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| Hpathy Ezine - Sept., 2004 | |||||
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Jane Cicchetti<-- Interviewed by Elaine Lewis |
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Jane, are you ready for Part 2 of our inquiry into your new book, Dreams, Symbols and Homeopathy? Are you ready for more challenging, and in-depth, probing questions? I was afraid of that. All I have are the ones I made up. So, brace yourself (not!) here comes another cavalcade of thrilling questions: Regarding "compensatory dreams": This is a very interesting concept--that a shy person, for example, will dream of great exploits and great achievements to "compensate" for his one-sidedness. Here's the problem I have with this concept, I would think that if a person could "achieve" in his dreams, it would inevitably "spill over" into his waking state and affect him in a positive way. In my own experience, I don't dream anything that I can't actually do. There's one exception though, I've found that when friends aren't speakng to me, I dream that they are; or if someone dies, I dream they're alive; it's as if I'm in denial. I wonder if a dream like this would be considered an Ignatia dream, or is that a compensatory dream too? Dreams often show us the other side of ourselves- in other words- they compensate for how we are in our waking state. And yes, what they say about that other side of ourselves can "spill over" and change our life. The problem is---we usually don’t want to listen because the dreams are often shadow material. Remember our discussion of the shadow- that it is made up of parts of ourselves that are unacceptable and undesirable? Because we don’t want to look at this shadow material it is easier to just say this is nonsense that happens while I am asleep. When we become serious about looking at our dreams or if our homeopath helps us analyze our dreams and uses them to find a good remedy for us- we begin to accept and integrate this shadow side of ourselves. We are then on the path to integrating our shadow energy and becoming a healthier and more conscious human being. The dreams that you mentioned (that someone who isn’t speaking to you really is, or that someone who is dead is actually alive) can, like all dreams, have different meanings depending on who you are; in other words, your whole life story, what exactly happened before the dream and how that relates to who you are as well as your exact associations to all of the details in the dream. These dreams could indicate any number of remedies depending on how they fit into the whole picture of who you are and under what circumstances they occurred. Here's a question I get from some of the parents in my practice: When a child has a nightmare where he seems wide awake, talks, cries, etc., but the parents can't communicate with him, and especially if he's just been given a remedy within a few days, what significance can one make of a dream like this? Unless there is an emergency situation, it is important to always wait and see what happens after someone has taken a remedy. It really depends on what happens after 4- 8 weeks to be able to evaluate the significance of a child having such a nightmare after taking a remedy. One thing that occurs to me is that any child receives quite a shock coming into the world and a good remedy might just bring this up in a dream. Of course if this continues, we might have to consider a new remedy because the first was incorrect or it uncovered this layer of shock. As far as the importance of the content of the dream- I have rarely found the child to be able to remember the content or these nightmares until much later on in life. Of course the eyes open, crying etc. are important but I think that parents have enough to be concerned over without being too concerned about an occasional nightmare even if it occurs after giving a remedy. As it happens, the child I was thinking of when I asked the above question was much better the next day. I wonder also about the dreams where a person is sure he's awake and not dreaming. He may dream that someone is in the room--robbers, for example. He tries to get away or call for help but he's paralyzed (REM sleep). He's very distressed by this. Do these dreams hold any significance for the homeopath? What is significant about these dreams (where the person feels that they are awake), is their intensity. Intensity in dreams is important just like intensity of any symptom or modality is important. When using dreams all of the principles of homeopathic case taking and analysis still apply. We become the unprejudiced observer of a person’s dream state and let him or her tell us what the dream is about – in each and every minute detail. After that we may or may not have characteristic symptoms that will be part of the important symptoms that we use in our analysis. |
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