Kelly Bulkeley

November 1, 2010

Proud to Be a Primate

“Our goodness is as deep as our darkness”—that was Kimberley Patton’s gloss on the findings of Franz de Waal, a primatologist who spoke on Saturday at the American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta. De Waal’s new book, Age of Empathy (2010), shows that cooperation, reciprocity, and conflict-resolution are just as natural in primates as are aggression and competition. Contrary to the Social Darwinist assumption that nature is bloody “red in tooth and claw,” de Waal’s research proves that non-human animals have all the basic building blocks of morality. This means that human morality is not just a matter of controlling our violent, selfish instincts, but rather enhancing and refining our other instincts for empathy, compassion, and sociability.

Also commenting on de Waal’s research was Armin Geertz, who highlighted the core idea of evolutionary biology that “all life is continuous.” What seems unique about humans is actually an extension of abilities and behaviors we find in other animals. Looking ahead to the future of primate research, de Waal said, “the trend is toward the continuity of humans and animals.”

Is this true of religion? When elephants mourn their dead, chimpanzees dance in rainstorms, and wolves howl at the moon, are we seeing the building blocks of spirituality? Can animals have mystical experiences? De Waal said it was difficult as a biologist to address such questions, but he did not rule out the possibility of affirmative answers.

Score a point for scientific open-mindedness.

What about dreaming? Both Patton and Geertz, professors of religious studies, mentioned dreaming as a universal human experience that factors into all religious traditions. De Waal did not talk about dreams directly, but the cognitive abilities he has identified in non-human primates (empathy, imagination, pretend play, etc.), combined with the similarities in brain functioning across all primate species, strongly suggest that humans are not the only dreamers in nature.

In his earlier book Chimpanzee Politics (1998) de Waal talked about the dreams of people who study primates:

“That chimpanzees are experienced in the first place as personalities is evident from the dreams of those of us who work with them. We dream about these apes as individuals, in the same way that other people dream about their fellow human beings as individuals. If a student were to say that he or she had dreamed of an ape I would be no less surprised than if someone claimed to have dreamed of a human.

“I clearly remember the first dream I had about the chimpanzees. In it my preoccupation with the distance between them and me was apparent. During this dream the large door to their quarters was opened for me from the inside. The apes were pushing each other aside in order to get a good look at me. Yeroen, the oldest male, stepped forward and shook my hand. Rather impatiently he listened to my request to come in. He refused point blank. That was out of the question, he said, and besides, their society would not suit me: it was much too harsh for a human being.” (41)

October 25, 2010

The Nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft

The American fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) wrote a series of interconnected short stories and novellas in which dreaming features as a frightening portal between the normal world of sanity and the unnamable horrors that lurk in every shadow.

Dreams and nightmares are central themes in “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” and “Hypnos,” among other Lovecraft tales.

Robert Bloch, an early protégé of Lovecraft’s and later an accomplished science fiction writer in his own right, said this in the introduction to The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (New York: Ballantine, 1963):

“The one theme incontrovertibly constant in both his life and his work is a preoccupation with dreams. From earliest childhood on, Lovecraft’s sleep ushered him into a world filled with vivid visions of alien and exotic landscapes that at times formed a background for terrifying nightmares….Gradually he built up a rationale for both reality and dreams, nothing less than a history of the entire universe.” (6-7)

I’ve never made a detailed study of Lovecraft, beyond just reading and re-reading his stories for entertainment. I wonder if there are any Lovecraftian dreamer-scholars out there who have more to say about this.

October 21, 2010

Snakes, Dreams, and Jung’s Red Book

People have reported dreams of serpents and snakes throughout history in cultures all over the world. In terms of Jungian psychology, snake dreams have a powerful archetypal quality. They give people an extremely memorable and uncanny experience of the “otherness” of the collective unconscious. Jung has a few things to say about the symbolism of serpents and snakes at various points in The Red Book:

“The serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life.” (247)

“Why did I behave as if that serpent were my soul? Only, it seems, because my soul was a serpent….Serpents are wise, and I wanted my serpent soul to communicate her wisdom to me.” (318) (This comment comes after a long dialogue in active imagination with a great iridescent snake coiled atop a red rock.)

