Dreams and dream analysis with Dr. Melody Bacon

Hello, this is Julianne Good and this is Psych One-on-One. We are here to help you understand psychology a little bit better and to give you tips for making your life a little bit easier for you and your family and friends. Tonight, I am having Dr. Melody Bacon back on and I'm really happy to have her back on. She was on last year in about April for one of my first shows on the Grace-Filled Divorce. That was a great show and if you are interested in divorce resolution, that's a great show to go back to and refer to. Tonight, we're going to be talking about dreams and dream analysis and I'd like to tell you a little bit about Dr. Bacon. She is the teacher and administrator for the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Southern California and the new chair of the MFT department at the Irvine campus. And she is passionate about blending the insights of psychology with spiritual formation practices and her training is in Jungian analytic psychology. And of course, Carl Jung was heavy into dream interpretation work. So this should be really interesting. Hi, Dr. Bacon. How are you? Oh, I'm fine. Glad to be back on your show. Well, thank you for coming back on. Yeah, so tonight we're going to be talking about dreams and I think that's one of those things that all of us experience at one time or another, whether we really understand it or not and whether we really remember our dreams. I think all of us are a little bit curious about it. So can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got into doing dream analysis work? Sure. Yeah, I actually had started reading some of the works of Carl Jung, who was a student of Freud's many years ago. And as you mentioned, he was, he as well as Freud, were both very interested in dreams and what they meant to people and how they could be used to help people. And so he was very interested in dreams and how they could help their clients. And actually one of the ways in which Carl Jung and Freud eventually split was over a disagreement in regard to what dreams meant. For Freud, he essentially saw dreams as kind of a way to cover up information, to hide information from the conscious self. And Jung actually saw... He saw dreams as more like poetry, as the shorthand information and full of symbols and meaning. And so that got me in turn more interested in what my own dreams could mean. And then later on when I, after studying for several years in the field, started to work with clients, I found that a lot of times a dream can really be helpful to helping illuminate a client's issues or direction they should go. And sometimes just really highlighting something that they may not really want to face, but once we look at the dream together, they are aware of the fact that they really do need to kind of confront that issue. And a lot of times it can be something really positive that they're just not aware of about themselves consciously. So there are a lot of really good things involved and a lot of things can be packed. And so that's how I got into one little dream. And what percentage of people would you say, just off the top of your head, would really remember their dreams and sit there and try to work with them at all? Yeah, you know, I think most people are curious about them, but they don't know how to go about it. So they kind of feel confused and, wow, I have this weird... I had a weird dream last night. And they kind of know it must mean something, but, you know, there's not a lot of information out there unless you actively go out and seek it and try to work with them yourself. And so there, I would say, you know, probably less than 1%. But those people who do really find that they start to uncover a lot of wisdom that they themselves have, and it can be really kind of surprising and energizing at the same time. And so I always recommend to people that if they are interested, if they do have dreams that they really want to know about, that they spend some time and do some reading or maybe work with someone who works with dreams so that they can get some insights. Because, you know, I think on some level, they're aware of the fact that this is significant for me. I think a lot of people don't remember their dreams. And some people will say, well, I don't have them. But we know from a lot of research that that's impossible. In fact, if you don't have dreams, you'll eventually go psychotic. And they've done research on people and kept them from going into that part of their sleep cycle. So we know everybody dreams. Not everybody remembers their dreams. And I think it's... And this is true for most people. People who work with dreams. Your psyche, your brain and your mind are efficient. And you're not going to remember things that you don't think are important. So when people don't remember their dreams, it's mainly because they don't attend to them and they don't consider it important. So why would they remember that? Yeah, or sometimes they'll sit there and go... They'll have like a shadow of a feeling when they wake up that something significant... Significant happened when they were sleeping. Maybe feel a little bit off when they first wake up. But you're right. Just to be able to give yourself some time, just a moment upon arising in the morning and to kind of ask yourself, okay, well, if I just sit here, maybe some of this dream content will come forward and I can get some kind of insight into this. Absolutely. I recommend to clients, to keep a pad of paper by their bed and start writing as soon as they get up. If they wake up in the night, they can jot