Post #83,443
2/22/03 10:26:23 PM
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Re: ahem, no special significance
I'll accept that waking up short of breath could be a response to sleep apnea, but the preceding elements? Nah. Of a piece with your analyses of the international situation.
cordially,
"Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
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Post #83,444
2/22/03 10:29:28 PM
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could be, I will have to dig out the fenichel
and look. The dream parts itself is extremely common, auditorium, partial nudity, total anxiety because you dont know why you are there or are unprepared. Instead of off the cuff, I will look it up.
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
\ufffdOmni Gaul Delenda est!\ufffd Ceasar
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Post #83,445
2/22/03 10:44:47 PM
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Re: could be, I will have to dig out the fenichel
What, you've got a cribsheet to tell you which dream elements mean what? I didn't think people still believed in that sort of thing anymore.
My original question sought to understand what this common dream meant to each individual experiencing variations of it--not what it purportedly meant for all according to a textbook.
cordially,
"Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
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Post #83,452
2/22/03 11:34:45 PM
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my apologies then
The description of the dream was a common one that had been discussed by many a folk and some people have discussed it at length in pysch texts. I didnt really understand you were looking for local lore only.
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
\ufffdOmni Gaul Delenda est!\ufffd Ceasar
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Post #83,457
2/22/03 11:51:18 PM
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Textbooks and Jung
Know whatcha mean (I think..) re pop-psych summaries.
From my limited (and long ago) exploration of the existing posits about 'dreams', I concluded with the impresion that only Jung had an inkling of the likelihoods. But then, Jung is probably the most metaphysical of any of the dabblers in homo-sap psych.
If there is such a ding as the collective unconscious, there would follow - a glimmer of a concept of where 'thoughts' might come from, too - I reject our natural assumptions that "I made Them Up\ufffd" At least - now I do.
Anyway, not much more can be said (well) as the next stage involves the meta- somewhere along the way.... words usually fail along that way.
As to the 'college' example.. I'm sure I had some variants, though I doubt with the naked/modesty er archetype. But I knew the source of this mini-High Anxiety play (a lousy Mel Brooks movie from '70s): here I was at the Institute, surrounded for 1st time by folks not only as 'bright' but often Lots-More. Hadn't seen a C before, and next --> yada yada.
My personal belief: this style of dream is a predictable consequence of a weird, even pathological idea of competition - at least, as parsed by Murican fantasies. 'We' don't attend these training schools to become more 'learned', more aware, more human(e) etc. but to beat-out the next guy's GPA. To Win cha cha cha. And it's all downhill from there. And leads to a kultur like..
Such dreams of inadequacy seem to measure the extent to which we have (or had..) bought-in to that measurement of self-worth (?) I'm sure I haven't experienced that sort of dream in a long time, so it doesn't matter that the details have faded. But the anxiety was certainly there, then; it's tough when you're so inexperienced that.. you believe all that crap!
Cheers,
Ashton
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Post #83,459
2/23/03 12:05:30 AM
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on your thinking
I am not sure how many jobs/gigs you have had but to those of us who move from contract to job to contract etc have a ramp up path at the beginning of a new gig. I personally find I really dont have a full handle on it until I start dreaming about the job. The subconcious mind working in its way to assimilate the info needed for the gig. The nakedness in public with unknown requirements could also just be anxiety about the waking state. How many times have each of us been suprised that an icon of thought once met, is dumber than a rock? This makes us nervous on how We are perceived.
Greg's shortness of breath made me think of the connection between seal state (see SIDS and Seals) and a dream that would kick him into wakefulness.
Extremely violent dreams often mean you arnt getting enough sex. ( insert your personal definition of enough here)
The dream state is important to the waking state whether precog (assembling random waking events into a coherent meaning) or as a rest from sanity. Being sane all the time will result in insanity.
A couple of burbles
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
\ufffdOmni Gaul Delenda est!\ufffd Ceasar
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Post #83,466
2/23/03 12:51:35 AM
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No particular quibbles
with your summary - in fact it's a lot more coherent than ones I've encountered which began from less (actual experience) yet spawned a series of expen$ive 'text'books.
But..
(To oversimplify) I begin from a base assumption that ~"Most of what we 'know' is Wrong". On most all scales, that is - and particularly where ideas like God come in, freighted with the imaginations of millennia.