“I have united with the serpent of the beyond. I have accepted everything beyond into myself.” (322)

“If I had not become like the serpent, the devil, the quintessence of everything serpentlike, would have held this bit of power over me. This would have given the devil a grip and he would have forced me to make a pact with him just as he also cunningly deceived Faust. But I forestalled him by uniting myself with the serpent, just as a man unites with a woman.” (322)

“The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent.” (353)

These passages make it clear that Jung regarded snakes both negatively and positively, both as “chthonic devils” (318) and as indispensable guides for the soul.

From a Jungian perspective, snake dreams offer people the dangerous possibility of connecting with the wisdom of the collective unconscious and drawing strength from its archetypal energies.

If you’re interested in learning more about snake dreams in history, scroll down the list to see this post. (titled “What Do Dreams of Snakes Mean?”)

If you’d like ideas about how to interpret snake dreams, see this post.

For more information about actual snakes, take a look at the website of the East Bay Vivarium.

October 18, 2010

Reading Jung’s Red Book

I’ve never read a book before that made my desk shake and tremble when I set it down. That caused a minor atmospheric disturbance in my study every time I opened and closed the cover. That required several changes of physical posture to view the contents of each page. That should be considered, due to its alarming weight, a hazard to children, pregnant women, and the elderly.

My ambivalence starts here. The florid design and gargantuan size of The Red Book by C.G. Jung (edited by Sonu Shamdasani) insists that we take this work Very, Very Seriously. But we have to ask, is this how Jung wanted his unfinished private collection of fantasies and paintings to be presented to readers?

He plainly did not want to publish it during his lifetime. He left no clear directive one way or another about its fate after his death.

By not expressly forbidding its posthumous publication, and by sharing the original text with his inner circle of family and friends, Jung indicated some willingness to make The Red Book a part of his public literary corpus.

I doubt, however, that he would have felt comfortable with the grandiosity of this back-breaking tome, which literalizes to an almost absurd degree the metaphors of prophecy and revelation he used to describe his “confrontation with the unconscious” during the years 1913-1930.

October 2, 2010

A Dream Before Dying

Life’s profound problems often get resolved in the sleep that comes before the final rest, these authors say

By Anne Underwood
Newsweek Magazine
July 25, 2005 issue

As a hospice chaplain for 10 years, the Rev. Patricia Bulkley confronted the raw emotions of the dying-their terror at the approaching end, their unresolved family problems, their crises of faith. They were people like Charles Rasmussen, a retired merchant-marine captain in his mid-80s who was dying of cancer. He was consumed by fear until, in a dream one night, he saw himself sailing in uncharted waters. Once again, he felt the thrill of adventure as he pushed through a vast, dark, empty sea, knowing he was on course. “Strangely enough, I’m not afraid to die anymore,” he told Bulkley after that dream. Death was no longer an end, but a journey.

As Bulkley reveals in a slender but powerful new book, “Dreaming Beyond Death,” many people have extraordinary dreams in their final days and weeks. These dreams can help the dying grapple with their fears, find the larger meaning in their lives, even mend fences with relatives. Yet all too often, caregivers dismiss them as delusional or unworthy of attention. Not Bulkley, who often discussed dreams with patients at the Hospice of Marin in California. Her experiences were the inspiration for the book, which she coauthored with her son Kelly Bulkeley, a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. It is the first volume devoted to the (paradoxically) life-affirming power of pre-death dreams. And though the research is still preliminary, the authors inject level-headed analysis into an arena often dominated by seekers of the paranormal.