down some notes and they don't have to write out the whole dream. Usually it's enough if you just write down some of the significant images in the dream. Then when you wake up the next morning, it'll come back to you. And even if you have a snippet that you're not quite clear on or you only remember a tiny part of it, that's okay. You can write it down. Sometimes as you're writing, more of the dream will come back to you. And just by doing that, if it's an important dream and you're trying to remember it and you can't get all of it, you can rest assured that you'll have that dream again. If your psyche thinks it's important for you to know this, it'll come back again. And just your effort to attend to it will be enough to make sure that whatever message you needed to have will come back to you. It will come up again, sometimes several times. Yeah, and do you agree that if you give yourself maybe some kind of message before you go to sleep, like, I will remember my dreams or something like that, something to kind of pry that whole remembrance happening, do you think that that could possibly help people remember their dreams a little bit more? Yeah. I think the intentionality of it, I have been in my own analysis, dream analysis for many years with a Jungian analyst and actually in Santa Monica. And every once in a while, I realize our appointment's coming up and I don't have a dream. So you make one up, right? Then I'll just say, okay, tonight I need to have one. And then I'll say, And 90% of the time I will wake up with one. And, you know, but I think that if you can kind of promise yourself, look at, I know I haven't been paying attention to my dreams, but I promise I'm going to start doing it now. 90% of the time people will start to, you know, remember the dreams that they've had and, you know, just the intentionality of it will kind of jumpstart the process. And what kind of information do you feel is really important coming from dream content? Well, usually it's going to show you something you don't know about yourself. So I always tell my clients the first interpretation we come up with, and I always start with what does the client think the dream means? Because that's important. The client is the expert on different parts of the dream. You know, I just heard about one where there was a staircase in the dream. Well, what do you associate with that image? Because the important thing with Jungian analysis is that, you know, you have to start with the association of the dreamer rather than the, you know, the analyst telling you what the dream means. So, you know, you start out with, I think, first of all, kind of looking at the context of your life, like what's going on now in my life that relates to this dream or, because they don't come out of context. And the first interpretation you give, if it's something you already know about yourself, it's not the correct one because your psyche isn't going to bother telling you something you already know. So then you have to go with, okay, you know, cross that one off the list. And the next step you will go to is what Jung was very interested in, what he called the shadow, which is that part of you that you have pushed aside when you developed your ego and don't identify it as being you. And sometimes that can be a good part of you. That's what is called the golden shadow. So let's say you're a non-assertive, kind of timid person, and you dream about a very aggressive man who kind of runs roughshod over people. The dreamer is likely to see that as, wow, yuck, what a jerk. You know, why is this in my dream? Well, you have to assume that, well, there's a part of you that could be that way. Or, more than likely, because... The person's conscious self might assume that any kind of assertion on their part is aggression. That the dream is saying, look, you need to incorporate this energy into your conscious self and be more assertive. Versus fearing it. Right. I told a client the other day, it's kind of like energy that needs to be channeled, like electricity. You either channel it through... Through wires up into a lamp and you get light, or it doesn't get channeled and it, you know, burns down your house. So that's a lot of what you're doing with, especially your first, you know, while of working with dreams, is looking at opposites. Usually you can start with an opposite of what you think you are. And they usually show up in your dreams, people you don't really care for. Or maybe you really admire if it's a golden shadow figure. And, oh, I'm not... Not like that. That person's so brilliant. And, you know, you have to assume that every part of the dream is part of you. Because where did it come from? Your own psyche. So, you know, that person's there. That's the nice thing about dream work. You can't really argue with it because it came out of that person. Exactly. It is what it is. Yeah. Now, with working with the dreams, do you feel that every part of the dream represents... Some part of that person? Or is it just like random? Like, you know, you had mentioned the staircase before. Is that kind of random? Or is there more meaning to objects within dreams? Usually you look with objects. Now, there's another way of working with dreams from another theory called Gestalt therapy. And Gestalt says that everything is part of you. So the stairs would be part. You would actually act that out in the session. You know, being the stairs and speaking as though you're the staircase. People walk on me and blah, blah, blah. That's a different way of working. From a Jungian perspective, if there's an image in the dream that is