Yes, to me unarguably - there are connections among: today's events & fears/anxieties about those, the sigma of all previous (esp. recurrent situations), and dreamstate.. incl. how well (or not) we remember having been In that state. Lots of etc.s
So to me, there can be *no* wonderfully useful distillation of the above into a process. (Though it's occasionally helpful to try to find a model to hang it on, otherwise we can't grok any part of 'it'. We only know metaphor - it's the mind's machine/assembly language IMhO)
Finally, 'dreams' appear to me to be entirely intertwined with such ideas as one's 'being', awareness of that and.. then whatever one has finally come to understand. Homogenizing that-all is to me, a pointless exercise - though it provides many academic opportunities and will continue to do so.
As you are likely aware, there are many ancient and modern models which find little difference between the above 'dream states' and the 'waking dream-state'. The very Large word Reality is most often taken to be about "what one sees, experiences? in the waking dream-state".
When you reject that very-popular notion.. pop-psych dims to meaninglessness, except for the smarmy and cynical process of social engineering (most often for personal profit). I reject that notion, so you see - -
Cheers, sleep tight
Ashton
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Post #83,468
2/23/03 12:58:19 AM
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sleeping tight leads to bad personal habits:)
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
\ufffdOmni Gaul Delenda est!\ufffd Ceasar
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Post #83,463
2/23/03 12:44:54 AM
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Re: Textbooks and Jung
There are a number of theories of dreams out there, of course. The group I find most congenial/plausible holds that the imagery of dreams is arbitrary, thrown up for consideration of the sleeping mind by the equivalent of a random number generator (although images and associations at the top of the heap, i.e., more recently encountered in waking life, may tend to be overrepresented among the bits available for sampling), and that if we are to look to dreams for clues as to the individual's psyche it should be the narratives the sleeping mind attempts to impose on these semi-random images. In other words, a cigar can be just a cigar, unless the narrative suggests otherwise.
The persistence of the unprepared-back-in-college narrative in my dreams and, apparently, in thousands of others--well, I haven't a ready explanation for that, and looked to the IWGM for possible enlightenment.
cordially,
"Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
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Post #83,472
2/23/03 1:21:01 AM
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Theory on that universality (in the US)
First, that particular dream-form almost must be a cultural thing, generated from one's overall attitudes about 'edjaKayshun', 'success' and all the surrounding mythos.
Second, and in this culture - typ. one encounters this first New milieu, after being partially-kicked out of the approving nest, where one was personally regarded in special ways. The metric encountered is rilly John Dewey in its starkest pragmatism ~ demonstrate what you Learned, Now, and for a -numeric- Grade, sucker..
Those rich enough or lucky enough to have encountered mentors whose manner was both less goal-oriented and less dogmatic, might escape early-conditioning of.. what? 'performance anxiety' (WTF That might mean) -- and so might experience less angst about That Grade; might thus actually remain receptive to learning for the Love of becoming less woefully iggerant. This can still happen (!)
(Theory remember): so it's reasonable to expect that most will adapt to these New expectations (now intensified) in a Gaussian way. Some will never get over the shame! of not meeting grade-expectations [Gawd knows where Shame meets Guilt]. Believe that the intensity of related dreams (their inclusion of nakedness or.. a big Wart on one's forehead) might follow from the intensity of the [-] feelings about "academia" which have become a pattern. ~ then,
Tell me what you Fear (if you are among the few who Know)
I'll tell you what your nightmares "are like".
(Well, maybe not *me* but you get the idea)
Ashton Karl Leibnitz
..just watchin the film
Now as to ones replaying ~
{harp arpeggio.. smoke.. incense.. lust}
"ex-requited 'love'.. experience" within a Puritan-based, property-obsessed, toy-besotted kultur [cackle] - Let's Not Even Go there. :-\ufffd
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Post #83,479
2/23/03 1:40:19 AM
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Tend to agree re this - had probs with Jung & Freud interp
Jung for me, was just a bit too mystical but I do believe his dream analysis was/is better suited to people with far more complex minds and thinking, than the average.
Freud's interps were easier to understand but seemed to better describe the more primitive reactions of people. Freud had an incredibly insightful understanding of idea connections and trains of thought. I think some of his followers either did or were accused of, confusing the unconcious with the dream state, there can surely be little doubt that one intruded on the other but not always. The Freudian & Jungian analytic methods though, *all* focussed on dreams that troubled people. Freud's famous statement was that dreams were the royal highway to the unconcious mind.
