UCLA DREAM SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATION

(April 16, 2019)

TOWARDS AN INTERSUBJECTIVE SCIENCE OF DREAMS

George Bermudez, Ph.D., Psy.D.

Core Faculty & Director, Child Studies Specialization

Antioch University Los Angeles

Training & Supervising Psychoanalyst

Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis Los Angeles

“The varied experiences in dreams may be thought of as continuously

exploring, portraying, rehearsing, commenting upon, criticizing, adding

to, varying and improving on aspects of the socially shared

characteristics of a people… in the deepest privacy of dreaming, the

culture’s ways are being developed, tested, explored, and reinforced.”

Lippmann, P. (1998). 203-204.

On the private and social nature of dreams. Contemporary

Psychoanalysis, 34, 195-221.

“We enter into stories, we are entered into stories by others, and we live

our lives through stories.’

Michael White, Originator of Narrative Therapy

ABSTRACT:

The overall objective of this presentation on psychoanalytic dream

theory and dreamwork is to provide a brief introduction to and

overview of the historical development of psychoanalytic dream

theory, arriving at a contemporary vision of an intersubjective

science of dreams. The arc of the evolution of psychoanalytic dream

theory begins with Freud’s pioneering theorizing in his magnum

opus, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), takes us through the

refinements of Psychoanalytic Ego Psychology and the

transformations of Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory, and

arrives at contemporary psychoanalytic theories (Psychoanalytic Self

Psychology; Intersubjective Systems Theory;

Interpersonal/Relational Psychoanalysis; and Contemporary

Intersubjective Systems & Field Theory, culminating in the “social

dreaming paradigm”). The presentation will examine and reflect on

the relationship between psychoanalytic theories of dreams and the

evolution of psychoanalytic models of the mind. Despite the

pluralism, which is often decried as fragmentation, in psychoanalysis

and psychoanalytic dream theory and the historical fluctuations in

interest in dreams, Freud’s prescient assessment of the singular

position of the dream in understanding the psyche seems to have

endured: “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a

knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” (Freud, 1900,

p. 608). The presentation will end with the recounting of two dreams

from the presenter’s clinical practice, transparently demonstrating the

intersubjective and social nature of the dreaming mind—which

psychoanalysis reveals as mirroring the unconscious processes of the

human psyche.

As I suggested in the abstract announcement for this presentation, the

plan is to provide an overview of Freud’s pioneering dream theory

and the subsequent refinements and transformations. Psychoanalytic

dream theory and clinical dreamwork is inextricably linked to

refinements and developments in psychoanalytic theories of mind,

specifically, building on Freud’s foundational formulations

concerning unconscious mental phenomena and the structure or

organization of the human self. This tradition has been the gift of

psychoanalysis to human knowledge — an unwavering commitment

to exploring the human unconscious through intersubjective

experience —experientially, collaboratively, and self-reflectively. So,

I will be tracing the major paradigm shifts in psychoanalysis over the

course of the 20th century, which have shaped the contemporary

pluralism in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Along the way, I

will illustrate with some dream narratives.

However, I’d like to briefly preview my evolving perspective, which

is aligned with the contemporary intersubjective paradigm, and in

sharp contrast to the traditional Freudian (i.e., “classical”) method,

which focused on uncovering the hidden meaning—the latent

content— obscured by the conscious narrative—the manifest content.

Freud suggested that through the method of free association we

would gain access to repressed drives/instincts and unconscious

fantasies from childhood. I will return to Freud’s psychoanalytic

story about stories that hide other stories!

I’ll begin with a dream that was presented in a dream group I recently

co-facilitated (with two other psychologists, Drs. Haim Weinberg

and Martha Gilmore) at the California Psychological Association

Conference (April 6-7, 2019). It is the initial dream in this group. the

dreamer reports: “I had this dream 1/2 hour ago. It felt very vivid,

very alive. I am hiking in a canyon with co-workers. It’s very

slippery: some can make it and some can’t. I jump into green/blue

water which is extraordinarily inviting. I emerge from the water after

enjoying myself and discover that the group is in a circle as if a

trauma has occurred. I hesitated to join the group because I was not

there.”