Accounts of prescient or meaningful pre-death dreams span religions and cultures, from China and India to ancient Greece. The last dream that psychologist Carl Jung was able to communicate to his followers, a few days before his death, was of a great round stone engraved with the words “And this shall be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness.” To Jung, it showed that his work in this life was complete. Socrates and Confucius also spoke of significant dreams they had shortly before their deaths.

Yet there has been little systematic study of such dreams in modern times. The inherent difficulties are obvious. You can’t enroll people with a week or two to live in formal studies-and they’re hardly going to walk into a sleep clinic and volunteer. By default, hospice workers and family members have collected more of these stories than dream researchers. No one even knows what percentage of people ultimately experience such dreams. Still, scientists recognize that they can be deeply meaningful.

There are certain overarching themes that emerge-going on journeys, reuniting with deceased loved ones, seeing stopped clocks. Often the imagery is straightforward. In one woman’s dream, a candle on her hospital windowsill is snuffed out, engulfing her in darkness-a symbol of death that scares her, until the candle spontaneously relights outside the window. A man struggling to find meaning in his life dreams of a square dance in which the partners leave visible traces of their movements, like ribbons weaving a pattern. “There really is a plan after all, isn’t there?” the man asked Bulkley after that dream. “Somehow we all belong to one another.”

But not all pre-death dreams are comforting. They can also frighten the dreamer, who imagines being chased through crumbling cityscapes or hurtling in a driverless car toward a freshly dug ditch or entering the sanctuary of a cathedral, only to have a tornado break through the roof and suck the visitor up into the whirlwind. “I’ve had patients who woke up pounding on the mattress, very agitated, struggling with the idea that they’re going to lose this battle,” says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center. These dreams are warnings of unresolved issues. But by forcing attention to the underlying problems, nightmares may ultimately help the dreamer find peace. “Ignore them at your peril,” says Cartwright.

It is hardly surprising that pre-death dreams are more urgent, more vivid and more memorable than the run-of-the mill patchwork of dreams. “Throughout life, at acute stages of crisis and transition, the need to dream is intensified,” says psychologist Alan Siegel of the University of California, Berkeley. The more dramatic the event, the more the dreams cluster around solving related emotional issues. Pre-death dreams can be so intense that the dying mistake them for waking reality-especially when the dreams feature dead relatives.

Yet despite the power of these dreams, caregivers often miss the opportunity to explore their meaning. It’s a loss on both sides, according to Bulkley. Talking about end-of-life dreams can give family members a way to broach the uncomfortable topic of death, she says. For the dying, discussing such a dream can provide a simple way to articulate complex emotions-or, if the meaning of the dream is unclear, to fathom its purpose. And to the extent the dying person finds comfort in any such dream, so do surviving relatives. “These are the stories that get repeated at funerals,” says Bulkley. “They become part of the family lore.”

The authors resist the notion that pre-death dreams prove the existence of God. Yet the dying often interpret them as affirmations of faith. On her deathbed, a female cancer patient of Bulkley’s was stricken with doubts about the nature of God. For three nights in a row, she dreamed of huge boulders that pulsated with an eerie blue light. To her, they represented a divine being that was unidentifiable, but very real. “I don’t need to know anything more than that,” she told Bulkley. “God is God.” But she had one final dream. In it, the boulders morphed into steppingstones. In the distance a golden light glowed. “It’s calling me now, and I want to go,” she told Bulkley that morning. She died the next day-at peace.

Pictures and Scans of original article 2005 Newsweek
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September 27, 2010

Jung’s Seminar on Children’s Dreams

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940 by C.G. Jung, edited by Lorenz Jung and Maria Meyer-Grass, translated by Ernst Falzeder with the collaboration of Tony Woolfson (Princeton University Press, 2008).

