Sanskara

My psych class has been doing a lot of dream work lately. I used to be a big fan of Freudian dream analysis (mostly because it made me feel smart) but lately it's falling out of favor with me. The problem with Freudian analysis is that it is looking for universal patterns instead of context sensitive patterns. I understand that Freud believed that a suitcase represents the womb, but who cares? Freud was one guy and if you break down the elements he chose to imbue with symbolic significance, you start to get a picture of a pretty fucked up old man.

A dream interpretation approach that I'm finding much more interesting comes from Fritz Perls' person-centered therapy. Perls' believed that everything in the dream, all the characters, the setting, the objects, the sensations and events, EVERYTHING IS THE DREAMER. There's this great example in a video where Perls (who looks like Karl Marx after a four day cocaine binge) is walking this student through a dream. In the dream, the student is going up a mountain path when he has a surreal encounter with a friend. The encounter isn't even interesting to Perls, he focuses entirely on just the path until the student realizes himself that he doesn't like being tread upon by others. He is the path. It's really powerful because instead of a doctor telling you what your dreams mean, Perls' approach allows the dreamer to discern the significance on their own. Remember, every fucked up thing that shows up in your dreams is self-created. You are what you dream and Freud only came up with a translation tool... Perls challenges his clients to write their own language.

Buddhists call things that reoccur in the mind "Sanskara". Sanskara are ideas, thoughts, feelings or events which continue to play out. Some people can't get over feelings of inferiority, the time they hit a deer on the road, or resentment at a peer for getting a promotion. However they manifest, I believe that Sanskara play an especially important role in Perls form of dream analysis. My theory is that you can combine the approaches of both Freud and Perls in order to create an interpretive method for your own dreams.

Here's how it works: Keep a dream journal for at least two weeks. Make sure that the paper and pen are close enough to your bed that you don't have to get up. Getting up ruins your remembering. Jot down every detail you can about the dream- it doesn't have to be chronological- sometimes I find that I begin remembering more as I'm taking notes. Resist the temptation to interpret! At the end of the two weeks, take note of tangibles which reoccur in your dreams. Not feelings, like "Oh, in my dreams I'm always lost". I'm talking about things- Racoons, Squash, Periodic Tables, whatever. Now continue your dream logging and the next time you have a dream with part of your sanskara present, take that dream into a counseling situation where you can work out the personal symbology. The important thing is to prepare yourself to know what to look for before moving forward and trying to recognize its significance. Within a few months, you can construct an entire dictionary of personal dream analysis.

The untested problem with this theory is that the human mind is real clever. Once I know what my dreams mean, my brain might start fucking with me. Reminds me of this Beck song, except I think he's singing it to a girl, but I like to sing it to my brain. And just for you curious cats out there, one of the elements of my sanskara is Zombies.