The three ancient birth-civilization cultures of Sumeria,
the Nile and the Indic Valley, developed and tapped dreaming,
meditative, healing and visionary or oracle traditions. These three had influence on the Greeks and Romans who developed or used healing and dream temples, some of which included dream
“beds” for receiving revelatory, diagnostic or healing night dreams, and
“waking dreams” or visions.
Indigenous cultures around the world have encountered, nurtured and
respected both the night revealing dream and the day vision or visionary quest
– the vision quest often being conducted in special locations and environments
for isolation, physical purification, going inward and for receptivity.
Within these traditions were often the dream oracle.
The dream temples of Greece are well known among historians and archeologists, and the role of the physician-healer such as Asclepius and the role of the sleep inducer Hypnos are fairly known. What may be less known is the role the early healing dream, visionary or imagery practioner’s had on the birth of modern psychology, including depth psychology and its early modern manifestations as psychoanalysis and dream interpretation or dream analysis.
Hypnotherapists of the 19th Century appear to have reverted back to the ancient suggestive and consciousness altering practices of the physician-healers of the dream temples of Rome, Greece, Sumeria, Egypt and the Far East, especialy India. These cultures used body position, suggestion or the power of chanting, and the power of sound and music to induce healing and sleep-dream states of consciousness – much as what are called “shamans” of various cultures around the world used and still use music or drumming, sound, words-of-power or suggestion to alter both their consciousness and that of the patient for analysis or diagnosis of the condition, and intervention.
Sigmund Freud borrowed the tool of hypnosis from the physician’s of his time to heal his patient’s but not being very successful at hypnosis, it is said, he developed another form of consciousness altering and memory inducing technique for analysis and intervention – that of free association or psychoanalysis. His method included sensory isolation such as in a low lit room with eyes shut as the patient free associated - what some have called the “stream of consciousness”. A couch - not much unlike some used in ancient dream-healing temple, but softer - for waking dream states, was used by Freud and still is by psychoanalysts, just as versions of the couch in the form of modern day lounge chairs are used by modern day hypnotherapists.
Free association may be viewd as a light form of hypnosis without the use of hypnotic induction and without the use of direct hypnotic suggestion. The client by their body position, eyes closed and by the nature of turning inward to remember, visualize and associate can create a hypnoidal-like state of consciousness from which unconscious material can surface, and even dream-like memories and images emerge. This type of method in actuality has been used by shamans and healing cultures, including the dream temple cultures, for thousands of years. Freud appears to have rediscovered the unconscious the ancients studied in altered states of reality and in dreams for centuries – probably since the beginning of time, ancient man and woman sitting around a flickering fire as the emerging mind of man was born and self-reflected on himself and herself.
Psychoanalysis was and is in actuality a form of active meditation – meditation being used for centuries to study nature, the cosmos and the human mind or inner consciousness. The concept of the self that emerged in psychoanalytic literature over the last century has its roots in ancient teachings, philosophies and meditative and sleep-dream or hypnos inducing trance techniques from the Indic Vallley and from the Far East. The West is now only rediscovering the sophistication of these ancient techniques – including the “scientific” use of sound to assist mind-body altering experiences for psychological integration, healing and transformation.
Mystery healing and spiritual traditions from various cultures appear to have always had a dyadic form (one "seeing" inside and the other guiding and recording the other's reported inner experiences) of inducing, reporting and processing meditative, expanded consciousness, imaginal or visionary dream states. The modern day analyst’s chair or couch is only a Western form and perspective, possibly much limited in its use due to lack of depth and understanding of the degree consciousness or the mind and body can be worked with in these more inclusive states of mind. The challenge is to overcome the limitations of hypnosis – actually a difficult skill to master and do well without inducing harm – and to overcome the limitations of free association that can become stuck at the mental association or analytical level by many patients or clients.
To learn to do this in depth – a depth worthy of the depth of the human experience – and in safety we should go back in time to the beginning of these sciences, the science of the Self or self psychology. The individuals who practiced alone were seers and masters of meditation; those that practiced with others in dyadic form were often also viewed as healers, or shamans.
(to be continued)