Our Creative Assistants: As in the case of placing the ingredients in the stew and do the initial seasoning of the stew, the problem is attended to with great care for a short (or extended) period of time. We can find no adequate solution—in part because we usually look only to solutions from the past. We give up frustrated and exacerbated and move on to something else. The problem is still being worked on—but at another level of our mind (the back burner). New, novel solutions are swirling around on this back burner. Finally, it is ready to be “consumed”. A moment is awaiting when we are relaxed or distracted. The solution now comes forward and we attend to it. Sometimes, this solution might be conveyed through the visionary in our dream. The incubation process is fully engaged – whether or not we are awake!
A dream can also provide a “networker” who introduces us to other characters (alive, dead or mythic) who can offer ideas and share stories that illuminate our current or future condition. As the Jungians have often noted, our subterranean “networker” has access to a vast reservoir of insights and narratives. We might even have access via our networker to resources that are in some sense genetically inherited l—the so-called “collective unconscious”.
There might be a challenger or jokester in our dream who offers a playful or even quite thoughtful and valid critique of our work. We can turn again to the wisdom offered by the Jungians who write of the “shadow” entity that lives in our unconscious and serves as a corrective to our puffed-up self (the persona—public mask). Inside the dream, this shadow function often serves as a counter to the cheerleader and visionary. This corrective function might even lead to our dream becoming a nightmare—where a quite disturbing alternative reality and outcome of our planning is enacted. We wake up and do some rethinking of the carefully laid out plans we produced when awake.
There is the option-provider who offers an alternative pathway for us to consider. While this dream character might not be laying out a “yellow brick road” for us, they might be giving us a glimpse of a set of actions we can take that have we have not previously considered. We might be given a change in clothes—now being clad as a warrior or as a famous movie star. The alternative scenario might introduce us to potential allies or potential enemies (including people in our real life – see Erich Fromm’s interpersonal function).
The contingency-planner stands alongside the option-provider. In a dream, this character is offering or even plays out a possible set of actions that could take place in response to a possible situation or shift in situations or in one or more possible environments in which action must take place. As is often case with “real life” coaches, the dream-based contingency planner is in the business of not only offering specific challenging settings and alternative actions, but also of opening the client (dreamer) up to doing their own contingency planning. We are not weak or indecisive when we acknowledge that things might change and that we might change our mind and our actions. While this contingency perspective might be hard to embrace in “real life”, the dream can be a safe place in which to engage this perspective—especially with the guidance of the dream-based contingency planner.
Finally, the role of dream as “coach” is perhaps best engaged when a character in our dream becomes a patient “listener”. The listener often brings us back in the dream to what we have already said or done. Our statement or action can be stated (or demonstrated) in a new and revealing way by the listener. The listener could change cloths and become a clown to real the “silliness” or “sad truth” in what we have said while awake (or at an earlier point in our dream).