I’d like to direct your attention to several features of this “manifest

content”.

There is a central tension or conflict for the dreamer: how do I stay

connected and respond to the group’s struggles? The dreamer

initially withdraws from the group although there are some who are

falling behind. The dreamer chooses to swim alone. However, the

dreamer returns to the group to discover that the group is grappling

with trauma, but the dreamer remains apart because he tells himself

he was not there when the trauma occurred.

It dos not take a rocket psychologist or psychoanalyst to surmise that

the dreamer is struggling with self care, some might say self-

absorption, vs. group care or altruism. Does the dream need

“interpretation” or does the dreamer need encouragement to more

fully experience and move towards resolution of the social dilemma

portrayed in his dream metaphor? Are the dreamer’s concerns only

his own private existential struggle or do they reflect larger

intersubjective-group anxieties, or even an entire culture’s historic

struggles?

A later dream shared in the same group suggests that the trauma

alluded to in the first dream is related to America’s historic struggle

with race and those that have been left behind: in that dream an

African American couple is “pummeled with questions about

abortion” by a member of a White church. The African- American

couple has five children, and although the dreamer apologizes, the

tension /conflict is not resolved.

A Freudian analysis would direct us to only use the manifest content

as stimulus for associations revealing the real content: repressed

instinctual desires (sex and aggression) derived from immature

childhood fantasies. Each element of the dream would be associated

to by the dreamer, and the analyst would synthesize into a

comprehensive interpretation that would explain the dreamer’s

hidden (repressed) real intentions.

A contemporary psychoanalyst (for example. Philip Bromberg, a

contemporary Relational Psychoanalyst) would view the manifest

dream as reflecting the dreamer’s disavowed conflict regarding his

social relationships, attend to the affective experience iconically

represented in the central imagery of the dream, and encourage the

dreamer to fully experience the existential dilemma enacted in the

dream by recounting the dream in the present tense and more fully

embodying the dream experience.

My own psychoanalytic view of the dreams shared in the “social

dreaming matrix” is that the dreams reflect, in addition to the

dreamers’ personal and interpersonal anxieties, the larger socio-

cultural issues in which the dreamers are embedded. As

psychoanalytic anthropologists have discovered : the members of a

culture dream with that culture’s symbolic code and enact, rehearse,

or re-configure the culture’s scripts and role schemas. I aver that the

dream narratives I’ve shared express some hope and implicit request

for help in resolving profound socially-conditioned dilemmas :

subsequent dreams and associations in the group lead us further to

appreciating the socio-cultural struggles. For example, there are more

dreams shared with images of shaven heads; heads with eyes in the

back; images of caring grandmothers and lost innocence of the past,

leading us to the hypothesis that dreamers are fearful and

yearning for the protections and solutions of the past.

How did we arrive at these different psychoanalytic

formulations and approaches? Our story begins in late 19th century

Vienna, a nominally Christian city in which Freud discovered

enormous conflicts about sexuality in his patients, and a context in

which Jews had recently achieved some relative relief from the socio-

political and cultural “othering” that had made them the “Blacks” of

Europe. Freud, influenced by a multiplicity of personal, professional,

and cultural factors, not the least of which was his status as a Jew,

focused his professional work as a neurologist on patients suffering

with psychological -somatic problems. Influenced by Darwin’s

theory of evolution, the energy and machine science of his day, and

the contemporary unconscious socio-cultural conflicts, he developed

a hypothesis concerning the organization/structure of the mind that

would help explain the clinical phenomena he was seeing.

Essentially, the mind was powered by an instinctual energy called

Libido (life and sexual energy seeking pleasure), which, however,

was in conflict with social norms. Hence, the dream, the royal road to

the unconscious, reflected this conflict: the manifest content was the

work of a censor (representing the prohibitions of the culture) which

relied on certain mental processes (displacement; condensation;

negation/reversal; and symbolism ) to disguise the desires (the latent

content) of the Libido. Dreams and clinical symptoms were designed

the same way: a disguised expression of fundamental, instinctual

desires, which began their expression and development in early

childhood, resulting in his development of the Psychosexual

Stage theory (oral, anal, phallic phases, and Oedipal Complex, etc.).

