ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608060016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: BOB CONDOR KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
This is how far dreams, those nocturnal tributaries of the subconscious mind, have seeped into the mainstream of consciousness.
``The last two years I have used dream work in corporate management seminars,'' said Peter Mudd, a private psychotherapist and executive director of C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, who counts several large companies among his local clients. ``Most of these managers come in quite skeptical but go out pleasantly surprised or even moved by how their dreams can help them discover a different dimension to the workplace.''
Corporate America's pillow talk aside, dreams are still the stuff of which psychiatry practices are made. But a dreamer today has so many new - and perhaps less intimidating - choices for exploration, including discussion groups, workshops, books, Internet sites, alternative healing therapists and even some family practice physicians. It is boom time at nighttime.
``People are increasingly interested in becoming fully human,'' said Blanche Gallagher, a Catholic nun who runs two dream discussion groups each semester as part of her teaching duties at Loyola University's Institute of Pastoral Studies. ``The groups are more popular than ever.''
People are discovering there can be a practical application of their dreams, one that is less threatening or embarrassing and more positive. You can enhance your personal relationships - even with the boss. Maybe understand how to solve a health problem. Receive career guidance. Figure out the best town to live in or where to start a new business. Find creative inspiration to help finish off a project or write a best seller.
``There is a direct correlation between everyday life and dreams,'' Mudd said. ``There doesn't have to be some great mystery to it.''
Gallagher has recently started several private groups to meet demand for her dream guidance.
``Dreams are the most creative work we do,'' said Gallagher, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. ``We are magnificently educated in this country in terms of the left brain [which controls logic and capability for numbers among other tasks], but it's time we get on with the other half [representing more intuitive, creative thinking].''
Indeed, even during the last decade, there has been less stigma attached to the interpretation of dreams, first developed as a rigorous scientific endeavor of psychoanalysis by that heady tag team of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung (pronounced ``yoong'').
The physiological elements of dreams were first probed in 1952, when a University of Chicago researcher discovered periods of rapid eye movement during sleep. It was subsequently determined that REM sleep was most fertile for dreaming. We first enter REM about 90 minutes into sleep, and then more frequently, up to seven prime dream cycles each night. Dreams last longer and are more vivid in REM, but you also dream at other times.
While Freud basically believed the purpose of dreams is to allow people to satisfy hidden, unconscious desires (especially sexual fantasies), Jung eventually broke off with his mentor to expound dreams as more open to individual interpretation and representing messages from our subconscious selves to our conscious selves. Jung's teachings are followed by most of today's therapists who work with dreams.
Now in the corporate setting, Mudd often discusses dream work on the first evening of a four-day seminar. He uses dreams to begin a discussion each subsequent morning, and he hears some doozies, including managers who admit they attacked certain co-workers during their sleep.
``We establish confidentiality within the room to make everyone feel comfortable,'' he said. ``Some people are quite courageous and willing to reveal their emotions and frustrations by telling their dreams.
``Other people can be naive. They explain a dream thinking it's nonsense; then I point out what it might mean by asking them some questions about the dream events. Then we relate the dream back to their work situation. By the time we're done, they usually feel differently about the power of their dreams.''
For example, Mudd said a common dream among managers focuses on some calamity at work, such as a factory breakdown or computer glitch. Co-workers appear in the dream to make things more difficult or help in some unexpected fashion.
``It's not always the people you expect that either want you to fail or succeed,'' he said. ``Maybe someone you considered an opponent is really interested in your success -or vice versa. This dream signals some different ways to look at your work relationships.''
Mudd said there is no better interpreter of dreams than the dreamer. This is a core statement among dream workers (therapists and other health professionals who use dreams in their practices) who follow a Jungian approach and avoid overgeneralization of symbols found in the many ``dream dictionaries'' that can be found in bookstores.
``I consider myself a scientist,'' said Veronica Tonay, a psychotherapist and lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz who has published numerous academic studies on dreams. ``I'm very upset about those type of books. They are based on intuition, not research. It's no better than seeing a fortuneteller.''
Tonay urges her clients to pay attention to dreams as part of maintaining health, much as Hippocrates, the Greek physician and so-called father of modern medicine, prescribed some 2,400 years ago. Without high-tech medical tests, Hippocrates employed the next best tool - one that therapists and health professionals believe is sorely missed as science has overrun intuition in the field of medicine.
``There is so much more interest in dream work,'' said Tonay, author of ``The Art of Dreaming: Using Your Dreams to Unlock Your Creativity'' (Celestial Arts, 1995). ``I have done 70 radio interviews alone to publicize the book, with lots of questions from callers about people falling from a cliff,'' which could mean any number of things - such as falling in love, a part of yourself is dying, feelings of insecurity - depending on who is doing the falling.
``But we're still so caught up in work life and hectic family life. If we don't pay attention to our emotions and intuitions, they will show up in dreams whether we like it or not.''
What's more, dreams might portend serious physical conditions. A Michigan State University study asked patients suspected of heart disease (but as yet undiagnosed) to recall any dreams from the previous year. Those subjects who reported dreams of death and separation generally tested high for heart attack risk.
Dr. William A. McGarey, a general practice physician and director of the Association for Research and Enlightenment clinic in Phoenix, has been using dreams to help diagnose patients since the early 1960s.
``I have found that dreams can provide adequate warning of an illness, giving the patient and doctor some direction before it becomes too advanced,'' says McGarey, who describes some of the dream work in his new book, ``In Search of Healing'' (Perigree).
An example: McGarey was seeing a woman who reported that she had the same dream two successive nights in which she blurted out, ``I have MS.'' McGarey checked and found early symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
``We took measures to stop it from developing,'' he said. ``She is presently doing quite well. Of course, not all dreams are as literal as hers.''
Gallagher said she has a good idea why dream exploration, a staple of medieval times, is once again beginning to fill a yawning need among the masses.
``We have relied on words to communicate for much of the 17th through 20th centuries,'' she noted. ``Since dreams are visual, they have been less in favor.
``But movies, television and computers have changed all that. We now think more frequently and fluently in visual images, and that brings us back to our dreams.''
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Color graphic by ROBERT LUNSFORD Staffby CNB