This is an article that originally appeared in Dream Time Magazine in Spring 2002. I wrote it to show how to think about multiple dreams. We are so used to thinking of dreams as being completely separate from one another that it takes some experimenting to see the deep connections that are almost inevitable.

David 

The Dynamics of Dream Series

David Jenkins

Dreams are typically examined one dream at a time. We take a dream and ask questions searching for the meaning of that particular dream, then we wait for the next dream and perform a similar examination on that one. However, when we take a group of related dreams and view them as a series rather than as a collection of individual dreams some new kinds of questions arise. Suppose, for example, that I dream about a dog on Monday and another dog on Tuesday, what is to be learned by looking at the contrast between the two dreams? If, on Monday, the dog bites me and, on Tuesday, I manage to get away, does this represent any kind of improvement? If the theme of a dog will recur on Wednesday or Thursday, how should I prepare for this next dream? If I sift out all my dreams about dogs, will they, when considered together, give me some insight that is not available from any one dog-dream? These are different kinds of questions from the more standard interpretation approach where we might ask "What does the dog remind you of?", "Have you ever been bitten by a dog?" and so on. Instead, we are trying to develop an understanding of the "dog" of our dreams.

Anyone who works with dreams soon becomes aware that there are themes -- people, places, objects and ideas -- running through the dreams. Sometimes the material that repeats is constant: Perhaps we always dream about our mother. Sometimes we are aware of a common conceptual link between the dreams: For example, we dream about a journey -- at its beginning or its end, whether we are stuck in the mud, lost along the way or gliding effortlessly over difficult terrain. In fact it is rare that a dream exists in isolation from its neighbors.

There is a puzzling inconsistency here between the way we dream and the way we look at dreams. We rarely have a dream that is unconnected to the dreams around it, yet we usually examine dreams one at a time. We try to grasp the meaning of that particular dream but we seldom look at how it fits in with the surrounding dreams. Examining one dream at a time seems to make sense because every dream is different (and surely things will get more complicated if we work on groups of dreams). But, when our dreams do bring up a theme and those dreams are considered together, they quickly yield some fascinating insights that are simply not available when we consider each dream as a separate event.

The benefits of looking at dream series are not just for the long-term journal-keeper who can ponder over several years worth of dreams and trace a theme's evolution. Even the smallest sequence, just two related dreams, will show more than can be gained from examining each dream alone. The second dream adds a new point of view and enables us to reassess our understanding of the first dream: The changes between the two dreams will give us a sense of direction and the consistencies will give us a clearer sense of the important elements of the dream. Here is an example of three dreams (shown in Figure 1) from the beginning of a series. They illustrate some of the issues that arise when we consider the dynamics of the theme. The second dream, when it was compared with the first dream, radically changed the dreamer's understanding of the first. The third dream shows a theme that is discernibly not ended but still in process.

The dreamer was a 40-year-old woman, Kate, who had been divorced for four years. At the time of the dreams she shared a house with two male housemates. The first dream:

Kate is living on an exotic island. Nonetheless, she is in her own home, working in the kitchen. Her ex-husband and her father are sitting idly in the living room. There is a knock on the door. Kate is too busy and the men are too slothful to answer the door. They hear the knock several times. She asks the men to answer it but they do not move. Eventually, Kate puts her work down and goes to the door. The person has left. The dream ends with an argument as to who was to blame for not answering the call.

This dream is rich in symbolism and easily stands on its own. It encompasses many familiar elements of a psychological setting: It places a woman in a stereotypical role, in the kitchen, invokes the two most important men in her life and poses a clear question of the identity of an unknown fourth person. Dreams in which an unknown person makes an (often frightening) appearance are termed "Stranger" dreams. The strongest interest of the dreamer was in the mysterious stranger: Who knocked on the door, a man or a woman, and what did they want? There are no "correct" answers to these questions.

Then Kate again dreamed about the same island. The second dream:

Kate is outdoors, in a public place, with her housemates. The two men are approached by a monk who asks them to join the Church of Zen. They try to explain to the monk that there cannot be any such thing as a Church of Zen, that Zen is a state of mind. The monk ignores this and pressures them to sign up for the Church of Zen. Only Kate sees the humor of this situation. The two men treat it very seriously.

