by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 3, 2010
(This is from Wikipedia….. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is the best example they could come up with?)
A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other element. Commonly, dream sequences appear in many films to shed light on the psychical process of the dreaming character. For instance in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, the purpose of Pee Wee’s dreams is to inform the audience of his anxieties and fears after losing his bike. Other times major action takes place in dreams, allowing the filmmaker to explore infinite possibilities, as Michel Gondry demonstrates in The Science of Sleep.
Audio or visual elements, such as distinctive music or coloration, are frequently used to signify the beginning and end of a dream sequence in film. It has also become commonplace to distinguish a dream sequence from the rest of the film by showing a shot of a person in bed sleeping or about to go to sleep. Other films show a dream sequence followed by a character waking up in their own bed, such as the dream sequence George Gershwin composed for his film score to Delicious. Certain Surrealist and neo-Surrealist directors such as Luis Buñuel and David Lynch refuse to distinguish between waking life and dreams in many of their films, mixing the two states as they please.
The dream sequence that Atossa narrates near the beginning of Aeschylus’ Athenian tragedy The Persians (472 BCE) may be the first in the history of European theatre.[2]
Similar to a dream sequence is a plot device in which an entire story has been revealed to be a dream. As opposed to a segment of an otherwise real scenario, in these cases it is revealed that everything depicted was unreal. Oftentimes this is used to explain away inexplicable events. Because it has been done, in many occasions, to resolve a storyline that seemed out of place or unexpected, it is often considered weak storytelling; and further, in-jokes are often made in writing (particularly television scripts) that refer to the disappointment a viewer might feel in finding out everything they’ve watched was a dream. For example, the entire sequence of the Family Guy episodes ‘Stewie Kills Lois’ and ‘Lois Kills Stewie’ are revealed to have taken place within a virtual reality simulation, upon which a character asks whether a potential viewer could be angry that they’ve effectively watched a dream sequence. The TV show Dallas revealed that an entire season of the program was a dream.
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by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 1, 2010
“Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”
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by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 1, 2010
“In dreams begin responsibility.”
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 1, 2010
“Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask…”
The X-Files
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 1, 2010
A woman discovers that her arm is covered with skin colored adhesive plasters she had not remembered were there.
She is trying to pull one off, but feels as if she is pulling off her own skin.
This dream seems to me to picture beliefs that were so much part of me that I simply could not see them. When something like the previous snowdrift dream led me to wake up and take notice — I still could not free myself from them. Since they seemed to be me myself, how could I remove them? How could it be possible to divest myself of this prejudice or that fear, this tendency to infatuation, that shame or this excesssive expectation?
I needed to learn skills and develop confidence, and to love myself enough to risk this difficult enterprise. I see the dream as a step along the road of my discovery that I can in fact differentiate myself from all the ”plasters , all that is not truly me. Perhaps I put them on long ago for protection, a useful tool in a child’s ego survival kit, but they are self destructive delusions for the adult. This dream helps me to recognize this situation honestly and without blame, and to begin to peel off these ”plasters with compassion.
Returning to the image of the previous dream of being stuck in a snowdrift, legs waving in the air, going nowhere…The first essential step was to recognize and admit that I was upside down, and to ask myself what was upside down in my life? What view of life would a person have, upside down and split between being frozen and frantically up-in-the-air ? What feelings came up and what was the experience of non-feeling, of being frozen, numb?
Then, when fear, for example, was the issue I was dealing with, the next step was to experience fear thoroughly in my body, with particular attention to the specific part of my body where I felt it most strongly. Along with this I allowed a natural release of whatever sounds, movements and memories arose in me.
In this way the ”plasters fall off and one eventually topples out of the ”snow , landing right side up on to solid ground, having reclaimed more of oneself.
What is also interesting about these two dreams, unlike all the others in this series, is that I myself did not dream them. They were reported by members of one of my dream groups and illustrate the commonality of our dreams. Every member of the group aslo felt these might easily have been their own dreams. It is often the case that you resonate with some element in another person’s dream and find your own life illuminated.