Thus the model of the mind (the so-called Topographical Theory,

because of its spatial metaphor of a layer-cake structure

with deep unconscious, preconscious, and thin conscious layers)

applied to dreams was of a human mind in conflict. This seminal

Freudian contribution—of a mind in conflict— has been an enduring

feature of psychoanalytic theorizing and intervention.

So, let me summarize Freud’s thinking:

1. Dreams have meaning but it’s hidden. The conscious narrative-

manifest content- is an elaborate and defensive cover, perhaps a

metaphor, behind which is a hidden, less acceptable narrative ;

2. The code is cracked through the method of free association, which

leads to the ever-present discovery of guilt -ridden childhood desires

pressing for expression and satisfaction;

3. The dream, motivated by these primitive, immature desires, offers

substitute gratification through processes such as displacement;

condensation; and symbolism;

4. Clinical symptoms can also be explained in a similar manner;

5. The mind has several layers of contents: a repressed unconscious;

a more easily accessible pre -conscious; and a thin conscious layer

reflecting our awareness at any given moment;

6.. The ultimate solution to intra-psychic human conflict is

renunciation of those primitive and immature desires, generated by

our universal instinctual heritage of polymorphous sexual desire and

destructive aggression.

Freud’s Topographical Model held sway from the last decade of the

19th century until the 1920’s, when he revised his model of the

mind, having realized that the repressed and unconscious drives he

had discovered were disguised and managed by another part of the

mind that was also unconscious. He developed a Structural or Tri-

partite Theory with three structures: Super-Ego, Ego, and Id. The Id

represented the former repressed unconscious—the repository of all

our instinctual heritage; the Super-Ego, a mental structure which

represented internal social morality ; and the Ego, which was the part

of the mind that contained the former conscious part, but also now

included cognitive skills as well as unconscious defenses (such as

projection; intellectualization; rationalization; displacement; etc.) and

negotiated between reality, the super-ego, and the id.

American psychoanalysis took on this new paradigm (Ego

Psychology) with gusto, exploring the Ego’s adaptation to reality but

also its vast array of defenses (the well known defense mechanisms:

projection, denial, reaction formation, sublimation, displacement,

etc.) in coping with pressures from the Id and the Super-Ego,. The

Ego was eventually viewed as possessing “primary autonomy“

(Hartmann, 1958) , that is, it was born free of instinctual energy and

conflict , and had an extraordinary array of “ego functions (reality

testing; judgment; sense of self; object relations; thought processes;

defensive functions; adaptive regression; and the regulation of drives,

impulses, and affects). With respect to dream theory and analysis, the

development of Psychoanalytic Ego Psychology culminated in Erik

Erikson’s ground-breaking, now classic, paper on the Dream

Specimen of Psychoanalysis, in which he analyzes one of Freud’s

seminal dreams (“The Dream of Irma’s Injection”)), assessing both

Freud’s personal struggles in mid-life and the impact of his

competitive professional and cultural milieu. Erikson’s paper is a

master class in applying the insights of Psychoanalytic Ego

Psychology to dreams, in which all aspects of the dream (content;

action; and form) reflect the entirety of the dreamer’s psyche: how is

the dreamer perceiving reality as well as managing internal conflict

among the various agencies and developing compromise solutions!

Erikson also suggested that the manifest content was meaningful and

often revealed the unconscious concerns, affects, conflicts, defense

mechanisms used by the dreamer. Furthermore, in his effort to

integrate Freud’s psychosexual emphasis with the psychosocial

dimensions of human life, Erikson also offered us a

pioneering integration of the contemporaneously emerging insights

of the European developments in psychoanalysis: Object Relations

Theory, but also took the social origins of the psyche further by

suggesting that cultural institutions were powerful organizers of the

mind. This was an idea that Erikson noted, in that classic paper, was

violently resisted by patients and colleagues alike: he argued,

nevertheless, that dreams were a royal road to understanding the

unconscious organizing impact of the dreamer’s socio-political

context.

