Shrinkrapradio meets Alan Siegel

In edition #94 of shrinkrapradio, Dr. Dave and Alan Siegel discuss the wisdom of dreams. The wisdom of dreams being that the images of dreams deliver to the dreamer a personal wisdom that is larger than his waking, active, understanding. A nice example is the subject of nightmares. Alan points out that only for seriously traumatized people, nightmares have no good effect. This can also be observed by the fact, so he claims, that when the dreamer keeps track of these nightmares, the nightmares are merely repetitive. In more average circumstance, the nightmare however, develops and even by logging the dream, the dreamer is taking some action to tackle whatever hangup is presented there.

Anybody who keeps track of dreams (and I am one of them) can see this kind of beneficial effect, merely of recounting the dream. Just that already reliefs and focuses some of the energy of dreaming. Quite frequently, additional lessons also present themselves. Eventually, after time, one also is likely to perceive the progress. However, the personal thing dreaming is, also these perceptions are personal.

Perception is reality. And both Alan Siegel and David van Nuys, with their clinical background, I guess, are fine with that. When you are taking the clinical perspective, all that matters is the patient. And if he or she is making sense of the dreams and their dream recounting is helping them, then all the better. Nevertheless, this interview, grazes on the objectification of the question. There are skeptics who claim dreams are just random impressions of the resting brain. Sure, and whatever all those dream accounts do is merely applying interpretations and taking them as the true meaning of the dream. Alan points out that: anybody who keeps track of his dreams is struck by the meaning and will be, as it were naturally, convinced there is more to them. That is a bit of a petitio principi. As to say perception is reality, because when you start to perceive all looks so real.

My own two cents are that these things boil down to a matter of choice. You can choose to be completely skeptical and relate to dreams as completely random. It also implies to choose to throw away some effort to make sense of them, albeit at a completely personal level. And where people do that to their own benefit, more interest is warranted. Dr. Dave makes a suggestion on the way. Shrinkrapradio kicks bottom again.