Alissa Goldring, Photographer
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 1, 2010
An enraged man pursues me. I see that he is blind. Terrified, I manage to catch him in a suitcase and lock it, but his hands are not caught and still reach outside.
When I meditated on this dream three things struck me: (1) the blindness of the angry part of me, (2) the fact that I’d caught him in a suitcase, which showed me I was carrying my anger around with me and (3) the helplessness of the hands, which I write and paint, the instruments of my creativity.
The image of this dream made vivid for me the pain and self destructiveness of my former attempt to deny my anger. I felt the enormous energy I’d put into locking up the angry part of me, and how blind I was when angry. It was a metaphor for how, unwittingly, I had imprisoned my creativity, which kept on trying to get out, thus escalating both my anger and panic.
Yet it also showed me that I had not hidden my anger away in a closet or prison – I kept it with me… The dream called me to explore the relations between my anger and my creativity, and reminded to focus on freeing the energy and power I’d locked away in this dream I saw that my hands were still alive, that my creativity was still powerful, despite many obstacles and detours.
Instead of trying to hid and forget all I had stuffed into my shadow, I needed to use my energy to “open the suitcase”. I needed to develop sufficient self-confidence to look at myself honestly, so that I could release and heal my anger, and all that was under it. The dream led me way back to my childhood, to fear and deep hunger and need. I had to begin to feel compassion instead of anger, self-respect instead of shame. I began to pay attention inwardly — to stop being blind, to see.
Alissa Goldring, Artist and Grandmother
November 1996
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on September 1, 2010
A man is stuck head first in a snowdrift, legs flailing in the air.
What this dream gives me is a laughable picture of an absurd yet familiar condition. It is so easy to go on habitually in an intellectual mode, out of touch with feelings, sensation and intuition, until a dream like this one takes the abstract idea of being cold, rigid and stuck and makes it visible and real. At the same time the dream shows how I want to get unfrozen and reach wildly for solid ground. A variation of the ” ostrich with head stuck in the sand . . .
I see my past mirrored in this dream — and my urgent need to function as one whole, to be present, in touch with reality. When I recognize myself in a sense caricatured in this vivid image, I have to stop and smile and take it in. The picture stays with me as mere words never can, making the phrase ”frozen needs a reality.
This dream reminds me of the way Hopi ”clowns mock a person whose ego has gotten out of hand. They may walk behind and imitate in an exaggerated way his pomposity or other failings. Aren’t dreams often our built in personal tricksters or jesters, alerting us to self-destructive tendencies which we have taken for granted?
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on August 31, 2010
I have some meat and chicken I’m carrying from a public place where I had stored it, to put into my refrigerator to cook later.
But I see that my frig is packed over full, and the top part, the freezer too.
And it is not working, there is no electricity.
It is not cold, but it is bursting with a solid wall of packed stuff. Nothing is staying fresh, yet I’m trying to add more. . .
Although the frig was vividly clear, it did not look like an ordinary frig — there were no shelves on the doors or inside.
Of course I asked myself, is this a picture of my accumulations, clutter? I thought of my endless struggle with the mail, paperwork, letters to answer, books to read, slides to store, files to sort, dreams to index, etc etc etc!!! — not to mention maintenance: laundry and marketing, cooking and eating, walking and swimming and time with family and friends, and perhaps see a film! — and the hope to create space for the “real work” of painting and writing! No wonder I felt like a jam-packed storage.
But I’ve been going on like this, rather hopelessly, for years, with periodic bouts of cleanup and reorganization and fresh starts. My Mac Desktop is a case in point !
I feel myself drowning in the mass of information inundating us on every side. I see myself like a wide-eyed child at a vast buffet — wanting to taste everything, and getting indigestion while trying to save up tempting morsels for later.
I see that I am in a ridiculous, hopeless situation. An impasse. This dream shows me how ludicrous my efforts are. But it does not give an answer. I will have to find the solution in living. What the dream does is free me from blind repetition, from being stuck in trying harder in the old habits. It asks me, is this what you want to be doing?
