Therapeutic Dreams and Reliving

“Reliving with Freud” is wonderfully systematic, but I am concerned with only some of the themes in the second half of Professor Binion’s paper. The paper is best assessed by practicing psychologists and scholars of Freud—I am neither. As a generalist historian, I do find Binion convincing when he marshals evidence in Freud’s own casework to say that Freud should have accorded “trauma” more independent agency than he did. Binion is also convincing when he says a traumatic event can lead to neurotic symptoms regardless of which developmental life stage the trauma victim is at—and regardless of whether the victim carries any predisposition to be traumatized by such an event. The First World War’s shell-shock cases should have settled this, but apparently by then Freud was locked into his theory that all neurotic symptoms have infantile origins.

On the other hand, I don’t share Binion’s well-known view that both traumatic reliving and traumatic dreams are devoid of therapeutic benefit—which I’m sure will figure prominently in his forthcoming book that this paper is part of. If we go back and start with Freud’s early emphasis on those highly-frequent dreams about the dreamer’s previous day’s preoccupations—and if we then dismiss Freud’s later interpolation that, in addition, every dream also fantasizes the fulfillment of some infantile wish—isn’t it possible that our dreams are not (as Freud supposed) retrieving the preoccupations of the previous day that we tried to dismiss from our minds but instead are releasing from our minds our previous day’s preoccupations? Might our dreams, in other words, be partly a way our minds release preoccupations, or even random thoughts, which are useless (if not counter-productive)? If so, that would be therapeutic.

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And if so, then we should say goodbye to Freud’s theory that dreams enact “wish fulfillment.” Granted, children’s dreams often enact that, but I doubt that’s often true of adults’ dreams. I think normal adults’ dreams aren’t fulfilling wishes but releasing them; freeing our minds of useless preoccupations that perhaps were once useful.

While I’m writing of preoccupations, my mind is racing ahead to a special category of them: expectations. Schopenhauer, who realized that expectations are important in shaping our lives, also identified their origin to be in our past experiences. As Freud said, “What has been, will be.” Binion reminds us that Freud’s work showed him many people’s disturbing preoccupations. Another Schopenhauerian theme, which Freud embraced but Binion does not, is relevant here, too: the will. When we dream, we do not will. In dreams we are merely aware; everything happening as though it were inevitable. Admittedly, we often react in our dreams, such as by thinking “oh no…,” but even then—and here I am shifting from ordinary dreams to traumatic ones—in dreams which culminate with us knowing exactly what to do but unable to do it, the reason why we can’t is because we can’t will it. As we dream, we may think we are willing it. If we were awake, what needs doing might be doable with a mere fraction of the effort we dream of exerting. Yet, while dreaming, we can’t do it because a dream is like the past: it can only be experienced. Its course cannot change. (I’m told that “lucid dreaming” is an exception, but I know nothing of that.) Only when awake can we change anything, and with regard to what’s past, we can only accept it.

By precluding our will, dreams achieve our acceptance, but only very temporarily in the case of traumatic (high-consequence) dreams. Dreams by their nature accept not just what arouses anxiety in us but also what arouses the fuller list with which Binion supplements Freud: what arouses our “shame, disgust, compassion, disaffection, disen-

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chantment, whatever.” Our dreams accept whatever in our past aroused any of those feelings in us. Let me say explicitly that I consider our dreams’ acceptance of the past to be a form of guidance, pointing our will toward permanently accepting what is past, and isn’t that the definition of therapy?

Traumatic dreams can release our high-consequence preoccupations and expectations only temporarily—only while we’re asleep—but our will can later make the release permanent, which is why I disagree with Binion’s well-known position that traumatic dreaming is never therapeutic. After we’re awake, through our will we are able to accept whatever is causing our traumatic dreams. Thus, regarding the efficacy of our will, I agree with Freud, not Binion.

Binion’s other position I contest is that traumatic reliving is never therapeutic. Again, it is admittedly not automatically therapeutic, but if a trauma is relived within a wholistic awareness, thereby contextualizing and making relevant the trauma’s significance, then traumatic reliving can be therapeutic. This is called “gaining perspective” on a trauma, and thereby coming to accept it. Nothing in us automatically accepts a past trauma, no matter how long ago it happened or how often it reappears in our dreams, waking thoughts, or compulsive behavior; but when our awareness is whole, our will is then able to accept a past trauma and act out that acceptance in a positive, therapeutic way. The sequence can be vice versa: exerting our will to accept a past trauma and acting out our acceptance can somehow give us therapeutic perspective on it, as has often been verified, not by the changed outer behavior but by changed inner experience.

This way of interpreting dreams suggests a counterfactual exercise. We have both benign and threatening dreams. If we think dreams are enacting wish fulfillment, wouldn’t it be logical to explain threatening dreams by the

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existence of a death wish? But if we think of ordinary dreams as merely releasing what is useless among our low-consequence preoccupations and expectations, and if we think of traumatic dreams as showing us what is useless among our high consequence preoccupations and expectations, then we need no death wish theory to explain threatening dreams. Threatening dreams would merely be doing what benign dreams do: releasing (or at least revealing) our useless preoccupations and expectations.

By the word “useless,” am I implying that some preoccupations or expectations are useful? Emphatically yes! Expectations are useful if what they expect is likely to happen. Expectations are inherent in how our inner, subjective life relates to the world’s outer, objective life. Realistic expectations have survival value. Also, dreams, I think, help us discard the others.

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