Newsletter 2009

Dream Tending

Stephen Aizenstat

New Orleans, LA Spring Journal Books, 2009, 281pp.

Stephen Aizenstat is the founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute located in Santa Barbara, California. The Institute—which provides graduate diplomas in Psychology and in Mythology—has as its motto “animae mundi colendae gratia (‘for the sake of tending the soul of the world’).” Through countless Dream Tending seminars Stephen has developed a hands-on/soul-open method for engaging images, images of dreams and the moving images (the images which move us) of our lives.

I studied at Pacifica. The years I spent there were some of the most fulfilling in my life. The teacher for our class on Human Development invited Stephen for a half an hour talk. I found him (here’s that word again) “engaging”, thoughtful and funny. He told us that in therapy we could always fall back on two questions: “How so?” and “Tell me more.”

Throughout the book Stephen uses the expression, “Dream Tending teaches us …” The guiding image in this book is that of the Wise Teacher. This image is incarnated by the figure of Stephen’s grandfather who escaped the Old World’s pogroms to become a shoe cobbler and a “tzaddik” (and in his own right a tender of dreams) in the new one.

The book is first and foremost a practical guide based upon the author’s many seminars. The first chapter starts with standard dream ‘interpretation’ (Freud’s association, Jung’s amplification and Hillman’s animation). Stephen warns us against the ego’s need to make sense and to dominate, and suggests that we “engage the Dream in an attitude of not knowing.” Here also we find two fundamental questions that must be asked: “Who is visiting now?” and “What is happening here?” The Image is a guest and we’re its host. Images love to talk about themselves and we have to maintain a living relationship with them.

When Stephen writes about the attitude we must foster towards these images he uses language close to that of Rogerian therapy: “For an image to reveal something essential, it must exists in a field of acceptance, positive regard and openness.” Like people images evolve. This evolution gives us “clues about our own imminent development.”

The second chapter focuses on nightmarish images. The nightmarish image wants to “find its true sense of being which exists below its storm and fury.” Furthermore, “by keeping us off balance and uprooting us from our complacency, they juice the vital forces of our imagination.”

In the next chapter we are invited to apply living images to life’s major challenges. The first section is on addiction images and how they express extremely repetitive behavior. There are different steps to engage all images and be engaged by them. For addiction images one of those steps is to “Take Action.” There is another section on how a couple could benefit from doing dreamwork. One of the steps is to “focus on the dream archetype of Lover…” It made me wonder if inviting other dream archetypes would be helpful for other kinds of relationships.

This is followed by a section on workplace and vocation. The workplace is seen as a dream. Dream Tending “sees dream images of money as related to the flow of a company’s vital energy.” That may be too restrictive. There are other flows in a corporation: ideas, information, etc. As for the section on Finding Vocation my only regret is that it is only three pages long. In our difficult economic times and at a time where many of us are questioning their presence in bloodless institutions this is an unfortunate oversight.

The fourth chapter is on the World’s Dream. It starts with an interesting distinction between “solar consciousness” and “lunar consciousness.” The latter “includes all the marginalized parts of ourselves that are so necessary to our health and to the health of the world.” It is through lunar consciousness that the inner and outside worlds interplay. It includes both dreams and the dreaming mind. As Stephen reminds us, “dream images are not representations of our personal nature only, but are also informed by the subjective inner natures of the things and the creatures out there in the world.” So, “… the deepest answer to the question, ‘Who is dreaming?’ is ‘It is the multi-dimensional world who is dreaming’.” What “informed” means is not too clear. Stephen refers to Jung’s notion of the psychoid nature of the archetype. There is quite a leap here from the outer world informing our dreams to the multi-dimensional world itself dreaming.

This is followed a discussion on dream landscape images (the “dreamscape”) which are the doorway to the World’s Dream (we pay too much attention to characters). If our dreams come from the World Dream, if they have meaning then it is our chance to take action “on behalf of dreams in the world.”

The fifth chapter shows how dreams point to possible diseases and their remedy (in addition to existing allopathic medicine). In fact, “the dream images linked to our bodily disorders are themselves often out of order, broken, malignant, or damages in some way.” Stephen gives the example of “the image of a rusted gate creaking in the wind may symbolize my hurting elbow.” I got a little lost here. Does this means that we have to look in our dreams for anything that is not working and see if there is a bodily counterpart that might relate to it? He suggests that it is paramount to treat the wounded image.

The sixth chapter is the most original one. It focuses on the practice of the Dream Council. It is not a get-together to discuss dream images but a way to bring various dream images in a free assembly where images can interact with each other. This is where we “bring [one’s] concerns, problems, bad feelings and questions before the council.” It is a utilitarian vision that goes somewhat against what was said earlier. Stephen reminds us that, “once we open dialogue with dream figures, Jung asserts, we have personal responsibility to continue the interaction.”

Notwithstanding small reservations Dream Tending is an instructive, practical and powerful guide for those of us who want to engage and nurture this dialogue.

–Alain Bédard

Alain Bédard is a Project Manager in the Information Technology department of a large corporation in Montreal. Quite literally the reading of Anthony Storr’s The Essential Jung in 1987 changed his life. He obtained his M.A. in Clinical Psychology at Pacifica in 2003. Alain is entertaining the idea of moving on to a private practice in psychotherapy.