Tag: Freud | In your dreams …

Dream Alchemy in Phnom Penh

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, last month, giving a workshop on Dream Therapy to creative arts therapists, which attracted Phoenix Jay of Phnom Penh’s The Advisor to interview me for their cover story. It’s a broad ranging yet deep interview, which you can read in full here – it includes a discussion of trauma, Jung, Freud, and an interpretation of Phoenix’s recurring dream and her response. I’ve picked out some extracts for you as a taster:

Extract

Jane Teresa:
If someone comes to me with a dream, my prime focus at first is to answer their questions. Why did you have this dream? Let’s have a look at it and explore it together. Let’s discover from your dream more about your mindset; about your unconscious mind, about how your past experiences are influencing the way you’re experiencing life now. Let’s put a window on that, without judgement. The next thing I have in mind is, whatever this dream is about, I want to help that person to experience a bigger and better life because of what they understand about themselves through their dreams.

Extract

Jane Teresa:
Say you told me about a dream and I said: ‘You’ve got an unconscious belief that you’re really sick and you’ll never be well.’ You could go away and do a whole New Age affirmation – ‘I’m really healthy; I’m fighting fit’ – but we all know that doesn’t work.

Phoenix Jay:
I didn’t want to be the one to point that out.

Jane Teresa:

There’s no point talking to your unconscious mind using rational everyday language because it’s not going to understand.

[Laughs] It makes us feel good but generally it doesn’t work. And the reason it generally doesn’t work is because you’ve got an unconscious belief to the contrary. Because your unconscious mind is so strong, it usually drives you more than your conscious mind. So in that somewhat silly example, just to keep things simple, if you were someone who wasn’t particularly looking after your health, it would be because you’ve got unconscious beliefs: ‘If I was healthy I’d have to do this, that and the other. I want to be the victim. I’m going to make sure I’m unhealthy.’ In reprogramming that, you can then be released from it: ‘Why did I think it was so important to be sick? That’s stupid, isn’t it? I’ve got a new unconscious belief that’s supporting my conscious intention and my conscious mind.’ So you start creating a healthy lifestyle for yourself. You wouldn’t be seeking a cure for your health, finances or whatever if they were all really good – and the reason they’re not good is because they’re being unconsciously driven by something else. There’s no point talking to your unconscious mind using rational everyday language because it’s not going to understand, but if you use the language of your unconscious mind – your dream symbols – you can really create quite stunning changes and there’s where I get really excited about working with people.

Extract

Phoenix Jay:
So, the big question: does the key to the future of human evolution lie in breaking down the barriers between the conscious and
unconscious mind?

Jane Teresa:

Know thyself: We’d treat each other with greater kindness and compassion and forgiveness – and with that, everything changes.

One hundred percent! If you could say 101% and it made sense, I’d say 1,000,000%. It’s been touched upon by so many cultures throughout history. The one that springs to mind is the Delphic Oracle from Ancient Greece. It’s the place you went to consult the oracle on your future. Above the door, in Greek, is a sign that says: ‘Know thy self.’ Look within first. If we could all understand our unconscious minds more thoroughly and in that gain understanding of our greater being and what life is really all about, then we wouldn’t act in the ways we do. Even if everyone was just a metaphorical drop of water in the great ocean of life, if every little drop of water – drop by drop by drop – got it and looked within, we would all treat each other so differently. We’d treat each other with greater kindness and compassion and forgiveness – and with that, everything changes.

Read full interview

Consultation and mentoring

The power of taste

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Maybe I should open a patisserie. I recently tasted the most delicious concoction of a cake in a dream. Architecturally it was a stand-out, a creamy white abstract puff atop a stack of four dried figs.

I passed the cake around for everyone to taste. On closer examination, I noticed the figs weren’t figs after all. They were biscuits shaped like figs.

Freud might have taken a sexual approach to interpreting my dream – a creamy puff atop a phallic stack, and figs too?

Contemplating my dream the next day, I closed my eyes and imagined biting into the cake, just as I had done in the dream. I wanted to connect with the taste. I waited a few seconds, nothing. I persevered. I believed. I knew that if I had tasted it in my dream, I could access the sensation again. And suddenly there it was. Carnation evaporated milk. Quickly followed by a vision of my favourite childhood biscuits: fig rolls.

“When I grow up I’m going to have a cupboard full of Carnation evaporated milk, and drink whole cans whenever I want to.”

My dream symbol began to make sense. Puddings – as desserts were known in our family when I was small child – were sometimes served with Carnation evaporated milk. The can was placed on the table, two holes punched in the top, and, if we were good, we were allowed to pour an extra spoonful and – the best part – drink it straight from the spoon. Not two spoonfuls, just one.

“When I grow up and have my own home,” I remember saying on one such occasion, “I’m going to have a cupboard full of Carnation evaporated milk, and drink whole cans whenever I want to. And I’m going to have lots of packets of fig rolls and eat as many as I want.”

Fig rolls were my favourite biscuits, and a very rare treat in our house. Whenever we went visiting relatives, Mum would remind us of biscuit etiquette just before going in, “One fancy and two plain.” Our relatives would look quite astounded when they passed the plate a second time and we selected two plain tea biscuits each despite their encouragement to have another chocolate digestive or custard cream. We understood about the cost of fancy biscuits, about being polite, and about being healthy, but when our cousins, subject to different family rules, happily plundered the fancies, it niggled. It more than niggled me when there were fig rolls on the plate.