highlighted for you, like a car or a staircase, then you would look at that not necessarily as part of you per se, but what does that represent? You know, something... For the dreamer, let's say I ask someone, so what do stairs mean to you? And they might say, well... You know, I remember when I was four years old and I fell down the stairs and almost broke my neck. And that has a different association than someone who says, well, you know, I don't know. I have stairs in my house. I like them. I like to, you know, blah, blah, blah. So that's why you have to know what the association is for the dreamer, first of all. But there's also another part of that image, which is what Jung called the collective unconscious, which is larger symbols that relate to beyond the personal association. So in this case, if you think of staircases, there's a lot of religious symbology, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And that's where, again, you have to think about the religious symbols. And that's where, again, you have to think about the religious symbols. You have to know what the dreamer's own tradition is. But in this case, let's say they come out of that tradition. Well, Jacob's ladder, there's a lot of stairs in the Bible, angels going up and down this ladder. So you're going from one level of consciousness to another would be one way of interpreting that image in the dream because stairs take you from one level to another. So when you're sitting there in session with a client, and you're helping them to interpret their dreams, are you throwing out possibilities? Are they bringing up, well, it could be this or that? What would be a typical scenario? Well, generally, I start with asking them to tell me the dream, just in a narrative. And I don't stop. I just have them go through the whole dream. I don't take notes. I just listen. And this is something people can do if they're working with their own dreams, which is just write out your dream without trying to interpret anything. Just write it out. And then once they've told me their dream, I'll ask them to recite it again. And this time I'm going to be looking for anything that stands out for me. The thing when you're doing work with clients, the assumption is that you're, you know, you're connected with them. And so a lot of times images that arise in your mind as a therapist do have something to do with that client. And then I will ask them, okay, what are your associations to stairs or a letter? Let's say this dream where this woman got three letters in the mail. And one of them had a picture. And the other had a picture of a staircase on it and a stick figure going up and down. So I asked her, you know, what her association were to letters, to the stairs. One letter was from her mom, but it was written to her mom in her own handwriting. So I wanted to know, well, what's your association to your mother? So you have to start out with each of those things. And if you're writing down your own dreams, you write down your dream and then you would circle. In this case, the word staircase and mother and letters. And then you might write out for each of those images what your associations are, going up and down or when I was three, I fell down the stairs, whatever. The key is you want to make sure you don't go too far afield. In other words, you don't want to do free association, which would be staircase, stairs. You want to do free association, which would be stairs, carpets, you know, and then pretty soon you're going really far afield from that symbol. Right, right. And then all of a sudden it loses its essence, basically. Yeah. So you stick as close as you can to just two or three associations to each of those. And then from that point, I will ask the client, do you have any ideas what you think the dream might mean? Because, you know, sometimes that can be important. You're aware of what's going on in their life. So usually when, you know, you're working with your own dream, you're aware, you don't have to be explaining that to anybody. You're aware of what's going on. But as a therapist, I don't know. I need the context for their life because dreams don't happen without the whole context. And then at that point, I would make some suggestions. Sometimes it's like I just said, well, here's an idea of staircases that have been in human mythology that have to do with moving from one stage of awareness to another. There might be something in you right now that is wanting you to pay attention because, let's say on the letter it says now. So it's really highlighting you need to pay attention to something in your life that you're not dealing with. Maybe you're pushing it aside because you're too busy. The dream is saying you need to really deal with this now. And often, if that were the case, the client would say, oh, wow. And then they would say, well, come to think of it, there's this thing. I've really been in class I've been needing to take or something. Anything can come up. But. But usually that's when the client says, OK, I know what that is. It's my subconscious telling me to wake up, right? Yeah. In the middle of the night. I know. I've been putting it off. You know, it's yeah. I had a client once to give you an example of a symbol that didn't make any sense to her until I pointed it out to her. She was in the dream. She was in church. She was a Catholic and she was taking communion. And she was up at the front and the spider came down between her and the priest. And so I asked her what she thought about spiders. And she had some associations to them. Nothing terribly traumatic or anything. But she