However, before we move on to discuss Psychoanalytic Object

Relations Theory and its impact on dream theory, it’s important that

we acknowledge Jung’s early challenges to Freud’s psychosexual

theory of the mind and dreamwork. Jung advocated for several

major revisions to Freud’s dream theory :

1. The manifest content was often full of transparent meaning and

obvious practical significance; he felt that Freud simply did not

understand the language of dreams and so responded with a

suspicious hunt for hidden meaning. It was as if Freud, while

vacationing in Italy, became suspicious of hidden meanings when

people spoke Italian, rather than simply understanding that he did not

understand nor speak Italian, and this was their native language.

2. Jung became suspicious when he could not find evidence for

Freud’s psychosexual theory in any of the dreams recounted and

analyzed in Freud’s monograph, the Interpretation of Dreams; Jung

went on to develop a theory of the collective unconscious of the

species, represented symbolically through archetypal dream images

as well as other cultural productions (art, myths, religious icons, etc.).

3. Jung believed that dreams had a healing and prospective

dimension, often warning or pointing to solutions.

OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

The theories of two European psychoanalysts, Melanie Klein and

Ronald Fairbairn, although diverging in some important aspects from

each other, revolutionized psychoanalysis by proposing that the

very earliest relationships in a person’s life had an enduring impact

on the psyche’s organizing of future relationships and a person’s

sense of him or herself. (Both theorists retained Freud’s language of

the “object” —the “other” that “was merely the vehicle through

which gratification is either obtained or denied…” (Mitchell, 1981, p.

374). Dreams in their view were dramas enacting the internal world

of early object relations, internalized representations of the earliest

relationships, although perhaps in symbolic forms. The dream

reflected in visual imagery and narrative action the current state of

the self: abandoned by others, or persecuted by others , or gratified

by others, or feeling guilty or anxious about his or her aggressions

against others, etc. In their current interpersonal relationships (which

could also be discerned in dreams), people are projecting their

internalized expectations and recreating the relationships of their

early years.

As a result, I must note, that there have been a number of attempts at

theoretical integration of these several traditions: Freud’s Drive

Theory; American Ego Psychology; and Object Relations Theory,

most notably Otto Kernberg, who gained fame for his approach to

Borderline psychopathology.

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY REGARDING DREAM

FUNCTION

Before I go on to outline the development of Kohut’s (1971, 1977)

psychoanalytic self psychology and its impact on dream theory, and

then end by summarizing the emerging theory of the “social

unconscious”, I want to note a glaring absence in my presentation: I

have not yet provided a psychoanalytic theory of why we dream.

Freud famously suggested that we dream to preserve sleep: “A dream

is invariably an attempt to get rid of a disturbance of sleep by means

of a wish-fullfilment, so that the dream is a guardian of sleep”.

(Freud, 1940).

Freud seems to be suggesting a kind of regulation function for

dreaming: strong impulses toward action are inhibited and instead

gratified by the dream’s fantasy narrative. There is research evidence

apparently supporting this hypothesis (Guenole, Marcaggi, &

Baleyte, 2013).

There is another important psychoanalytic hypothesis concerning the

function of dreams proposed by Wilfred Bion, who was deeply

influenced by Melanie Klein, the Object Relations theorist. Bion

suggested that dreaming was the mind’s process for regulating and

organizing experience: in other words, dreaming is the psyche’s

creation of meaning, without which the mind may become

disorganized and pathological. He further suggested that we are

dreaming all the time, but its imagery only becomes fully discernible

when we sleep. Bion’s hypothesis of continuous dreaming seems

related to the discovery by academic psychologists that there is

a continuously “wandering mind”, reflecting upon and linking the

self’s past, present, and imagined future.

A third regulatory function of dreams from a psychoanalytic

perspective is offered by psychoanalytic self psychology.

PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF PSYCHOLOGY

Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (Kohut, 1971,1977) is an American

development in psychoanalysis which proposes that the healthy

development and functioning throughout the lifespan of the human

self and mind require dependence on others. Object relations

(internalized from the past and in current relationships) serve

the functions of regulating self-esteem, guiding ideals and values,

and even providing a sense of being human: the self who is optimally

provided these interpersonal experiences early in life and at crucial

developmental phases will internalize theses functions facilitating

self esteem and vitality; the healthy pursuit of ambitions and goals ;

maintaining guiding ideals and values; as well as a sense of

belonging. Theorists in this tradition suggest that the dream serves

the function of maintaining or restoring the self’s self -esteem, sense

of continuity, and cohesiveness (Fosshage, 1997). Dreams provide a

snapshot of the current state of the self: it’s current state of self

regulation or dysregulation; and the dreaming process serves a

restorative function after stressful or traumatizing experiences, which

Hartmann (1998) refers to as “calming the storm”.

CONTEMPORARY DREAM THEORY, SOCIAL DREAMING, AND

THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS

Despite Freud’s (1900) influential perspective that dreams evince

wishful thinking drawing us away from reality, contemporary dream

theory, inaugurated by Erik Erikson’s (1954) monumental reassessment

of Freud’s prototypical dream analysis of the so-called specimen dream

(“The Dream of Irma’s Injection”), has moved some distance from

Freud’s initial formulation. Erikson developed a nuanced refinement of

the Freudian psychosexual focus, adding a psychosocial dimension,

which was “violently resisted” (p. 37) by colleagues and patients alike.

Erikson’s discovery of this broad resistance to the social dimension

foreshadows the discovery of social dreaming by Gordon Lawrence

( 1982, 1998, 2003b) and my own experience, and provides more

validation for the hypothesis suggested by Hopper and Weinberg

(2011): “Recognition and understanding of the social unconscious

constitutes another painful blow to our narcissistic grandiosity,

omnipotence, and omniscience” (p. li).

Contemporary psychoanalytic dream theory has continued to evolve,

converging on the following assumptions and hypotheses:

● Dreams metaphorically express the dreamer’s emotional state which

is closely linked to past and current interpersonal relationships

(Bromberg, 2000, 2003; Friedman, 2012; Hartmann, 1998; Stolorow &

Atwood, 1992).

● Dreams are a form of emotional thinking and problem solving

(Barrett, 2001; Bion, 1962, 1992; Hartmann, 1998; Lawrence, 2003a).

● Dreams are the body-mind’s process for thinking new thoughts (Bion,

1962, 1992; Blechner, 1998, 2001; Lawrence, 2003b).

● Dreams are the body-mind’s process for restoring organization after

stressful or traumatizing experiences, which Hartmann (1998) refers to

as “calming the storm” (Bion, 1962, 1992; Erikson, 1954; Fosshage,

1997).

Influenced by all the foregoing theorists and researchers, I have evolved

a view of dreams: In general, they are metaphoric attempts at

integrating, resolving, and rehearsing solutions to events (stressful or

traumatizing or disorganizing) that have yet to be fully experienced,

represented, and witnessed by the dreamer’s own mind or another mind.

Traumatizing and disorganizing experiences, however, very often need

another mind to aid in metabolizing, creating meaning, and restoring

psychological coherence, continuity, and self-esteem (Bromberg, 2000,

2003; Fosshage, 1997). Adding the influence of Erikson and Lawrence,

I contend that the “social dreaming matrix” (SDM) provides a container

for achieving reflective capacity for unformulated and nonsymbolized

collective experience for groups. The SDM is a pathway for healing

collective trauma, if the SDM generates the requisite communal

recognition and witnessing of the dissociated, linguistically

unsymbolized trauma.