This new English translation of C.G. Jung’s seminar on the earliest remembered dreams of childhood marks a dramatic advance in the study of Jungian dream theory. The book makes available to English readers a fascinating, informative, and thought-provoking source of insight into Jung’s practical approach to dream interpretation. It will appeal to anyone who wants to learn more about how Jung actually worked with dreams. The book will also serve as an important resource for teachers and researchers in their use and/or criticism of Jung’s psychology of dreams. Although the title suggests a narrower focus, Children’s Dreams in fact provides the best single source for understanding the broader dimensions of Jungian dream theory.

From 1936 to 1940 Jung taught the seminar at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The participants included some of his brightest followers, including Marie-Louis Von Franz, Aniela Jaffe, and Jolande Jacobi. Each meeting of the seminar involved one of the participants presenting and analyzing an early childhood dream report (or brief dream series), after which Jung would comment and other participants would ask questions and respond to Jung’s ideas. We cannot know how faithfully the transcript represents what actually happened in the seminar, but the written text does give the strong sense of a lively, intelligent, free-flowing conversation among people who knew Jung’s theories very well and wanted his guidance in applying them.

Virtually no mention is made of the ominous political situation in Europe at this time, i.e., the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany and the outbreak of World War II. A Jung critic might take this as a retreat from the real problems of the world into the self-reinforcing fantasy world of dream symbolism. A more sympathetic reader might wonder if the seminar participants found this work so compelling precisely because they knew that dark forces were afoot and they wanted to gain better practical insight into the deep psychological roots of the darkness threatening their civilization.

The first chapter, Jung’s introductory lecture to the class, is itself worth the price of the book. In clear, straightforward language Jung lays out the basic principles and themes of his approach to dream interpretation. He puts special emphasis on the earliest remembered dreams of childhood because these types of dreams often relate to primordial themes in the collective unconscious and thus offer an especially good view of archetypal dynamics. In this Jung highlights a key notion in his overall psychological system: “[T]he unconscious is older than consciousness….The unconscious is what is originally given, from which consciousness rises anew again and again.” (7) Children have less conscious superstructure than adults and thus more direct exposure to oneiric blasts from the collective unconscious. This is not always a good thing. On the contrary, one of the remarkable features of the dreams presented in the book is their relentlessly negative, violent, frightening character. Most of the dreams are nightmares, many of them recurrent. This may reflect the fact that the seminar participants drew most of the dream reports from their clinical practices with people suffering psychophysiological problems. It may also reflect what Jung considered the numinous power of the archetypes, their overwhelming energy and consciousness-stretching impact on people, particularly early in their lives.

In the introduction Jung lays out his method of analyzing dreams in terms of a four-part dramatic structure:

1. Locale: Place, time, ‘dramatis personae.’

2. Exposition: Illustration of the problem.

3. Peripateia: Illustration of the transformation—which can also leave room for a catastrophe.

4. Lysis: Result of the dream. Meaningful closure. Compensating illustration of the action of the dream. (30)

Each dream in the book is analyzed according to this structure. This creates a helpful unity across the length of the book, which at 468 pages requires an extensive commitment of time and energy to read all the way to the end. For teaching and reference purposes the book can be read piecemeal, in selections of one or two dream discussions (each one goes for 10-15 pages). But we found real value in reading the book start to finish because many of the most interesting exchanges between Jung and the participants pop up unexpectedly in reference to different dreams. As the seminars proceed Jung refers back to previous dreams and their analyses, so there is definitely a cumulative quality to the text.

Jung’s Children’s Dreams will not, in all likelihood, satisfy contemporary researchers who ask about the reliability of memory processes in dream recall, particularly dreams that people are remembering from many years in the past. Nor will those who question Jung’s assumption about the universality of the archetypes find any reason to give up their skepticism. But for those who already appreciate and value Jungian dream theory, Children’s Dreams will be a cause for joy. The book is comparable to Freud’s epic Interpretation of Dreams (1900) in providing a rich, complex, highly detailed exposition of Jung’s psychology of dreams and dream interpretation.

(Originally published in DreamTime 2009, co-authored with KB’s mother, Patricia Bulkley)