was really confused what this meant. And I said, well, here, let me just explain to you what spiders represented. In Greek mythology, ancient Greece, they were the symbol of the goddess Hestia. And Hestia was the goddess of the hearth and home. And she was a weaver. And I said, you know, the interesting thing is, is this is a feminine symbol being brought into this religious ceremony, which tends to have a masculine priest. And my. My client was female. But I said, you know, what other symbol of the divine is feminine here? You know, this is a feminine part of, you know, the divine showing up in the middle of this experience for you. It's a balanced picture of God, feminine and masculine totality. And that was really meaningful to her because she was really on a spiritual journey. And. Had gone through a lot to get to this kind of place of meaning and peace. And accepting that part of herself as well, that feminine part. Did she have it? Did she have any fear about the spider? No, she wasn't one of those people that had a fear. She was a person who hadn't. Owned her own strong feminine part. And had. She was a nurse by training and had tended to be the old fashioned nurse who sees the doctor as the be all and end all who were male in her day and age. And so this was a new way of being in the world, which gave equal. Importance to masculine and feminine aspects of human nature. Yeah, that's a great way of interpreting it. I like that. I mean, just you even speaking about it, I can sit there and see the dream happening. And unfolding as you were talking about it. So that's that's really fascinating. Now, if the listening audience would like to join us, Dr. Melody Bacon and myself, the number is 800-893-9562. Again, that's 800-893-9562. And we're talking about dreams and dream analysis. And we are going to take a commercial break and we're going to come back and talk a little bit more. And I'm going to. Ask you about a couple of things that I've had some interesting dream experiences with. OK, super. Thank you. The Chicago School of Professional Psychology offers numerous psychology, behavioral and health related science graduate degrees at three campuses. Los Angeles, California, including branches in Westwood and Irvine, Chicago, Illinois and Washington, D.C. And online. Chicago School prepares. Students to meet the ever changing mental health needs of society through classroom experience and real world training. The Chicago School Counseling Centers in Irvine and Westwood provide caring, confidential and affordable psychological services to individuals and their families. For more information, visit the Chicago School. And thank you to the Chicago School of Professional Psychology for sponsoring Psych One on One. And we're back. I'm with Dr. Melody Bacon. Dr. Bacon, I want to talk to you about intense dreams. And, you know, the type of dreams that one has that will wake you up in the middle of the night sweating or feeling like you want to scream or you can't breathe. So what is that all about? Well, you know, this is it depends again on the image. It's actually not. Not as bad as one might think, having had that experience. It's not a pleasant experience. But it's usually something about the dreamer that they need to really confront and they need to befriend in some ways. Beauty and the Beast is a great metaphor for that, because what happens when she befriends this beast is, you know, he gets transformed. And so even though the Jungian view of dreams is that the dream ego has a perspective and the dream ego would be like you and your own dream. But it's not the only one. And so even though the dream ego may be running away from someone, you know, somebody's out to get me, an intruder. The truth might be that the ego is running from something. And so it's not the only one. And so it's not the only one. Because it doesn't want to deal with it. And, you know, you really, the dream is saying you really need to. And this is really quite urgent. One of the things that you can do with those kinds of dreams, and any of them, but in those in particular, is what they call dreaming the dream onward. And what that is, is a practice where you remember the dream. Let's say there you were in. A street and a man starts chasing you. And you go back into the dream in your imagination. And you put yourself back in. And then you turn around and you say to the man, you know, what is it you want from me? Why are you chasing me? And you then listen for what the man says, you know. It's very much like writers of fiction will say when they're writing. It's very much like a character dialogue. And, you know, they're writing out. I remember Stephen King saying, well, I wanted this character to be a certain way, but he didn't want to be that way. You know, so there's almost like a life of their own. And that can happen. It's called active imagination as well. And you can get a lot from that as well. Some part of you that may say, well, you never paid attention to me, so I had to get really big. So usually, though, there's something. That really needs attending to immediately. That's one thing. There's another one that's a recurring dream, which is similar. You know, you're not getting the message, so you keep getting that same dream over and over again. Yeah. Actually, you know, in my teens, I had had a recurring dream. But the interesting thing was, was I was dreaming about a family. And I would go and be with this family who were very loving and kind. And it was kind of like in a country situation. And it was almost like a commune, which is interesting. But as I progressed in the dream, the characters in my dream got older. And they were treating me as if I was older also. And then once I had moved away from my childhood home to go to school 100 miles away, I stopped dreaming about that family. And actually, that family, the last. The last time I dreamed about them actually all said goodbye. Wow. How interesting. So you didn't need them anymore. Yeah. Somehow not. But I thought it was just fascinating that they had progressively gotten older as I had gotten older. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very unique example of the ways in which dreams can be significant. Mm-hmm. In ways that you can't. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. If you don't even know consciously, obviously it was or you wouldn't have continued to have that dream. And you don't always need to interpret them for them to be important and meaningful and helpful. Right. I think looking back on it, it felt almost like it was a nurturing experience. Mm-hmm. That's what it sounded like. Yeah. I needed to have that family in my subconscious to get me through wherever I was going through in that point. Because, I mean, everybody. Everybody has kind of a rough era when they were teens. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. They were there to support me while I was sleeping. Yes. And that's almost like a ballast in a ship, you know, that keeps the ship stable while you're going through rough seas. And, you know, you're not aware of it, but it's still doing its job. Mm-hmm. And it sounds like psychologically that's what that family was assisting you with as you were going through, you know, a period of life where you needed that kind of stability. Yeah. It was very interesting. I've had some pretty intense dream life at times. I mean, like vivid colors. Do you get into doing almost like color interpretations? Is that part of the analysis process? It can be. It doesn't tend to come out as much in separate. It's separate from whatever the object is. But certainly, yes, if somebody comes in and they're wearing, you know, a purple cape, for example, you know, and purple is generally associated with royalty. And so there's going to be certain colors. Again, some of it's a cultural context, too, you know. So you have to, that's why the dreamer really always needs to be the person. Yeah. To let you know what some of the symbology might mean given their own culture, you know, their cultural heritage. Yellow, for example, can mean different things and different cultures or white. But definitely, you know, the color of an object, especially if it stands out or is different than you might expect, you know, that can mean something. And, you know, if you're going in a car and most of the time people don't mention the color. They just say, I'm in a car. But if there is a color that, you know, it's a red car with, you know, white upholstery, then that's when you'd say, okay, well, what do you associate with that? Because it's unusual to have those specific details. So obviously, as a highlight for the dreamer, this is a significant item in the dreamer. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I don't dream more than just any old car. It's a specific car. Yeah. Well, sometimes I'll dream and the whole dream is vivid. I mean, it'll be like multiple colors and like, I don't know, it's almost like competing for attention maybe. Mm-hmm. Because it's just, it's so bright and it's just so hard to sleep through something like that. Yeah, you know. You wake up and you're just like, wow, okay, what is my brain doing? Well, yeah, and, you know, it's almost like sometimes it's system overload, you know, it's just too much. Yeah. And that can sometimes be a mirror of your external life, you know, there's too much going on, I can't attend to any one thing, and sometimes you get the same thing in your dreams. There is so many details, you're writing them out, it's like, wow, you know. I'm obviously feeling overwhelmed and my dreams are also overwhelming me. There's too many things. Too many details. It's almost like a manic quality to it sometimes. Right, yeah. Well, that accounts for being in the middle of my finishing up my master's. I'm sure that had something to do with it. Yeah, you've got that. And, you know, as life unfolds, sometimes we get into those spots where we're transitioning, but in the meantime, we're double-duting, you know, on different things. And it can, you know, it can create a lot of fragmentation in terms of, you know, where do I put all my energies? Right. It's too much sometimes, right. Now, lucid dreaming, where you can go into the dream and feel like you're consciously controlling the dream at points. Mm-hmm. Can you discuss that a little bit? Yeah. You know, there's some people that hold with that. I would say I would, and Jung was this way. Jung really preferred. He preferred active imagination, which is done while you're awake, because you're imagining, but you're not running the show. You know, you're letting your imagination go, but you're also awake, and you can dialogue, and, you know, you can get a lot out of it that way. I think that when the ego, which already thinks it's in control of everything as it is, which we know it's not, or else why would there be psychotherapists? Right. Right. Everybody's life would go the way they want. So, you know, the ego for Jungians is just a small part of the whole psyche, which is your unconscious, your personal unconscious, your collective unconscious, and so I guess my own predisposition would be to say, well, generally, that person probably already thinks that they can control everything as it is. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. How useful it is for them to go back into their dreams to try to control them, because at some point in time, they're going to get into a position in their lives where, what Jung would say, they're going to get overtaken by a complex, and that's often what you see, for example, with people who are very rigid and controlling, sometimes have... Yeah. the biggest midlife crises of anybody. You know, they'll throw over their wife and kids and their job, and they run off to the woods and build a house. I mean, it's just, and then wake up one day and go, what the heck happened to me? You know, how did I get here? So the psyche abhors imbalance. So the more one-sided the ego is, the more the unconscious will try to compensate for it. And so what you're trying to do when you're working with dreams or working with clients is to help them learn how to integrate and to balance out. And the problem with lucid dreaming is the ego never has to do that because it just goes in and says, well, I'm going to make things happen. So there are others, of course, who would disagree with that. There's other orientations. There's toward dreaming that have completely different interpretations. That's why you have different schools of thought. But I would say from the Jungian point of view, I think it would be less helpful than just allowing yourself to have your dreams at night and see what comes up. So sit there and consciously make a conscious effort, you know, before you go to sleep at night when you wake up. Like, okay, let my subconscious, give me some messages here. Let's see what's really happening and see if I'm in denial about anything or repressing something. And let that, you know, let the symbols emerge and help you in your waking life. Yeah, it's almost like if you go to someone's house and you're visiting and you never give them a chance to talk about themselves, you're not interested in them. You know, at some point in time, they're not going to be, you know, connecting with you. And I think it's the same with your unconscious. If you never have any curiosity about these dream figures and what are they doing in my dream and why are they here? And, you know, then at some point you're just not going to have anything because you're not curious. You don't really, you don't, you don't really care. Or you just brush it off as crazy dreams. Oh, yeah. That's the way most people do. Yeah. Just brush it off. Just forget about it. Especially if it's like a nightmare or something. You're waking up first thing in the morning. You've had a nightmare. And that's something that I think most people just want to brush under the rug and just go, oh, no, I don't want to, I don't want to think about that. I've got to get going for the day. So, but somehow during the day, at least I know with myself, it'll sit there and start edging at me. I'll start asking questions. Why did I sit there? And why did I dream this or that? I mean, it's so odd or it's so disturbing. Yeah. It is. That's the key is that disturbance, which is useful. A little imbalancing out of the ego is helpful because it means you might be getting ready to bring something new into yourself that, you know, you haven't been willing to before, but that will be helpful to you. One dream, for example, a nightmare that people have is someone they love is dying or they're dying. And, of course, people get mad. They get worried. Oh, what if I'm predicting this, you know, which doesn't happen most of the time. They've done studies of people who are dying and they're not, they never dream they're dying. So, usually what that means is something new is going to be born, actually, you know, because, again, if you look at, one thing that helps in dream interpretation is to have read a lot of mythology and literature. And that's how Jung got his start was reading across every culture of humankind the basic myth stories and the, you know, religious traditions. And in almost every single religious tradition, there's, you know, this idea of dying and then something new coming out of that, death. Mm-hmm. And so that shows up. When we're dreaming, which is, it's not a pleasant dream. It's not one anybody wants. But it can be comforting to know that what's happening here is something in you is dying. It's important. It's maybe something that the ego might treasure. But the hope is once it dies that there's going to be something new to follow, something, a new life and a new way of being. Yeah, that's the circle of life, isn't it? Mm-hmm. It really is. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that whole dying, you know, the seed being planted, you know, it looks dead. You put it in the ground and then it comes up and something new comes out or the butterfly, you know, the caterpillar becoming the butterfly. Right. So it symbolizes some sort of change. Yep. Right. So what do you think about, you know, people that go and try to do their own dream interpretations through, like, you know, dream dictionaries or go on... Yeah. ...online and, you know, and try to do it that way? