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Can Dreams Within Dreams Serve as Metaphor for Modern Life Itself?: Commentary on Paper by Hilary Hoge

The social nature of dreaming is discussed. Those few remembered and shared dreams (out of the totality of experienced and soon-forgotten dreams) are eventually shaped by the particular culture that reads into dreams its own way of viewing private psychological experience. Psychoanalysis is one such culture. It is recommended that the dream, on its own terms and in its own images and stories, be allowed to lead the way in psychotherapy. The significance of the creations of the mind asleep is discussed in relation to Freud's and Jung's mission to create a depth therapy for the psychological maladies attendant to life in modern Western culture. Dr. Hoge's contribution is significant in its subtle and intelligent evocation of the rich complexities of the world of dreams. Her use of the dream within the dream opens into a consideration of the sleeping mind's capacity for play and for stretching the boundaries of psychotherapy. Her discussion of the intermixing of subjectivities in therapeutic dream discussion (“Was it her dream or mine?”) leads to a consideration of the relationship between psychoanalytic work with dreams and ancient healing methods that often include an interest in the healer's own dreams as locus of treatment. Finally, there is a discussion of the relation of dreams to the emerging electronic virtual world which replaces the real and natural world with its own designs. In such a world, the dream within a dream may serve as a metaphor for modern life itself.