There is a saying that a problem cannot be solved on the level of the problem. Which is what I’d been trying to do for so long. The mind which created the situtation cannot extricate itself. Was it Hercules who, challenged to undo a knot which no one could untie, cut the Gordian Knot with his sword?
I see that I must stop accumulating right now, and let go the previous pile up. This requires a total change of attitude and action and goes deep into my need to collect. This frig part of myself makes me look at my definition of myself – am I what I save? or are they my habitual substitutes for love, security and trust, no less!
Alissa Goldring, Artist
February 15, 1997
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on August 31, 2010
In a dream of much confusion, loss, anxiety and desperation I meet a lovely woman who opens her arms to me.
I cry as she holds me. I feel tremendous relief simply to be able to cry and be accepted. She wears a peach colored form – fitting gown, with glinting sequins.
She is relaxed, gentle, strong and understanding.
This is the first dream in which I cry.
Discovering a compassionate part of myself who could allow me to cry, who did not feel threatened by opening up painful feelings, marks a profound inner change, which was evident to me the morning I woke with this dream.
A photograph of my grandmother has been facing me on my bedroom wall for months. My eyes had rested on it frequently, but this time I really saw it. I wondered about her and her life. I experienced her feelings and I cried — the accumulation of tears, I am sure, from my earliest years, from my entire life.
Being able to open myself to my sorrow freed me to be able to see — not only this family photograph, but to experience the whole spectrum of emotions I had numbed myself to. I realized that I too, like Native American children kidnapped from reservations to live with white families and attend white schools, had been forcibly cut off from my heritage and from the warmth of family traditions and family members.
I never had the opportunity to be close to any of my grandparents. I miss this connection sadly and imagine them as a source of comfort during childhood sorrows, as well as of pleasure and learning.They exist in my mind in an idealized world where there was time for parents and grandparents to be with children as a natural, unhurried part of everyday life, sharing chores and games, conversation, music and silence, nature, picnics, and attics and garages filled with “treasures.” A world where, when you skinned your knee or someone hurt your feelings, there was a comfortable lap and warm embrace ready for you, and no one ever shamed you for crying or told you you were too big to cry. A friendly world where, when you were confused or frightened and made mistakes, you learned and cleaned up your mess, with no ridicule or punishment.
There is a whole realm of feeling, vulnerability, tenderness, acceptance, trust — a life with deep human contact — that I longed for and lacked, somewhat in the way that full, true color is absent for a color-blind person.The dress worn by this lovely part of myself conveys gaiety and beauty. Yet she is also strong and wise. This contradicts a peculiar prejudice I absorbed in childhood — that a lovely appearance goes with a superficial, frivolous and unreliable nature, while nurturing, trustworth people tend to be plain and somewhat slow – witted !
I feel fortunate and grateful now to be re-opening that world of genuine empathic connection and to have a second chance. This dream both expressed and furthered my re-entry into my own capacity for grief, joy and love.
Alissa Goldring
by Stephen Parker, Ph.D. (Article Selection, Commentary) on August 30, 2010
For those readers unfamiliar with the International Association for the Study of Dreams, it is the premier organization for folks interested in dreams. Their conferences are well-organized, extremely interesting, and even lots of fun. It is also very socially unstratified — attendees are from many different backgrounds: dreamers, authors, scientists, students. It is wide open to the general public.
They are putting on an their ninth online Psiber Dreaming Conference — lots of presentations, lots of interaction, minimal cost… Be there in virtual reality….
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on…”
Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
September 26 – October 10, 2010
Join Host Jean Campbell and the Psibercore Team for two weeks of cutting-edge presentations, workshops, and discussion with some of the top experts in the field of dreams. This year’s conference will focus on the mystery of how dreams are created.
Keynote Speaker
for the PsiberDreaming Conference is the
INCEPTION Documentary Director:
Roko Belic
IASD is honored to announce that the Keynote Presenter for this year’s PsiberDreaming Conference “We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On” will be the director of the documentary film created for the release of the Inception DVD, Roko Belic, whose presentation bears the working title: “DREAMWORLD: Exploring the Movies of the Mind.”
