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| January 2007
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| Author Helps Readers Explore Their Dreams - Via Themes
Your teeth are falling out. You’re naked in public. You’re unprepared for a test. These are some of the more common dreams people report having while they’re asleep, says Robert Gongloff, CAS/BA ’61, secretary of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Many of us have dreamt about the same thing repeatedly, or had such a vivid dream we wanted to analyze it to figure out what it means. In his book, Dream Exploration - A New Approach (2006, Llewellyn), Gongloff takes people’s search for meaning in their dreams to the next level by delving into the various themes those dreams have in common – as opposed to what activities occur in a dream’s storyline or plot. “You can have three different dreams with entirely different symbology, but all three can express the same theme,” says Gongloff. For example, it doesn’t matter much whether you’ve dreamt about being naked in public or about being well-dressed; the theme is the same; it’s about self image and how you wish to be seen. Gongloff, who came up with 12 common themes that cover nearly all the activities people engage in life, devised a theme matrix in his book to help people find insight into what the next step might be in resolving an issue about which they’re dreaming. By identifying the theme, its possible motivation, and the issues it taps into, one can then “honor the dream” by taking actions to improve that area of one’s life. Some people say that dreams are just random firings of the brain, or “your mind just regurgitating stuff from the day,” acknowledges Gongloff. “I’d say from my work with themes that yes, it’s rehashing, but it’s important stuff. What we tend to do in waking life is we’re so busy with our credit cards, relationships, housework, and so on that we don’t have time to really think about the deeper issues. So when we go to sleep we’re able to get in touch with a higher level of ourselves.” For example, Gongloff talks in his book about having had a dream in which he felt overwhelmed. At the same time, he and his wife were considering building a new house. Even though his dream wasn’t about building a house, he translated his feelings of taking on more than he could handle to a decision not to go ahead with the new home project. He tries to handle the thoughts and feelings from his waking life the same way as he does his dreams, by examining themes. Gongloff has recorded nearly 7,000 dreams in journals since 1987, and examined hundreds of his own dreams and tried to fit them into the matrix of 12 common themes. “It’s a day to day process,” he says. A great way to begin is to simply tell yourself you want to remember your dreams, and try to write down whatever you remember about them as soon as you wake up. Historically, if you look back through history and the bible, there was lots of emphasis on dreams, he notes. “Then we got into the Age of Enlightenment and we said, ‘that’s not real,’ and we got away from the importance of dreams. Then psychotherapy came around and we got back to it.” Gongloff doesn't believe you need a trained psychotherapist to help you explore your dreams, though. "No trained psychotherapist can tell you what a dream means. I can suggest if it were my dream, it would mean this to me, but I'm careful not to say, 'you are something or you're not something.' I try to get away from meaning, and say instead, 'what message is the dream sending?'" Dreams have been more of a personal interest than a vocation for Gongloff, who retired in 1995 from doing computer systems analysis for the Navy in the D.C. area and moved to Asheville, N.C. But over time, exploring dreams “just kind of emerged as something important to do,” he says. He remembers really taking notice of his dreams a few years after graduating from AU with his education degree, when he was stationed in Turkey with the Air Force. He started a study group in which dreams were a large part of the discussion. Then in the 1990s, he met a woman in D.C. named Rita Dwyer, a former aerospace chemist, who claims her life was saved when she was engulfed in flames in her lab and the man who rescued her admitted to having had repeated dreams about the scenario. Whether you believe people’s dreams can predict the future or not, Gongloff says dreams put us in touch with a higher level of reality where we’re able to be more objective than when we are in a conscious, waking state. “I call a dream 'objective reality,' not bound by limitations of space, time, prejudice, or fears,” he notes. Some of us are simply more open to exploring our dreams than others. -Melissa Reichley For more info, visit Gongloff's site, heartofthedream.com or consider attending this year's International Association for the Study of Dreams annual conference in Sonoma, Calif., in June, where' he'll be speaking. Gongloff also recommends dreamnetwork.net and its journal.
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