A Brief History and Description of Social Dreaming

Lawrence (1982, 1998, 2003b), the architect of the “social dreaming

matrix” (SDM), profoundly influenced by Charlotte Beradt’s (1968)

Third Reich of Dreams (a book reporting the dreams of ordinary

German citizens during the period of 1933–1939—dreams reflecting

their intuitive but unconscious foreknowledge of the Nazi regime’s

intentions) (Manley, 2014), organized a process involving a group of

participants who share dreams and associations to those dreams. The

working hypothesis was that the dreams shared reflect a collective

cultural product, a social unconscious comprised of dissociated and

disavowed social, political, and cultural experience. Support for the

society-level hypothesis is available from social anthropology: Mageo

(2013) appears to have discovered that problematic cultural scripts are

reworked, transformed nightly by members of a culture. Borrowing

from Hopper and Weinberg (2011), who have proposed that the social

dreaming matrix is a “royal road” to the social unconscious, I have

suggested that “social dreaming” may also serve as a “royal road” for

accessing our society’s unconscious legacies and struggles with

racialization and race dynamics (Bermudez, 2018).

In social dreaming model, the basic task is to “discover the social

meaning of available dreams in the matrix” (Lawrence, 1998, p. 30).

There are several other fundamental assumptions: The dreams generated

in the SDM are the shared property of the dreaming community; focus

must be on the dream, not the dreamer, which facilitates development of

a safe “mental space”; and ascertaining dream meaning should be

approached with the attitude of a working hypothesis. In developing the

radical psychosocial paradigm of the “social dreaming matrix” (SDM),

Gordon Lawrence (2003a, 2003b; Lawrence & Daniel, 1982)

experimented with a three-pronged process at social dreaming

workshops, conferences, and organizational interventions:

1. The “social dreaming matrix” (SDM) in which dreams and free

association and Jungian “amplification” are encouraged. The

participants are instructed to share dreams and assume that each dream

is “our collective dream” and treat the group associations likewise. A

state of reverie is encouraged in this phase. They are also asked to attend

to emergent patterns across the dreams shared, especially references to

systems, organizations, groups, and so on. Part of his underlying theory

was that individuals’ dreams were emergent new thoughts trying to find

conscious formulation (Lawrence, 2003b).

2. The second activity (role application/synthesis) during a 3-day

conference was to break the whole group into smaller groups (typically,

four or five participants), with an experienced SDM leader. The task

here is to focus on the individual dreamer (who could bring in a new

dream or work with a dream shared in the SDM), with the goal being to

help the individual dreamer apply the learning from the dream to a

“social role” he or she is grappling with (workplace, school, community,

etc.). The “role” concept is a systems concept that captures the

integration of “self” with a “system,” or the ecological niche of the self.

There were perhaps two or three of these role applications held in a 3-

day conference.

3. The third activity was typically called the “reflection dialogue.”

Perhaps two of these were facilitated during a 3-day conference. The

idea here was to provide an opportunity for conscious reflection and

formulation of the emergent ideas, concerns, feelings, and so on during

a social dreaming conference (Baglioni & Fubini, 2013).

So, let’s summarize where we have arrived by the early 21st century

:

1. After over century of clinical experience and theorizing,

Psychoanalysts now realize that the human mind, although

apparently struggling with two major motivators, sex and

aggression, is profoundly shaped by the earliest familial

relationships;

2. Dreams, in both manifest and latent forms, reflect that new

complexity: they reflect the internal psychological world formed by

those early relationships and the current state of the self;

3. Freud’s Ego and Super-Ego are more clearly viewed as containing

the precipitates of early relationships;

4. American Ego Psychology incorporated the insights of object

relations, using the language of unconscious “self and object

representations”, and has lost its preeminence in American

Psychoanalysis, giving way to a Contemporary

Intersubjective/Relational Psychoanalysis, which integrates early

object relations and the current interpersonal and social context.

5. Psychoanalysts are now exploring and expanding our notions of

the unconscious to include a “social unconscious” potentially

accessed through “social dreaming”;

5. The mind and the dream are viewed as deeply concerned with and

saturated by relationships: the mind is profoundly social. The dream

seems to serve multiple self-regulatory functions related to

intrapsychic, interpersonal, and larger social relations.

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George Bermudez, Ph.D. , Psy.D.

Antioch University Los Angeles

400 Corporate Pointe

Culver City, CA 90230

E-mail: gbermudez@antioch.edu