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listen and care (and remember what was said, so the new insights can be
capitalized on later). So, I believe, exposing ourselves to emotional
experiences and memories (a part of many of the methods in this chapter)
may help us be more insightful and able to get in touch with other emotions.
Dream Analysis
People have always had an interest in dreams. The Babylonians,
5,000 years before Christ, had a Goddess of Dreams, Mamu, and a
book for interpreting dreams. The Egyptians, in 3,000 B. C., also had a
God of Dreams, Serpis, and learned men, like Joseph in the Bible,
were dream interpreters. They even had self-help techniques for
inducing certain dreams. They may have thought, as we do now, that
dreams satisfy some of our psychological needs and change our mood.
During the Dark and Middle Ages when alchemists were trying to
turn lead into gold, etc., many ideas were proposed about good and
evil forces, human thoughts, and dreams. Generalizations were made,
such as "things must fall apart, decay and rot, before a revival of new
healthy growth is possible," "opposites, like love and hate, try to
escape one another, but also seek a balance," etc. The alchemists
thought in terms of three worlds: the black, the white, and the red
world. Black is darkness, evil, despair, ruins, the crude unconscious
taking over our minds... White is the eerie, uncertain light of the
moon, the twilight zone of lunacy, irrational thoughts, things changing,
slippery, some hope... Red is the bright light of the sun, new life,
things in order, ability to see clearly, rational, willful control, morals,
growth, laughter... Each section of a dream and each object comes
from one of these worlds, supposedly.
Now, about 1000 years later, many dream interpretation books,
especially those by Jungian analysts, are still using these alchemy
ideas to understand the symbolism in dreams. There is no science
here; there is a lot of mystical, religious fantasy. Examples: The black
world's symbols--death, wounds, violence, confusion, chaos, black
cats, witches, sewers, sinister figures, "disgusting" pornography,
physical and sexual abuse, etc. The white world's symbols--going
crazy, shimmering surfaces, falling, snakes, night animals, street
people, being drunk, healing the sick, taking drugs, lying down, being
chased, eroticism, voyeurism, sex changes, pregnancy, etc. The red
world's symbols--a bright light, new growth, keen-sighted animals,
computers, schools, scientists, food, exercise, powerful people, male
and female genitals or similarly shaped objects, romance, making love,
etc. You can train yourself to think in these terms; there is no proof
but perhaps the above objects and acts are associated with your
underlying emotions of bleak sadness (black), scary confusion (white),
