Leseprobe aus
www.traumpraxis.de
English Version
Dream Recollection Tips
Many of us find it difficult to recall their dreams at all. My experience is, however, that nearly everyone is able to learn how to remember their dreams. It is only your own motivation to remember your dreams in the morning that makes all the difference. Many of my clients tell me they can’t remember their dreams. But it doesn’t take long for this to change. Most of them, after their first therapeutic setting, already start to succeed in remembering their dreams. In case of "chronic non-recollection" the Tips mentioned below may prove useful:
5 Tips To Recall Your Dreams
1. Before going to bed create a comfortable and easy atmosphere and allow the day’s events to once again pass before your inner eyes. Taking a bath before bedtime has also proven very helpful.
(By the way: If you are familiar with autogenic training, use it to enable you fall asleep. Latest research shows that regularly exercised autogenic training also enhances your ability to remember dreams. Alcohol - even in small amounts - weakens your dream memory.)
2. Have pen and paper - better still a cassette recorder or dictating machine - close at hand on your bedside table (you may want to place it in your bathroom instead so as not to disturb your partner in his or her sleep).
3. Make sure the switch of not too bright a light is within reach from your bedside. Maybe a torch will do too.
4. Before falling asleep tell yourself repeatedly: "I will wake up from my dream" - "I will be fishing dreams tonight" or whichever phrase you may want to suggest to yourself. While this is helpful your inner attitude is of like importance. No matter how brief, unimportant or absurd the images may seem to you, take them seriously and write them down.
5. When waking up try to do so as gently as possible. Don’t jump out of bed. Take your time in the morning if you can, even if this is possible on weekends only. Permit any image to arise. Recollection experiences of the past few days may prove helpful as dreams are often linked to these events.
In his book Das Geheimnis der Träume Andreas vom Scheidt explains
this method in great detail (no English translation available). He refers to
Berlin psychotherapist Harald Schultz-Henke who suggested to draw two columns
like in a vocabulary book. The left column is for the dream, the right one for
your ideas with it. So this is not an all new way to approach a dream's meaning
but rather a way to make it easier to develop a sense for the dream's meaning by
way of free association. And this is how you work with it:
1. The first column is for the manifest dream contents.
2. The second column is for all the associations you have with your dream.
3. The third column is for the associations you have with your associations of
the second column and
4. the fourth column is for the conclusions you draw from it all. The example
below may show you how this looks like. This method will help you to find first
ideas and sometimes even quite accurate Tips to what the dream wants to tell you.
The condition of course is that you are able to let sudden ideas come up. The
more you are able to do so the quicker your associations will lead you to the
right track.
All examples mentioned come from my work and are changed in as much as the dreamer's privacy is protected
| Manifest Dream Contents | Associations with the dream | Associations with the associations in column 2 | Associations with column 3 and conclusions |
| All I see is a single image: a spider weaving its web at a window. The window is divided by mullion and transom. I show this to another person who's with me. The spider's web seems damaged or not finished yet. The spider's busy mending the holes. Since it is a relatively huge spider I'm trying to figure out whether it might be a crossbacked spider. But I'm not sure. It looks a little too brownish. | Mullion and transom The m.a.t. remind me of the windows in my parents' house, especially our front porch built on to our house and half glazed. It led to the cellar as well as to the kitchen and my grandmother's bedroom where my brother and I used to sleep until I was about 7 years old. In spring and summer we used to spend lots of time on the porch, namely within my first 10 years. A part of our in-doors-life took place on this porch. Often you would find my grandmother and our housekeeper sitting there preparing vegetables and salads, ironing or doing other household duties. Weekends all our family would sit on the porch having coffee. It was a place of communication. The white cross on the spider and the one formed by the window's mullion and transom remind me of the white crosses on our graveyard that they used to give to children who had passed on early. Holes Here I remember my grandmother who used to mend the holes in our socks. The crossbacked spider The first thing I remember are the crossbacked spiders in my parents' house. I used to have very conflicting feelings about them. On one hand I admired them for the skillful way they used to catch flies and other insects on the other hand I used to fear them a little. Had a wasp or even a hornet got caught in the web and did that lead to a fight between the spider and the flying insect I didn't know who's side to take inwardly. I also remember spiders we used to have a lot in our cellar. As a child I used to fear them because of the darkness of the cellar. Brownish looking spider: reminds me of the daddy-longlegs we also used to have a lot. Even as a child they seemed harmless to me and I used to trouble them by chasing them from the sunny places on walls. Usually I wouldn't see a single one only but whole colonies of them.
|
Bedroom:
In my childhood I never used to sleep alone in a room since we were a
big family and space was limited. This is a thing I very much like to
remember. From the sofa I used to sleep on I could see the fire in the
stove and hear the adults' voices from the next room. This gave me a
strong feeling of security. Later on in the boarding houses I used to
attend I slept with others in a room as well. Only when I was 18 I
gradually began to get used to sleeping alone. Later again I preferred
sleeping alone in a room because of the bad experiences I had made while
in hospital at age 22 for one reason. - With my girlfriend at the time space was as limited as in my parents' house because with her four children aged 4 to 12 she had to manage a three-room-apartment. Grandmother: From an emotional point of view I didn't really have a close relationship with my granny, although I had a lot to do with her in my first years. I used to find her very strict and uncompromising. She was the one in charge of the household since my mother when still alive worked as a teacher. In her last years my grandmother was rather infirm. She passed away when I was 12. Housekeeper: I very much like to remember our housekeeper. She came to our house when I was 6 months old and stayed for nearly 13 years. She was much more a substitute for my mother than my grandmother was. Especially when it came to food she showed she cared a lot for me. Later she used to protect me from my father when he thought I had got up to something again. Family: We used to be a big family. I have four older siblings and we used to have a lot of relatives. My father enjoyed company and often invited relatives. On holidays we used to have a lot of visitors. As a child I looked forward to seeing my relatives. My mother's early death was a first cut into these positive rites. Unfortunately in the time to come quite a number of persons very close to me died, and our visitors at holidays became less. Graveyard: My hometown's graveyard plays a special part in my childhood since my mother died shortly before I was six, and three grandparents died when I was between 8 and 12. And each Sunday after church we would go to the graveyard. Before each holiday too I had to follow my family to the graveyard and was such reminded of the losses I had suffered during childhood. |
This dream obviously refers to my childhood conflict caused by the passing of the persons close to me. The dream was triggered by my relationship with my then girlfriend who used to live under similar conditions concerning space as I had in childhood in my parents' house. It is the conflict between my need for closeness and community and the fear of loss of close persons. And by the image of the spider in the end obviously not being a crossbacked spider the dream also told me that my fears were unreal. The crossbacked spider was and still is my symbol for my conflict between my need for security (mother) and the fear of loss. |
This method of approaching the latent dream content is a very good way to do
some exercise in free associations. The above example shows how your memories
are worked out in your dreams. It also shows how densely symbols are
concentrated in a dream. This is true for the crossbacked spider as well as for
the window's mullion and transom. Dense concentration in this context means that
different meanings can manifest in one and the same symbol. So the crossbacked
spider points to different meanings. It is closely linked to my childhood and
the inherent ambivalence of attraction, fascination and repugnance.
Eingangsseite Werkeverzeichnis
Leseproben
Recherchebeispiele
Lebenslauf Mitgliedschaften
Links Kontakt
Kolleginnen