The dream as a vehicle for the recovery of childhood trauma

Gertrude and Rubin Blanck (1979), drawing on Freud's discovery that a dream may lead to the recovery of forgotten childhood experiences, have shown how certain dreams may provide access to the pattern of the early mother-child relationship and to critical events that occur before the ego is capable of processing experience adequately. Drawing from their considerations, this paper demonstrates how a dream was employed to reconstruct a pattern of early chronic stress trauma which had contributed to a repetitive pattern of self destructive behavior in a depressed woman. This reconstructive effort helped start the difficult work of diminishing the painful impact of the traumatic past and paved the way for a beginning identification with a protective object, the therapist.     

Dream Recall Frequency and Unusual Dream Experiences in Early Adolescence: Longitudinal Links to Behavior Problems

Unique dream patterns are related to psychopathological distress in adults. In adolescence, this was investigated almost exclusively regarding nightmares. This longitudinal study examines developmental trajectories of various adolescent‐reported dream patterns, and their associations with parent‐reported psychopathology (internalization and externalization problems) in early adolescence. Ninety‐four 10‐ to 11‐year‐old normally developing children completed a week of sleep, dreaming, and pubertal development assessments. Parents reported behavior problems. Assessments were repeated after 1 and 2 years. Reports of unusual dreams decreased over time, and dream recall decreased among girls. Internalizing symptoms longitudinally predicted an increase in dream recall and unusual dreams. Moreover, unusual dreams longitudinally predicted increased behavior problems (internalization and externalization). Assessing dream patterns during early adolescence may help early detection of covert psychopathological distress.     

Red balloon: approaching dreams as self-narratives

In this article, dreams are seen as stories within a self-narrative. Dream stories, like all other stories, are told in an effort to make sense of experiences. Here, dream content is linked to current concerns, some aspects of which are not given voice in waking. Dreams depict restricting themes but also openings in self-narratives. Several examples are provided of how dreams can be linked to early, middle, and late therapy phases associated with recognizing, challenging, revising, and maintaining a revising stance. It is further suggested that dream stories can be used to trace, facilitate, and evaluate the process of reconstructing self-narratives. Finally, a number of therapeutic interventions are briefly presented to facilitate the work of narrative-informed family therapists working with individuals, families, and groups.     

Dreams as Empirical Data: Siblings' Dreams and Fantasies About Their Disabled Sisters and Brothers

Until recently, most experts in the area of dreams and dream analysis held the view that dreams must be analyzed and worked with by professionals in the area of psychoanalysis or psychology, or by sleep experts. For sociologists, subjective, nonquantifiable topics such as dreams and daydreams were not considered valid areas of inquiry. But these areas can provide a way-of-knowing that has not been explored; these nighttime visions can contribute a new source of data about issues that deeply concern people. This article uses dreams and conscious daydreams about disabled brothers and sisters as an example of the type of information that could be gleaned if we used dreams as empirical data. Siblings of disabled individuals, originally recruited for another research project, were queried about their dreams and fantasies of the disabled sister or brother. In the respondents' dreams (both awake and sleeping) a number of themes emerged: issues that came up only when they discussed their dreams. These themes seem connected with the waking reality of having a disabled siblings; they include: (1) previews of anticipated experiences, (2) a desire to be a savior and, consequently, to be respected for rescuing the handicapperl person, (3) a wish to have the handicapper sibling escape from the dilemma of disability, (4) the notion that someone or something (a fairy godmother) will change things, (5) sorrow about the disability or death, and (6) guilt that they were “normal” and the sibling was disabled.     

