Look, No Hands!… Biographical Aspects Of Dream Formation*

A few nights before I was invited to participate in a panel on dreams I had attempted a dream experiment based on a technique described by Carlos Castaneda1 in his autobiographical account of his tutelage with the Mexican sorcerer, Don Juan.4 In one passage Don Juan inquires,

“And now, suppose you tell me about your dreaming.” His sudden shift caught me unprepared. He repeated his request. There was a great deal to say about it. “Dreaming” entailed cultivating a peculiar control over one's dreams to the extent that the experiences undergone in them and those lived in one's waking hours acquired the same pragmatic valence. The sorcerers' allegation was that under the impact of “dreaming” the ordinary criteria to differentiate a dream from reality became inoperative.

Don Juan's praxis of “dreaming” was an exercise that consisted of finding one's hands in a dream. In other words, one had to deliberately dream that one was looking for and could find one's hands in a dream by simply dreaming that one lifted one's hands to the level of the eyes.1

Before falling asleep I ordered myself to dream this exercise and during the night had the following dream:

I am in our former city apartment. It appears as though we have just moved back there and I am waiting for the moving van to bring the furniture. Time passes and the movers do not arrive. I know that I am scheduled to see patients the following morning, which will require a minimal amount of my office furniture, at least. So far, the movers have