I have to say though that Fritz Perl's method (Gestalt Therapy) of having a person confronting the people or identifiable elements of their own dreams was perhaps the greatest insight I ever came across into breaking down the causation of troubling dreams.
Cheers
Doug
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Post #83,485
2/23/03 2:20:04 AM
2/23/03 2:25:25 AM
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Fritz Perls and the 'hotseat'
Was an Esalen denizen for a good while. I know someone who sat-in as he was at work (there were always many persons about). Took guts to sit in that seat. (My friend never did). Long ago read, In and Out of the Garbage Pail and maybe thumbed your ref.
(A friend and I -though not ever 'regulars'- put on Esalen's First 'computer workshop' - for Writers, natch. With a bunch of borrowed Osborne1s / WordStar. Some never got the concept of "a floppy disk" throughout; others went on within minutes, to write a short story and explore the Possibilities of: an endless supply of White-Out for emending, repositioning! Word-processors du jour like Wang - cost Thousands.. and shortly died, too)
Not much in the way of metaphysical answers from Fritz, but certainly one of the Best anti-BSers extant (once). If you *really* wanted to work on Your Hangups (through with blaming others) - Fritz was your cat-o-nine tales Guy.
Ashton
(regret I never 'saw' him; in days he was around there, I wasn't)
Edit - as to Jung: yes of course; omit the metaphysical, and all ya gets is another Cookbook. That doesn't make it any easier to deal with *That Idea* in (even special) language. But I keep coming back to notice what he must have grokked, to even try..
Edited by Ashton
Feb. 23, 2003, 02:25:25 AM EST
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Post #83,567
2/23/03 7:29:46 PM
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Of course the hard part about Perls was ..
what a bastard he was in life - screwing his patients, leaving his wife & kids (fucked up). A downright selfish man with a giant ego.
Even many of his ideas were simple plagiarism. But, Getalt worked, & he manged to achieve his dream of becoming known as the founder/father of the Gestalt process (sure earned him unlimited sex with hippie girls in the 1970s, even into his old age - old prick managed to become known as the grand-dad of the hippie revolution).
He was so tight-arsed (aggressive anal retentive) that his biggest discomfort in later years was his constant affliction brough on by his bleeding piles.
Why is it so many 'greats' can be such kooks in real life.
Yes I envied the old prick. <grin>
Cheers Doug
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Post #83,482
2/23/03 1:52:54 AM
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Dream theory
chaotic images of what you are finding problematic in current data set. Images of longstanding personal issues(I have had rational dreams of discourse with dead people who offer perfectly good advice on todays issues)and dreams that are exciting in nature but offer no co-rspondance to any current issue. Is there a subset that doesnt match the above criteria?
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
\ufffdOmni Gaul Delenda est!\ufffd Ceasar
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Post #83,467
2/23/03 12:52:11 AM
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"a concept of where 'thoughts' might come from"
May I suggest Daniel Dennett's astonishing tome Consciousness Explained? I'm not prepared to say, a decade after my first reading, that he has the answer, but his speculations have since that time formed a lens--think of the distributed reflectors of the Keck telescope--through which my own meditations have thereafter been focused.
cordially,
"Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
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Post #83,484
2/23/03 2:04:06 AM
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Fresh tofu.
Even with such a title, impossible of prose achievement ;-) - shall add to list for a foray.. maybe my pre-judgment is flawed. I seem to recall something in D\ufffddelus with his name on it? but not the content.
Then there's Julian Jayne's tonguetwister,
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind :-0
But that seems to be more about, "how we got This way today".
Moving --> on.
I fully expect never-to-achieve a umm Working-Model for the wetware; at best hope to achieve, a reliable means of disregarding the (mostly-noise) that the brain's (mind's in many?) auto-'thinking' process generates -all on its own-. We Are.. machine-like in our daily operations, most of the time - a hardly original 'thought', that. But it's a start.
A delicious irony I can only sometimes grudgingly accept (is) the fact that Language Must have [referents] for its nouns/objects - yet all the Interesting Words manifestly can have no such: like Consciousness or even consciousness. As one esoteric school puts it, "the mind cannot see itself". Yet suggests means by which one might work-around that little 'impossibility'.
I suppose this to be the root of my abject nonbelief in something like, The Information Age [!!] or for that matter, (when hubris strikes a young MA-candidate) The Knowlege Age / Age of Reason? etc. and yada.
