Seminar on Children's Dreams -or- Jungian Psychodrama
Dreams as Autopsychodrama -or- Media's Mass Customization
This interpretation discusses Carl Jung's ideas about the psychodramatic nature of the dream. I like to think of the dream as an auto-psychodrama. Since the beginning of "Field Notes of a Dream Researcher" I have been providing you the reader with background information for a social scientific model of the world we live in based on understanding the language of the dream. By the end of "1001 Nights", all the social scientific information for such a psychodramatic dream world model I have been building will be transparent.
Carl Jung "Children's Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940" discusses the dreams of children. Jung believed that the structure of a dream followed closely the structure of drama. In Jung's own words: "we first of all structure the dream as a story, as a course of events; the dream is a drama taking place on the inner stage, the true drama of course always has-like any course of action-a beginning, a middle and an end."
Jung further tells his reading audience that it is important to; "determine the exposition of the dream, in which the specific place, the time, specific persons, and a specific problem are exposed." From my own psychotherapeutic perspective, with the exposition of the dream begins the psychotherapeutic dialogue using the "language of the dream". In therapy, the case history works up a great deal of "background history", for what in clinical psychology is called a "case study". The dream can provide insight into memories, especially those which the conscious mind would like to forget.
When the first dream is presented in therapy, the dream does not usually start at the dramatic beginning instead it's almost always like tuning into season four, the episode of week 14 of a TV series like, "As the World Turns". Some dreams are about "flashbacks", such as "Flashbacks of Life in the Mind's Eye" posted at the IIDR website. Other dreams may focus on the "dramatis personae", a cast list of characters found in a persons dreams.
This list of inner cast of dream characters closely resembles what we today call a "social network" or web of affiliation. Jacob Moreno attempted to understand these interpersonal webs by using "sociometric methods" to create "sociograms". Mereno developed "psychodrama" as a psychotherapeutic method.
Many if not all the dreams posted at the IIDR website discuss a variety of aspects of the collective and individual psychodrama of everyday life. As these dream interpretations attempt to show, the dramatic stage is filled with thoughts and feelings about lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and family, cities, schools, churches, banks, popular culture and so on. More importantly dreams reveal the psychological and emotional narrative conflicts and problems that people are attempting to cope with.
As Jung observes, often a dream series does not find or reveal a dramatic solution to a psychological problem. Jung asks the participants of the seminar why? One participant provides an answer; "The conflict persists". In this light, many dreams sent to the IIDR speak of "Recurring Dreams" (read interpretation).
Many nightmares such as "Trauma and Personal Injury" poetically speak of "Gordian Knots" in memory that are not easily undone. These psychological knots in memory often begin in childhood, read "A Psychodramatic Guide to Nightmare Help".
One of the most important archetypal developmental dramatic functions of children's dreams, is the child's development of becoming "conscious". The dream is an existential and ontological dramatic stage, and on this dramatic stage the maturational growth of a conscious personality and its "individuation" is played out. Dreams provide insight into the core evaluations, individuals have of themselves.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending from whose perspective one takes, advertising and the mass media have begun to clue into the uses of the individuation process and have created "mass customization" of life styles.