Commentary: The media in 2045—Not a forecast, but a dream

The mass media continue to be among the most crucial instruments for the practitioner of public relations, and, to be sure, among the most frustrating. How are the media changing? How will those changes affect public relations? And should there be new public policies about mass media in a twenty-first century where technical, political, social, and economic realities will be radically different from previous centuries, including the twentieth?Although most public relations professionals have shied away from public criticism of the media, and have not been vocal advocates for changing public policies about media, nevertheless they need answers to the questions raised above. In this thoughtful essay, Claude-Jean Bertrand looks at a possible mass media half a century from now and provides a dream scenario.Unfortunately, Professor Bertrand describes some “twentieth-century” public relations practices as part of the “old” problems and “dreams up” some changes in those practices, as well. It may be that a public relations professional or professor should write an essay devoted to a dream scenario for public relations in 2045. The Public Relations Review invites such commentary.     

People in a World Between: Psychodynamic Themes in the Treatment of Bisexual Patients

Normal sexual behavior is on a continuum—with homosexuality at one end, heterosexuality at the other, and bisexuality at the midpoint. Most people have some bisexual potential. A bisexual person is capable of having intimacy with either a man or women but may be made uncomfortable by the ambiguity of their libidinal longings, feel different, isolated, and long to make a clearer gender choice—homosexuality or heterosexuality. The sacrifice to the self and the psychic conflicts that block such a lifestyle resolution brings these bisexuals into treatment and clinicians are confronted with a need to apply psychodynamic theory in new and more flexible ways. Using two case studies this paper discusses forms of androgynous transference, pregnancy fantasy, and dream interpretation that can unfold in the psychotherapy of bisexual patients.     

Toward an Integrated Understanding of Dreams

In this paper four different schools of dream analysis—classical, object relations, modern psychoanalytic, and self-psychological—are described, compared, and contrasted. Each approach is then applied to an analysis of the first dream reported by a patient. As each interpretations is accurate and useful in understanding this patient's psyche, it is concluded that an integrated framework should be used in dream analysis.     

Strengthening Social Work Approaches Through Advancing Knowledge of Early Childhood Intervention

Early childhood professionals—social workers, educators, speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, pediatricians, and others—create the foundation for a life-long duration of experiences that families, who have children with disabilities, will have with various professional groups. The nature of the early childhood interventionists' interaction, treatment, services or supports of the child and the attitudes conveyed to families during these critical early years may be a significant factor in the willingness of families and young adults to continue to pursue therapeutic and supportive services. With insights into early intervention best practices, social workers are likely to find themselves in a preferred position to plan appropriate family-focused intervention strategies that may encourage success and prevent complications or a worsening of specific initial conditions among children with disabilities.     

Reconsidering Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working Class(es)

This paper focuses on the early goals, past educational experiences, familial support, and current career goals of a sample of 80 White middle-class and working-class parents in a medium-sized northeastern city in the United States. The research will help determine whether members of the working class have lived in or still live in worlds of pain. Middle-class parents overwhelmingly report having had high goals and aspirations in high school, positive experiences in school, and supportive parents and role models in their families. Moreover, they report being satisfied in their current occupational positions. The working-class parents present a more complex pattern: For each of the areas studied—early goals, schooling, familial support, and job satisfaction and future goals—some of the working-class respondents report better experiences than the others. A more inclusive sampling strategy proved useful in this study in documenting the varied life experiences and attitudes found among members of the working class. These findings provide support for and modification of Rubin's (1976, 1994) portraits of the working class.     

Social Constructs and Human Service: Managerial Sensemaking of Volunteer Motivation

Managers of volunteers in human service interpret their job and experiences through a cognitive construct grounded in past interactions and experiences. This construct—sensemaking—then guides the managers' perceptions of subsequent interactions with peers, volunteers, and supervisors. Volunteers similarly make sense of their surroundings through cognitive constructions grounded in their own experiences. Unfortunately, managers and volunteers do not always make sense of their surroundings in the same way. Research has demonstrated that supervisors and paid employees may not necessarily agree in their perceptions of such issues as, for example, employee motivation. Such differences can lead to disagreements about the meaning of behaviors and the design of reward systems, eventually compromising organizational performance. In this study, sensemaking of volunteer motivation was assessed from the manager's perspective and compared with a previous study of volunteers themselves. Differences in understanding such a primary question as why volunteers are present can reasonably be expected to have an impact on organizational effectiveness. Interestingly, the predicted outcome of a different sensemaking schema was not supported in either the understanding of motivation or in the relative importance assigned to altruism. Additional attributes of volunteer managers were also considered to determine if sensemaking is driven by environmental factors such as exposure to volunteers, tenure as a volunteer manager, or social roles associated with gender constructs. These additional attributes were not found to significantly affect the process of attribution of altruistic motives.     