Thanks for tip; never know when one sentence can cause a small implosion, such as we are.
Ashton
This is your brain on bad interior design. Any questions?
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Post #83,488
2/23/03 3:52:11 AM
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Dennett
The title is, I think, deliberately provocative and audacious. The prose is clear, workmanlike--sometimes a steep uphill gradient, but never littered with scree. He takes about 200 pages to reach his punchline and then 250 defending it. The punchline is a combination of (1) the once-novel notion, now pretty-much conventional wisdom, that human consciousness is the product of many preconscious subsystems interacting, and (2) the borrowing of Richard Dawkins' 1976 notion of the "meme," which Dennett grabs and runs with (think of the most spectacular kickoff return you ever saw). Does he deliver on the title? As indicated, I was never quite convinced (although his model was more persuasive by far than Jaynes' to my way of thinking), but I believe he might have reached the neighborhood if not the actual address, and provides, in any event, a helluva ride. Also recommended: Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, AKA Huxley vs Wilberforce: The Rematch (Soapy Sam loses--again).
cordially,
"Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
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Post #83,487
2/23/03 3:27:03 AM
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Yeeeesss.... Dennett
/grabbing _Dennett and his Critics_ off the book shelf...
Not much of a fan of his. Nice to have people floating in the deep end, but I'll continue to wade for a while longer.
My current theory (which has as much research behind it as one coming from someone who does not do neurological studies all day can) is this: sleep is the integration of short-term memory into long-term memory. Dreams are your body's reaction to this, hallucinogenic due to various -cholines, and isolated from most motor circuits by the depression of -amines. cf. J. Allan Hobson and Antonio Damasio for that latter chemical bit; first part's mine--developed after reading _GEB_ in high school. This fits well with my own personal experience, at least: when I run short on sleep for a period of time, my dreams begin to have fewer long-term elements; then, when I can catch up on sleep, I find my dreams including elements from further and further back until I reach the point at which I began to seriously lose sleep. Don't know about y'all but I have *no* difficulty "interpreting" my dreams--the elements are readily mapped to my recent experience.
And to boxley, perhaps you're basing dream-interpretation on extreme emotions because your conscious mind naturally puts more focus on them? Dreams have just as many boring or quirky elements as they do anxious or epiphanic ones--don't ignore the boring bits when you develop your theory. :)
Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance -
Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation.
BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
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Post #83,511
2/23/03 10:11:57 AM
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trouble is I dont remember the boring parts much
and since I was a child I can self direct dreams. Example, a boring dream that is very vivid I can tell self during sleep to do something else (like changing channels I guess). In a terror dream I can shut off the monster or change it to a bimbo etc. I dont pay much attention to my dreams unless extremely troubled upon waking, so I do ignore the boring ones. Your idea makes plenty of sense though, catagorising and filing the chaff for later.
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
\ufffdOmni Gaul Delenda est!\ufffd Ceasar
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Post #83,564
2/23/03 6:56:02 PM
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Some lyrics which are apropos :)
When as a child,
I would wake
At dawn's early break,
My mother'd call my name....
"The day begins anew,
What would you like to do?"
My answer's always the same....
Just let me slee-ee-eep,
For a minute more.
Just let me slee-ee-eep,
For a minute more.
And let me dream,
A dream of luxury,
A dream of terror,
It doesn't matter,
If it's in error,
All the better,
Let me sleep.
When I retire,
I will wait,
Before dawn's early break,
For sleep to reclaim my frame...
The day begins too soon,
What am I going to do?
My answer'll still be the same...
Just let me slee-ee-eep,
For an hour or two.
Just let me slee-ee-eep,
For an hour or two.
And let me dream,
A dream of luxury,
A dream of terror,
It doesn't matter,
If it's in error,
All the better,
Let me sleep.
[switching to major key]
And when I die,
I will wait,
Before the pearly gates,
St. Peter calls my name...
"Your life begins anew,
What would you like to do?"
My answer'll still be the same...
Just let me slee-ee-eep,
For a thousand years.
Just let me slee-ee-eep,
For a thousand years.
And let me dream,
A dream of luxury,
A dream of terror,
It doesn't matter,
If it's in error,
All the better,
Let me sleep.
Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance -
Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation.
BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
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Post #83,840
2/24/03 5:48:43 PM
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Um.. we seem to have that dream, already__:-\ufffd
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