The Dreamworld: The Gateway to the Inner Reality of a Case
Bray Williamson MA Lic.BS Hom
Dreams and the realities that our patients construct within their dreamworld are often overlooked, under-repertorised, or indeed mis-repertorised.
In order to understand the importance of dreams, it is first necessary to have some understanding of consciousness.
Each of us has a separate subjective consciousness that is a construct within our brain.
What we perceive as the five senses; vision, hearing, smell, touch, and taste, are in themselves no more than electrical signals that have been sent along neural pathways to the brain. From these signals a construct is created, giving us our interpretation of the conscious world.
Over the centuries, philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and indeed physicists, have tried to explain how, when we consider that each individual has a subjective construct of the world, most people will perceive the external world to be very much the same.
The biological model believes that our perceptions are aligned because the human brain evolved to make an accurate model of the world in order to survive. If each individual perceived totally different things, we would find it impossible to function collectively.
The physical world has structures that the senses can reliably interpret, therefore two people looking at the same tree will get similar light patterns hitting their retinas, creating an almost identical interpretation in their individual brains.
This biological model is the easiest to understand with regards the senses, but does not explain the inner world of consciousness. To begin to comprehend this, I believe we must look at some of the theories coming out of quantum physics (an area of science that in my opinion is akin to Homoeopathy), in particular ‘Panpsychism’.
Panpsychism, from the Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind), theorises that consciousness is a fundamental and a universal part of reality, rather than something that only emerges within complex brains. The theory postulates that all matter has some degree of consciousness, however that does not mean full self-awareness but rather an experiential existence.
Therefore the belief is that consciousness has always been present within the fabric of reality, even to the level of atoms or sub-atomic particles. There is a similarity here within the ancient beliefs of the Shamans, that all things have an ‘Anima’, or as we see in homoeopathy, the ‘Vital Force’.
Having established that clearly the conscious physical world in which we exist is a construct of the brain, how then as homoeopaths are we to interpret the dreamworld constructs of our patients?
Sleep studies have shown that the average person dreams for around two hours per night. They have also demonstrated that dreaming only occurring during R.E.M. (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is incorrect, and that dream activity also occurs during the deeper phases of sleep.
There are three main theories that seek to explain dreaming; The Psychodynamic Theory, The Cognitive Theory, and the Neurobiological Theory. They are each, in themselves, very clever ways of interpreting and trying to understand the purpose of dreams and dreaming, however, from a homoeopathic point of view they are nothing more than assumption and speculation, therefore these theories should be avoided when assimilating a dream into a case analysis.
For many people, a dream is often nothing more than a brief phantasm of memory that is quickly lost upon waking. This however is not always the case, as some dreams can be elaborate constructs with cities, societies, personalities and politics. They can be as large as, if not larger than, the conscious world. A dreamworld can expand and even break the laws of physics, allowing some to fly or even metamorphosize into other beings. The effects of interactions in the dreamworld can affect a person for a whole day or longer. They can become memories that stay with us for years and even affect the life path that we take.
An example of such a dream is found in the poem ‘Kubla Khan’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
The first verse of his poem shows the vastness of the dream construct that his brain had created. This inspired him to write this poem, and later inspired the rock band ‘Rush’ to write their track ‘Xanadu’ from the album ‘A Farewell to Kings’, all based on a dream by Coleridge. It is worth noting however, that this particular dream may have been opium induced, but this does not detract from the construct.
This ability of the mind to construct worlds in which we exist separate from the conscious collective world is often ignored, or is not given the significance it deserves in case taking or case analysis.
When a patient comes to us with a dream that has significance for them, we must treat this in the same way as a significant real world event. As the homoeopathic case taker, we must record what this dreamworld event meant to the patient. We must inquire as to how it affected them, and how they felt both emotionally and physically. We must understand whether or not this dream event is still affecting them, as indeed this could be the ‘Never been well since’ that we, as homoeopaths, often use in order to unlock the case.
What we must never do is to speculate, to interpret, or to make assumptions regarding dreams. As homoeopaths we must be the unprejudiced observer, whether that may be within the dreamworld construct, or within the conscious physical world construct. From hereon in we come to understand how to use dreams as rubrics in the repertory. As any Classical Homoeopath will know there is a section ‘Dreams’ in ‘Kents Repertory’ within ‘Sleep’. For more on this, I recommend reading the article ‘Significance of Dreams in Homeopathic Case Taking’ by Dr Rashi Prakash.
The ‘Dreams’ section of the repertory can doubtless be very useful in unlocking a case, however the specifics of a dream cannot always be found here. It is not unusual for some homoeopaths to interchange ‘Dreams’ with ‘Delusions’ from the ‘Mind’ section, and on occasion refer to the ‘Fears’ section. It is my opinion that anything can be repertorised if it is showing the pathology affecting the patient, whether this occurs within their dreamworld construct or within their conscious world construct. Both constructs need to be considered with the same significance, and therefore with a complete use of the repertory, without prejudice.
An example of taking both constructs into consideration, was a patient who came to me suffering from extreme anxiety and agoraphobia. I had prescribed it on two separate occasions, with only a limited success. I therefore returned to the case, whereby I noticed that she had briefly mentioned a dream about men. Upon questioning her about this, she informed me that in her dream she had an absolute dread of men, something that was not the case within her waking world. Using the rubric ‘Men, dread of’ from the ‘Mind’ section, unlocked the case in a way which ‘Dreams of men’ could not. I prescribed Lycopodium to my patient, and her anxiety and agoraphobia were resolved. In this instance her dreamworld was the gateway to her inner reality, one that was not expressed in her conscious construct.
This case clearly demonstrates how the ‘Vital Force’, when affected by a disease state can through the dreamworld construct, manifest that which needs to be cured, and through this offers a key to ‘The Gateway to the Inner Reality of a Case’.
REFERENCES:
- ‘Kubla Kahn’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- ‘The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism’ by William Seager
- ‘Repertory of Homeopathic Materia medica’ by J.T.Kent
4. ‘The Science of Sleep’ by John Medina
