process and tell us something about the place of illness in that process. They suggest that "we can see how an illness such as cancer is viewed by the unconscious, from dreams which directly address the idea of psychosomatic unity" (p.123). They pay particular attention to the dreams as series: "Because the series shows a condensed but full circle of movement toward wholeness, we can see what kinds of changes that process would involve" (p.123).

The initial dream of Maffly's patient, David, contains an argument about food and about the proper feeding of some children:

There were several people talking in a room. One was a woman about 35 (she appeared to be my eldest daughter who committed suicide by drug overdose). The action began with the woman asserting that her income would first be used to pay all expenses other than food. Whatever money remained would be used for food for the kids.

I was very dissatisfied with this approach. The conversation went round and round until I obtained an acknowledgement that proper feeding for the kids was an obligation… equal to that given anything else. (p.133)

They comment that "throughout the course of the therapy, David regularly had dreams of looking