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. You know, there's some dream dictionaries can be helpful, but you can get too reductionistic and almost like, you know, when you open the horoscope in the morning paper or you go online and read your horoscope and, you know, you have to realize, you know, if I'm a cancer, every other person in the whole world is getting the same one as I am. You know, how can that be? Well, it can't. And people who do astrology will tell you, well, you know, there's so much more to it than that. It's the same with dream work. So dream dictionaries are only useful in that they might let you know if a symbol that's universal is showing up. For example, the ocean is... Any big water, a body of water in a dream... A dream is about your unconscious. But, again, it leaves out your own association because if you're dreaming about a lake and when you were 10, you almost drowned in the lake, that has a much different meaning, even though, yes, it means you could mean the unconscious, than someone who just remembers water skiing as a kid and that was one of the best parts of their life. So that's where, you know, you don't want to get too... stuck on, you know, a horse always means this or an apple always means that. Question it. And that's what the dream dictionaries tend to do and then kind of forecloses that. Yeah, but what does it mean to you? Right. Personal interpretation. Yeah, and association. Right, exactly. Yeah, what is it bringing up for you when you think of apple? Yeah. You know, sometimes people say, well, I like them, they're nice. Okay, well, then we'll go with, okay, well, you know, apples could mean, you know, this. And this mythology or that. But sometimes somebody will say, well, you know, this, we had an apple tree when I was a kid and my grandfather and I used to work on it. And then, you know, so now all of a sudden you're saying, okay, now this apple represents way more than, you know, Adam and Eve or whatever you might go with. It's, you know, your relationship with your grandfather. Mm-hmm. So that's where you start. That's why I always start with personal association. I start with personal associations before I go to the larger impersonal, transpersonal ones. And dream dictionaries, that's pretty much where they hang out. And I've looked at some of them, and some of them are even hard for me to figure out where they got that definition, so to speak. Because they're not referencing it to human experience, you know, mythology or literature. And to me, that's, you know, if you're just, then how did they come up with that? I guess I'm skeptical is what I'm saying. Sure. And I would imagine, too, that if you're reading through those interpretations, you really need to question, does this pertain to me? Yeah. Or does this just look like, you know, just a bunch of words that are just thrown on the screen here and I have to sit there and question it? Like, no, that doesn't seem right. If it doesn't fit. You know, it's not right for you. Right, exactly. Now, one of the dreams that I've been having lately that, you know, you're talking about kind of looking at a dream as a whole, but really picking out the most significant parts of it, I've been having flying dreams. Oh, interesting. And it's like they're very, I don't know how to exactly describe it, but very ecstatic. I feel like I'm just, I have no worries that I'm flying through things that my surroundings are very vivid. In fact, one time over the summer, I went to a museum and I had had a dream about being in this certain room and that I was flying in this room. And I had never been in this room before. Yeah, that's interesting. It just stopped me cold. And I had to wait until. Everybody was out of the room to sit there and go, okay, what is this trying to tell me? You know, because I know that you had brought up something before about premonition dreams. But at least in my life, I feel like I've had dreams where I've dreamt about a certain place before I've gotten there. And there was no way of me ever predicting that I was going to go to that place. I was just there. Oh, yeah. No, that does happen. I mean, that's, you know. That's different than the death dream, which for some reason most people don't dream of their own death. Actually, when people are dying, they don't dream about themselves dying, which is one reason why Jung thought maybe we don't. You know, the psyche acts like we're not going to die. Maybe some part of us doesn't die, you know, because it dreams as though we're going to be around forever. But in terms of, you know, specific. You know, showing up at a place that you've dreamt of, that does happen. And that's, you know, another phenomenon that Jung was very interested in exploring because, you know, it came up so often. But in terms of flying, were you in a plane or you were just flying in your own body? No, I was actually flying. One of them was in, both of them, the recent ones were in like art galleries. There was this one where it was a very long hallway. And it was very like abstract paintings up. Oh, okay. And going really fast down this hallway and felt like I could just levitate above everything else. Now, in the museum, I was flying above everything else. But there was a woman that was standing on the ground. And she was this old lady with this grayish face, but very wise woman. Okay. And just looking up at me and, you know, trying to give me a... Okay. Trying to give me a sign or something. And she, I don't remember if she said something to me or not, but believe it or not, in that art gallery, it was like a black and white photos of these faces. And one of those faces was the old lady that was on that photo. Yeah, that just took my breath away. Well, you know, when you're dreaming of flying, a person dreams of flying, you know, there's a little bit of... There's a little bit of an ego inflation going on. And we all have them. You know, it's a very common dream. But you do want to make sure that you're grounded. You know, it may be telling you you need to get grounded. And that woman, I think, was a