The two dreams both involve a stranger: The unknown person who knocked at the door in the first dream and the Zen monk in the second. If that were all, it would be a thin thread between them however the two dreams have much more in common. They both take place in the same unusual location. Furthermore, the cast of characters is essentially the same: Kate, two familiar males and a fourth person. Both dreams involve arguments. Structurally these two dreams are very similar. The crucial difference is that the mysterious, unknown person of the first dream who knocked on the door and left has made an appearance, so to speak, in the second dream (and now cuts a comical figure).

When the two dreams were compared, the second dream reverberated with the first one and changed the dreamer's view of it in two ways. Firstly, when Kate was not directly involved in the argument in the second dream she saw its humorous aspect. In retrospect, the argument of the first dream with her ex-husband and her father no longer seemed so bitter; Instead, it seemed comical that none of the three people answered the door in time. Next, Kate noticed that, in the second dream, it is the men who interact with the stranger and, in the first dream, she expects them to do that. She re-assessed the first dream as one in which she had expected the men in her life to answer "her" door for her rather than the Kate taking responsibility for opening her own doors.

Some time later, Kate had another comparable dream. The third dream:

Two strangers, a man and a woman, have suddenly appeared in Kate's home. She asks them who they are but they ignore her. Kate is very uncomfortable and asks them to leave but they continue to ignore her. She is left feeling helpless and with a sense that her private space has been infringed upon.

Again there is the theme of the stranger. This time the interaction is directly with the strangers and without the presence of any male intermediaries. We can now consider the three dreams together: We first had merely the implication of a person, we then saw the stranger in an outside environment in which case Kate felt secure and we have seen strangers in her home in which case Kate felt insecure. The conflict was initially between Kate and the male figures, then between the men and the stranger, in the third dream it is between Kate and the strangers. Her "wish" to answer her own door – rather than have men answer it for her – has been only partially granted: there are no men involved but there was no knock either, only an intrusion. Whatever we make of the three dreams should remain tentative, as Jung so often emphasizes. We might have expected, from the second dream, that the stranger was essentially masculine, but the third dream shows us that this is not so. The tension about strangers that is expressed in these three dreams seems unresolved. It is this dynamic of the theme that is absent when we consider each dream in isolation.

Any of these dreams could be analyzed and the stranger identified in some way. We could look at Kate's waking life where we would discover situations corresponding to those in the dreams. We could round up answers from the usual suspects: Kate's childhood, yesterday's events, her free associations and so on, but the situation remains that, in her 40s, this is a continuing inquiry in her dream life: Something about "stranger-ness" is going on (and on-going) that she does not yet fully understand. A definitive statement as to what one of these dreams "means" would only tend to foreclose this process.

The dreams show a tension around these strangers. At this stage I would predict that the dream series will not complete until Kate could meet with the stranger and feel comfortable. Perhaps the stranger will turn into someone familiar. We might see the argument progress to a point at which people are more in agreement (but the tension might also get worse before it gets better). A quite different possibility is that the dreams are displaying diverse viewpoints of an argument and, rather than progress towards a resolution, what we will see is a circumnavigation of the issue in which different dreams show various ways in which an argument can be handled.

Whatever happens to the theme of strangerness, this series is more than just the simple repetition of one element. Our examination has uncovered the vicissitudes of this theme. Indeed, it is likely that most themes would show a comparable dynamic if they were also subjected to a detailed analysis.

Here is a dream of mine that presents insuperable difficulties if it is considered on its own:

Of course, we would like to comprehend each dream as we go along but, in practice, that just does not happen. Even Freud gives a subtle hint to this when, in The Interpretation of Dreams, he writes that it was only in retrospect that he had completely interpreted a group of dreams.

To put it another way: few dreams are complete -- that is why we talk about them. There is an assumption, or at least a hope, that the talking can complete the dream. My personal sense is that this is rarely the case; there is usually an incompleteness to the work, i.e. the dream-conversation. Typically our dream life consists of several sagas woven together, reaching a form of completion only after the working out of many different issues. Completion dreams do occur but they are the culmination of a series of dreams in which the dreamer wrestles with many issues.

The incompleteness of the dream work, rather than being some kind of failure is a consequence of the on-going nature of the work: You can always wait for the next dream.

Figure 1. The three "Stranger" dreams