There is another theme that can help to provide future-driving synthesis. This is a theme associated with prophecy that has been with us for many centuries and in many countries (remember Joseph in the Torah/Old Testament). However, the matter of prophecy is still filled with controversy and misunderstanding. As I noted in a previous essay in this series (Bergquist, 2023b), prophecy or prediction often has to do with interpersonal relationships rather than droughts; we can act on this insight by altering our way of being with this other person rather than storing up grain. This type of dream often holds great weight. It may represent an exceptionally insightful synthesis of complex, multi-tiered information.
Problem-Solving: the dream-based art of prophecy might have a worthy ego-function competitor. In dreams, we can often solve elusive problems. In an early essay in this series, I introduced French and Fromm’s model of focal conflict management (French and Fromm, 1964) and reintroduced their model earlier in this essay. In another essay, I introduced the impressive work of Deidre Barrett regarding The Committee of Sleep (Barrett, 2001), and more specifically, the committee of characters in a dream that can clarify the nature of a problem, identify resources to solve this problem, and go about generating a solution inside the dream.
Members of this committee might be represented in dreams that involve visitations of people of our past (or from fictional sources), reoccurrences, false starts, and direct problem-solving. Visitations are probably the most intriguing of these problem-solving resources, and like prophecy dreams, are among the most controversial dream themes. On the one hand, we have “horrible” visitations by unwanted relatives, business partners, or “ghosts” – as was portrayed by Charles Dickens in The Christmas Carol. There are also very positive visitations that might be attributed to some Divine source (a gift of “grace”) or to our clever ego.
Somewhat less ethereal are the reoccurrences of old dream narratives and images. “Oh, it is back again. I thought it was going away.” I personally found I was often confronting a dream during my youth about falling from a cliff at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. As a child, I was terrified of standing on the deck of this state park overlooking the Fox River. My fear was aggravated by my brother and sister teasing me and threatening to push me off the deck. For many years, in my dreams, I was repeatedly falling off the deck, though never hitting the river below. It might be quite appropriate to ask me: “Why is this unresolved?” An even more important question might be offered, “Why does this still matter?” In many ways, this fear of falling from Starved Rock has been resolved. I no longer dream of this rock. However, I am still fearful of heights, so this issue still matters to me, even though I no longer have this dream.