In my dream, I had more than a measured spoonful of Carnation evaporated milk whipped into my cake, and not one but four fancy fig biscuits. I shared my cake and still I had more.

I was able to look at the rest of my dream and understand the cake symbol in context.

Memories are often filed away with associated smells, tastes, and other sensory details.

When a dream symbol presents you with a taste, smell, texture, or unusual sound or colour, close your eyes and invite the dream sensation to return. Memories are often filed away with associated smells, tastes, and other sensory details, so reconnecting with the dream sensation can unlock those associated memories and throw light on the meaning of your dream symbol.

Thanks to a taste sensation, I now understand my dream. As an aside, my tastes have changed, and there are no cans of evaporated milk or packets of fig biscuits in my cupboards. I don’t fancy them at all. But wait a minute! I always include dried figs and a dollop or three of creamy yoghourt on my morning muesli. So I guess I have lived happily ever after, after all!

Consultation and mentoring

Episode 129 The Dream Show: A bigger life

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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How can your dreams help you to live a bigger life, and what might that bigger life look like?

What kind of practical results can you expect to see when you understand a dream and apply dream alchemy? How might your relationship, work, finances, and communication – just for starters – change for the better, freeing you to enjoy a bigger life?

What kind of actionable ideas might you discover in your dreams? For inspiration we look at people who have become famous, or very rich, or who have received Nobel prizes by acting on ideas presented in their dreams.

How did Freud and Jung differ in their approach to dream analysis, and which saw the potential of dreams to awaken us to a bigger life?

And just how big can a big life get? If we delve deeper into those dreams that delivered ideas for best-selling books or successful commercial applications, are there even richer rewards these dreamers could have gained from deeper analysis of these same dreams?

Listen, enjoy, and please share.

A Dangerous Method

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Have you seen A Dangerous Method*, the movie about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung’s intense relationship from first meeting, through the birth of psychoanalysis, to their professional and personal falling out? Along the way, Jung (Michael Fassbender), shares some of his dreams with Freud (Viggo Mortensen), and you might enjoy, as I did at the cinema on Friday evening, listening to their thoughts and insights from their increasingly different points of view. If you’ve studied the popular literature on Jung, the dreams will probably be familiar to you, but they’re short and sweet on film which makes them all the more accessible.

Freud saw dreams as revealing his patients’ neuroses while Jung saw dreams as revealing a person’s potential for living a bigger life.

One of the biggest differences between Freud and Jung’s clinical approaches to dreams was that Freud saw dreams as revealing his patients’ neuroses while Jung saw dreams as revealing a person’s potential for living a bigger life. Freud focused on rigid scientific diagnosis (according to his theories) and cure, while Jung allowed a more spiritual, mystical, flexibility to influence his analysis of dreams.

And of course there’s lots of sex, in Freud’s analyses and in Jung’s relationship with Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly), the young woman suffering hysteria who became the first patient Jung treated with Freud’s new talking cure (psychoanalysis).

Toward the end of the film, Jung describes his apocalyptic recurring dream, which he believed was precognitive of the coming apocalypse, World War I. Yet as you listen you’ll notice the metaphor of personal apocalypse as he slides into his nervous breakdown from which he later emerged, the wounded healer.

Listen to the dreams, and have a think about the kind of dream alchemy you might prescribe for each one.

If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know that one of my key approaches is to look for limiting beliefs, reflected in dreams, and to assist the dreamer with dream alchemy to transform such beliefs into ones that allow the person to grow into his or her potential, to live that bigger life. Go see the movie. Listen to the dreams, and have a think about the kind of dream alchemy you might prescribe for each one.

* Directed by David Cronenberg, A Dangerous Method, is based on John Kerr’s 1993 book, A Dangerous Method. The screenplay was adapted by Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure.

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Episode 115 The Dream Show: Hippocrates, Freud & Jung

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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“Clearly you have an anxiety complex here,” Freud began, “and riding the pointed skateboard with a feeling of exhilaration does suggest a sexual connotation.”

Imagine getting Freud, Jung, and Hippocrates (a dream healer from around 2,300 years ago who became immortalized as the Father of Modern Medicine) into a room together to interpret a dream.

They’d all have different views. Where would they agree, where would they disagree?

“Your knee is not working smoothly. We must give you some clay to make a statue of a running woman,” Hippocrates diagnosed.

In today’s show, I meet these dream pioneers and ask them to interpret a simple dream I had about a skateboard. It’s an imaginary meeting, of course, but a genuine dream.

“Hippocrates, this is Freud; Freud, Hippocrates,” and so we begin.

The two grand old men eye each other tentatively as they reach across two millennia to shake hands. Hippocrates leafs through Freud’s weighty book, The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, while Freud runs his hands over the stone snake-adorned walls of the 2,300 year old Aesclepian Healing Temple where Hippocrates works.

“Hmmm snakes,” Freud murmurs.

Splashes echo from the depths of an inner chamber where Jung dives back into the pool of the collective unconscious and taps me on the shoulder, “Okay, Jane. They’re ready for you now,” he winks.

“So who are all those people and roads in your dream, Jane?” Jung whispered in my inner ear.

I have decided to bridge millennial gaps and bring my dream, wide awake, for these dream grandfathers to consider. I have chosen the ancient Greek Healing Temple where Hippocrates worked as the venue.

Listen in as we continue.

We keep it light and playful, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the fun and smile at their different perspectives.

Listen here (Episode 115).

Tag Archives: Freud

Dream Alchemy in Phnom Penh

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