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Goethe objected to the scientific method that came with the scientific revolution of the eighteenth century because it did not describe or explain the “becoming” that was paramount in nature. Science did not engage the “inside” which underlay all phenomenal manifestations. It got stuck on top, on the surface, on the outside of the world with its cause-and-effect explanations. Everything had a dynamic life of creation and science missed it. But Goethe spent his whole life studying outward forms so that he could see into the activity which produced the shapes he found. In this new book, Working with Dreams, Montague Ullman and Nan Zimmerman have looked at the form of dreams and have shown how this form exhibits the becoming of the inside of consciousness. These dream forms make up a form of human consciousness that acts as part of the connectedness of all things in a ground. Daily-life consciousness tends to be limited and dream consciousness acts to show how we become disconnected from our deepest connections.
At the core of this intriguing book is a concept that grew out of the workshop on dreams of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Ullman acknowledges his debt to Marianne Eckardt, one of the participants in that workshop, for suggesting the idea of dream “appreciation” rather than dream interpretation or analysis. The work “appreciation” means “to estimate correctly, to set high value on, and to feel grateful for.” Ullman and Zimmerman appreciate the way dreams reveal a dynamic connection to the universe.
One of the results of our psychoanalytic investigations into dreams has been the creation of the idea that a person needs an authority to understand his dreams. We may not have intended that result, but it does seem to be the case for many people that under the influence of psychoanalysis, the value of dreams recedes rather than acts as an aid to understanding. Many a person who has been in some form of psychoanalytic therapy has felt that his personal wor