Portents or Confessions: Authoritative Readings of a Dream Text

As a cultural and historical phenomenon, dreams are universally endowed with significance. Yet, their interpretations have varied widely—in the ascribed “meanings” of dreams and in the ramifications for dreamers. In this article, we examine the social trajectory of a contemporary “dream” that came to light in the context of a police investigation of a murder. We analyze the various institutional codes that refracted this “dream” through their particular vocabularies of motive, agency, and meaning. The case under investigation provides an opportunity to test a working hypothesis about a generalized modern attitude toward dreams; the two aspects of that attitude are that dreams are no longer viewed as revelatory of future events, and that dreams have been privatized. Evidence from this case confounds these expectations and leads us to develop a theory of coexisting institutional paradigms of interpretation of dreams and of the authority structures that compete for interpretive dominance. Our analysis has yielded insights into situational aspects of cultural phenomena.     

What might have been-what could be: Working with the grief of children in long-term care

Abstract

“What might have been. what could be'. The stuff dreams are made of. However, the longing, searching, and yearning implied are, each in their own way, activities of anguish which shift the golden romantic dream to torment. Being near a child who is pining in this way is uncomfortable and causes us distress - and all the individual ways of dealing with that distress. We've all been children. We all know what it is to loose something, or to be separated from someone important to us. We know how it can consume us and feel as if it's the end of the world. “A child does not know death - only absence; and in absence, the parent may as well be dead, so overwhelming is the child's sense.of loss (Robertson, 1952);'     

Thematic features in the manifest dreams of expectant fathers

Ten first-time expectant fathers recorded their dreams during three two-week periods in their wives' pregnancies. A content analysis of the dreams identified specific references related to pregnancy, childbirth, and fatherhood. The results showed that when compared to dreams of nonexpectant men, the dreams of expectant fathers in the early stage of pregnancies referred to the fetal environment, enclosures, and feelings of loneliness and exclusion. In the middle and late stages, references to providing nurturance, water imagery, birth, wives, neonates, and infants increased. References to the dreamers at work, threats to self, feelings of loneliness and exclusion, and cars decreased. These references were then reviewed using a psychoanalytic framework to detect thematic features of the manifest dreams based on the interaction between frequent references and other dream imagery. The thematic content shows that unconscious preoccupations of expectant fatherhood are depicted symbolically in dreams and elaborated during pregnancy.     

Sex,Sacredness, and Structure: Contributions to the Sociology of Collective Dreams

The article starts with a metaphoric and rhetorical use of the dream concept and then deals with collective dreams. Borrowing ideas from Freud, Durkheim, and Levi-Strauss, concepts are developed to describe collective dreams, for example, the American Dream. I demonstrate that binary oppositions, such as Durkheim's “sacred versus profane” distinction, structure collective dreams. Different forms of symbolic operation are described.     

Wedding the dragon: The powerful feminine as seen in Jewish women’s dreams

Abstract

This article addresses the theological and liturgical problem of incorporating mythic traditions of the divine feminine into contemporary practice, given the typically essentialist nature of these traditions. The article considers the dream practice of a Jewish women’s learning community, the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, and applies this practice to several “dragon dreams” in which dragons appear as powerful, erotic, sacred figures that “queer” the divine feminine by offering a norm-upending vision of what the feminine is and does. These dragon dreams provide a powerful alternative to traditional Jewish images of the female dragon in which the dragon represents the demonic feminine. I suggest that dreams can offer a “queering” of mythic images of the sacred feminine because they contain images that have mythic depth but also upend norms and expectations. The article then explores how these dragon images have made their way into the liturgy and theology of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.     

