I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of Iain McGilchrist’s work lately. I find his thesis very compelling– he argues that many of our most intractable problems are rooted in the struggle between the left and right hemispheres of the human brain, a struggle in which the left hemisphere has recently become dangerously dominant. If you are not yet familiar with this idea, I would urge you to seek out and watch a few of McGilchrist’s many online interviews or delve into either one of his two excellent books–The Master and his Emissary, and The Matter with Things.
McGilchrist usually starts with the evidence from neuroscience and neuropathology–what happens when one of our hemispheres is weakened or damaged by illness or injury, resulting in an unbalanced and unchecked predominance of the other hemisphere. But he doesn’t stop there; he brings the lens of hemispheric differences to bear throughout a fascinating survey of human cultural history, philosophy, religion, the arts and the sciences. What happens when the two hemispheres of the brain are working together harmoniously (as in the early Classical Greek period, the early Roman Empire, and the Renaissance)? What happens when the left hemisphere becomes too dominant (as in the later Greek and Roman periods, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and our own modern technological era)? And finally, what happens when the right hemisphere pushes back and asserts itself after a period of left hemisphere dominance (as in the Romantic era and the Sixties)?
Meanwhile, what about the dreaming brain? We would expect something as fundamental and pervasive as the relationship between the hemispheres to appear in our dreams in characteristic and identifiable ways. This something I’ve been thinking about lately. There is a very common type of recurring dream motif that has to do with frustration– in these dreams the dreamer has a very specific and focused goal but cannot seem to achieve it; he or she tries and tries but usually to no avail, and eventually wakes up in a state of frustration, anger, and stress. Common variants of this dream motif I have come across include:
- trying to make a call on a cell phone, but somehow unable to press the right buttons and make the connection
- trying to find a parking spot
- trying to find your car in a large parking lot
- trying to perform a particular task on a computer or similar device
- trying to find a specific misplaced object, often a pair of shoes, wallet or purse
Are any of these motifs familiar from your own dream life? The common element in all of them is the hyper-focus on a very specific goal and the dogged determination not to let go of that goal even though it doesn’t seem to be achievable. Now, to look at this through the lens of hemispheric differences: it is our left hemisphere that specializes in narrow focus on a specific tasks and goals. Valuing utility above all else, the left hemisphere strives to find the thing that it wants quickly and efficiently, take it, and put it to use. In all the aforementioned dream motifs the dream ego is looking for something that it can put to use, something that it knows well, something that it usually has within its grasp, but which is now, for some exasperating reason, unattainable. For these reasons I suspect that what we are dealing with in such dreams is the drama of a stymied and frustrated left hemisphere.
But why would it be so frustrated? The first obvious answer is because the brain as a whole is in the sleeping state not the awake state (although of course the dreamer is typically not aware of this fact until they awaken). While sleeping, many of the default networks that the awake brain employs might be offline and unavailable, leaving the left hemisphere unable to deploy many of its favoured executive functions.
I believe that the kind of dysphoria generated by such dreams of exasperation is one of the main reasons that so many people are alienated from their own dream life. Upon waking, as a left hemisphere-dominant default ego structure reboots itself and re-takes command of the bridge, it might tend to pass a negative judgement regarding the value of the dream that just happened. From the perspective of the left hemisphere dreams (especially frustrating, chaotic and repetitive dreams) rate very high for pointless absurdity and very low for utility. So why would anyone bother giving them a second thought?
Perhaps… because there might there be something corrective and compensatory trying to happen here. Is it possible that the psyche as a whole might be trying to point out to the left hemisphere that it cannot always have its own way? That indeed there might be some benefit in letting go of the hyper-focused mode? To explore this hypothesis, I have been using the technique of dream re-entry with many of my clients. In re-entry dreamwork we try to avoid the tendency to be interpretive; we don’t ask what it might mean that you can’t find your car, or your shoes, or your wallet. Of course, there could be some valuable insights to be found and explored along these interpretive lines, but this is not the path we are taking here.
Instead, we are going to facilitate an experience of trying something different within the frustrating dreamscape. We invite the dreamer to go back into the dream: ….’so here you are….you are desperately trying to reach your friend on the cellphone…but it’s not working…now…catch yourself…..slow everything down…become aware that you are within a dreamscape….this means that you can (if you wish) try something different, something that was not in the original dream….so…what, ideally would you like to do now….’
Very often, when the stage is set in this way, and when it is suggested to the dreamer that they need not continue to feel bound by the frustrating conditions given in the original dream, something completely new and unexpected will arise. The dreamer might want to forget all about their cellphone call, or their wallet, or their misplaced car. They may realize that the task can wait until some other time, or they may want to walk away from it altogether. There is a lovely sense of relief, an expansion, a widening of the context; the dreamer suddenly become aware of new elements, new spaces, new people within the dreamscape; new desires are felt and new connections are made.
The overall experience is of a healthy re-balancing of something that was narrow, one-sided, obsessive, and driven. It feels as if something good just happened, even if nobody is really sure exactly what that something represents or what it might ‘mean’. This is related, I believe, to what McGilchrist describes as one key element of a healthy relationship between the two hemispheres– the left hemisphere (the emissary), having done what it can do with its narrowly focused attention, must then hand things back to the right hemisphere (the master). It is the right hemisphere which is capable of appreciating the larger context and seeing a bigger picture. So…next time you wake up from a dream in which you were unsuccessfully fixated on a task, consider going back into it and trying something different.
Christopher Sowton
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