great example of that. Because she's on the ground and she's wise, a wise old woman, which is another big, huge archetype. Jung called archetypes really, really big, simple. And the wise woman is a big one. And so she's grounded and she's connecting with you. And so when you have those dreams, you want to see, am I getting kind of ahead of myself? Am I not keeping my feet on the ground? Am I, you know, where do I need to be more grounded, in other words, in a good way? Mm-hmm. And it sounds like in that case, you know, it was through this wise woman. And it would be a great one to go back into and talk to her. It would be. That would be very interesting to just sit down and meditate on that. Yeah. Yeah, and see what she wants to tell you. Hmm. I'll have to try that and get back to the audience about it. Yeah. Yeah. I would be wonderful. That's a wonderful image. And, you know, one that you can access anytime. You know? Yeah. If you have struggles or whatever, you can just put yourself back into that dream and sit down and talk to her and say, hey, can you help me out here? Exactly. So, you know, those are great images when we have a connection in that regard to something that's meaningful. You know, just because we had the dream one time doesn't mean we can't go back and do it whenever we want if we want to connect with that image. That's very true. Definitely done that. I've done that before. Great. Yeah. So, Dr. Bacon, as we're wrapping up here, can you talk to the audience a little bit about how they should work with their dreams? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I would recommend a book. It's a little one. It's by a man named Robert Johnson. So that's an easy name, Robert Johnson. And it's called Inner Work. And he has a very good outline for working. And it's about working with your dreams in there and a good way to, you know, I think he makes it very accessible for people. But, you know, it's kind of a four-step process. So the first step is to write it all out just as a narrative. That would be step one. Step two is to go back through the narrative and just circle those images that really stand out for you. It doesn't have to be every part of the dream, the staircase or the letters or, in your case, the art gallery and the woman and flying. And then after you've circled those images, let's say those words, then you would, step three would be take each of those words and write out what you associate with flying, like flying, exhilarating, and I can go fast or, you know. I'm off the ground, wise woman. And then the fourth step is to go back over that list of words you've made and which one has, like, the most resonance for you. You might have made a list of three and then one just pops. You know, you read it and flying, exhilarating. Oh, that one really has a lot of emotional charge. And you kind of make a little note by that. Okay. And those four steps are going to let you know a little bit more about, okay, this has to do with feeling exhilarated, with, you know, getting connected with a wise woman. And then, you know, again, making sure that you're not just putting something onto it, that you're, you know, you're trying to look for something you don't already know. Okay. And then the final step, if it's a big dream, which is a dream in Jungian world that really meant a lot to you. I mean, we have lots of dreams. But the big ones are the ones where it was really meaningful and it made a huge difference and you're grateful you had that dream. You can do something to honor the dream. I had one years ago when I first started my analysis with the image of a sea otter in it. And it was a very meaningful dream. And ever since then, I've bought little sea otter images. And I have one in my consulting office. And because it was a really meaningful dream and it was, I knew it was going to be an important thing for me in the years to follow through my analysis. So, you know, that can kind of follow, that can be the last part of the steps of working with your dream. Not every single dream obviously needs that kind of a response. But you'll know when you have one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. You just feel that kind of gratitude and I really want to honor and thank my psyche for giving me this dream. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And if the listeners would like to contact you, how can they do so? The best way would be probably at the Chicago School. And that's M, Bacon, M as in Melody, Bacon, B-A-C-O-N, at thechicagoschool.edu. And I'm very happy to, you know, respond to that. Respond to email and answer any questions and assist them in connecting with someone if they are interested in finding somebody to help them work with their dreams. Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Bacon, for being on again. You're so welcome. So glad to be here. Thank you. I so value you. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And if the listeners would like to contact me, they can do so several ways. My phone number is 562-234-4650. My Twitter account is at J-G-O-O-D-E. I'm on Facebook at Psych1on1. That's P-S-Y-C-H-1-on-1, and that's numbers. And also listen to past podcasts at the iTunes Store and also at skidrowstudios.com, where we're on right now. And I would like to thank my board up, Jenny Guzman. Great job again, lady. And Jeremy Hansen, the executive producer. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us tonight for Dreams and Dreams Analysis. This has been Julianne Good for Psych1on1. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. Bye now. Bye now. Bye now. Bye now.