Dreaming and Listening: A Final Journey

The following paper will examine the meaning of dreams and dream analysis from a classical psychoanalytic perspective, self-psychology, dream research, and current relational theory. Three consecutive dreams will be explored in the context of the client's terminal AIDS diagnosis and his eventual death. The dreams' latent meaning, as understood by this writer, and their manifest content as reported by the client will be contextualized within the therapeutic relationship and this client's struggle with the process of death and dying.     

Biracial-Bisexual Individuals: Identity Coming of Age

There is considerable controversy regarding the means by which bisexual and biracial individuals achieve a sense of identity. In this paper, the concepts of bisexual and biracial identity are reviewed, and the literature on identity developmental models are critiqued. Further, a qualitative study is presented that explored the complexity of biracial identity development in Japanese-Americans. It is based on the constant comparative method of analysis, or grounded theory. The study focused on how Japanese-Americans perceived themselves in relation to other individuals, groups, and/or their environment. Findings related to initiating explorations of identity and perseverance in pursuing a biracial identity, which depended on the degree of support or negative experience within their social networks. Participants explored identity options attempting to develop their own meaning of identity, to develop a confident sense of themselves and secure a positive ethnic identity. Based on research and dialogue, there appears to be parallels between bisexual and biracial identity development. A model is proposed that suggests that individuals who are bisexual or biracial go through four phases in their development of their positive identity. These phases are: Phase I—Questioning/Confusion; Phase II—Refusal/Suppression; Phase III—Infusion/Exploration; and Phase IV—Resolution/Acceptance. These phases describe people who have two distinct identities that place them in a position of self-devaluation. From there they move to a position where there is a positive perception of identity based on the coexistence of their identities.     

The Live Creature: Understanding the School and Its Passions

This essay explores certain inherent psychological tensions and contradictions that shape the subjective experience of school life. Describing the dynamic relationship between experiences of idealization and disillusionment, the paper discusses the opportunities schools have to support the growth of students and teachers by facilitating developmental processes of reparation and recovery. The essay both follows the narrative of a series of events that occurred in a high school sociology class and outlines three concepts—axis of variation, the school romance and the live creature—to illuminate for administrators and teachers how the school can promote development by understanding the complex ways that passions organize, and, at times, disorganize, the life of a school.     

Use of drawings in evaluating children who may be incest victims

Five semi-structured drawing tasks are described which have been helpful in evaluating children who may be incest victims. Such children can be asked to do a kinetic family drawing, a drawing of the alleged perpetrator, a drawing of their house, a drawing of their own body, or a drawing of a dream. In a sample of 19 alleged victims, all children under 12 drew freely and expressed relief at being asked to draw. Children 12 and over tended to accept a drawing task only if it was structured as diagramming. These tasks were also found to be helpful in evaluating brothers of alleged victims to determine how aware the boys were of the incest situation and how critical it was for them to be included in therapy. Such drawings can be collected in pediatric and gynecologic settings as well as in the playroom. Use of drawings allows the physician to respect the child's developmental needs while obtaining the information about the incest complaint necessary for medical, protective, and forensic purposes.     

Psychodynamic and developmental aspects of expectant and new fatherhood: Clinical derivatives from the literature

Expectant and new fatherhood has received increasing attention in the literature. During this major adult transitional period, earlier developmental conflicts are reactivated. These in turn influence adaptation to current life processes, consistent with psychoanalytic theory. Three major psychodynamic and developmental findings that repeatedly emerge in the literature—rearoused sibling rivalry, intensified dependency needs, and reawakened oedipal conflicts—are delineated. Less prominent psychosocial manifestations reported in the literature are also identified and discussed. Knowledge of the psychodynamic and developmental issues of this life transition is helpful to clinicians.