an excerpt from:
Changing Landscapes:
Structure, Methodology, and Creative Transformation
in the Realm of the Underworld
A dissertation submitted
by
Peter Walker
to
Pacifica Graduate Institute
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the
degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Mythological Studies
with emphasis in
Depth Psychology
This dissertation has been
accepted for the faculty of
Pacifica Graduate Institute by:
Dr. Paul Zolbrod, Chair
Dr. Dana White, Reader
Dr. William Pfaff, External Reader
December 8, 2019
Chapter 3
Underworld Methodology in Dream Work and Experimental Music
Dream Work
Underworld mythologies shed light upon areas of consciousness beyond human understanding, and in doing so, outline the pitfalls and benefits of unconscious engagement. The myths, beyond mapping, illuminate the need for a methodological approach to the unknown. In order to look more deeply into the concept of an underworld methodology, what is found in our ancient myths can be connected to a more immediate psychological experience through the exploration of dream work. The dream is a direct underworld experience and can serve as raw material upon which to reenter the unconscious realm in a therapeutic setting. The process of reentering necessitates an underworld mode of thinking. Hillman says, “Through dream-work we shift perspective from the heroic basis of consciousness to the poetic basis of consciousness” (Dream 137). Hillman’s idea suggests fully entering an underworld state of being, which is essentially creative. The Greek word poiesis means “to make, create, produce” (“Poiesis”) and it is precisely the action rather than the destination that is the concern in this chapter. As seen in the previous chapter’s mythological study, methodology for underworld exploration must align with the ideas of embracing the opposites, shedding of the ego, and the simultaneity, multiform reality, and polytheistic psychology found in the unconscious. Yet, above all, underworld methodology must be about process—and dream, like psyche, is process.
The term dream work applies here to both the fundamental process of the unconscious psyche as it is manifested in dream and the depth psychological methods of dream examination or interpretation that generally take place in a therapeutic environment. Considering both applications illuminates the nature and vitality of underworld methodology. Hillman talks extensively about the connection between dream and the underworld in many of his publications and lectures. In The Dream and the Underworld, he writes,
All my emphasis upon the underworld and my insistence upon maintaining the dream as an underworld phenomenon is to keep the depth of the dream intact. What we take out of dreams, what we get to use from dreams, what we bring up from dreams, is all to the surface. Depth is the invisible connection; and it is working with our hands on the invisible connections where we cannot see, deep in the body of the night, penetrating, assembling and differentiating, debriding, stirring, churning, kneading—this constitutes the work on dreams. (140)
Hillman sets a rigid boundary between surface and depth in order to differentiate and preserve the two realms. In dream work, we confront a boundary between conscious and unconscious, rational and irrational, upper world and underworld. Beyond the binary structure (or rather within it), Hillman suggests the inherent process of the dream, the unseen and constantly flowing force of the unconscious that dream brings, both in sleep and in therapy. He also talks about “working with our hands” on these unseen forces, suggesting the importance of process and methodology in accessing the invisible (140). Identifying particular differences between the opposing realms and focusing on more specific characteristics of dream work itself furthers the development of an underworld methodology and its application in order to best engage the unconscious.
In dream work, as we enter the dream world, the first thing we must do is let go of linear thinking. Linear, narrative modality is the nature of waking consciousness and the opposite of underworld nature. To understand the dream, we can take cues from our own physical experience of going to sleep as we lay our bodies down and allow ego consciousness to slip away. As Hillman suggests above, to enter the poetic-state of dream, we must leave the heroic-state of waking. Because the ego—the conscious mind—perceives time in a linear, narrative fashion, it essentially filters out the myriad psychic energies that lie just beneath the surface at any given time. Standing firmly in the upper world, we are unable to access the underworld; we simply cannot engage the dream with ego. Berry writes that the “heroic-ego consciousness is . . . that mode which severs the inherent continuity and interconnection of the dream image as a whole” (68). To enter the dream intellectually, then, we must look beyond ego, and engage our creative selves, namely the creative aspect of the unconscious. As Hillman states above, “depth is the invisible connection,” and so we must find our connection through depth (Dream 140). Both dream and dream work, then, become an
imaginative activity . . . [where] the psyche is always at work, churning and fermenting, without forethought of its product, and there is no profit from dreams. As long as we approach the dream to exploit it for our consciousness, to gain information from it, we are turning its workings into the economics of work. This is capitalism of the ego. (Hillman, Dream 118)
What Hillman describes as imaginative activity is decidedly nonlinear. Psychologically speaking, the opposite of linear might be irrational or illogical, yet these adjectives are not sufficient to define the nature of the underworld, for a simultaneity of thought, a poly-form way of thinking must be included. It is not merely a winding, aimless path; it is multiple paths woven together at once. Abandoning the heroic-ego consciousness encourages us to enter an imaginative mode of thought that embraces simultaneity, multiplicity, irrationality, and creativity.
Active imagination is one way to approach psychological dream work, and in and of itself, it is an underworld methodology. Active imagination can be defined as “an instrument for the discovery of unconscious contents and their movement, and it is also a destroyer of form and of conscious systematization” (Neumann 116). The process, centered on engaging the unconscious, is antithetical to and thus an elixir for heroic-ego consciousness. In active imagination, we are tasked with letting go of rational thinking in order to allow images from the unconscious to reveal themselves. The dream image that manifests in sleep, and surfaces upon waking, can be re-membered once again from a creative stance through this methodology. The methodology does not look for answers but rather allows for the possibility of more information to come forth from the image itself (Jung Active). This idea of a nonsearching or passive state is reminiscent of the enormous potentiality of the lifeless Inanna on the hook. From the death-state comes the potential of transformation; thus, instead of chasing the dream image, we succumb to it. We allow it to draw us in, or draw within us, and in doing, so we reenter the underworld. The aim of therapy, however, is to bring things to the surface. Extracting meaning from a single dream image is what Jung would define as a process of amplification, or “elaboration and clarification of the dream-image” (Memories 391). He explains his dream-work methodology as bringing forth “spontaneous ideas which proceed from a given dream situation and constantly relate to it” (Memories 393). In this way, through a single dream image we engage the opposites, connect the conscious and unconscious in a creative process, and tap into the wellspring of unconscious information.
An example from Jungian psychoanalyst Robert Bosnak’s handbook of Jungian dreamwork, A Little Course in Dreams, serves to illustrate the process of active imagination with a dream image and its relevance to underworld methodology. The author describes one of his group dream-work practicums, in which a participant, George, tells of a dream in which he sees “a stainless bowl with water in it. There’s a rabbit sitting in it. Its head is sticking up out of the water, and as I look at it more closely, its head goes under water. I begin to worry about that rabbit and its health. But when I look at it, I realize that this is its natural habitat. That’s the dream” (87-88). George and Bosnak begin to talk about the dream, allowing George to reenter it imaginatively. George sees again, in his mind’s eye, the bowl, the rabbit, and the water. He allows himself to be pulled in by the dream. After more discussion, it is the bowl that seems to hold George’s interest and the group focuses on that image. The author describes the interaction when he asks George a question regarding the bowl: “‘First, let’s look at the environment of the bowl. Is the bowl inside or outside, in a room or outdoors?’ . . . ‘In a room,’ George answers firmly” (91). George has no hesitation with his answer. As we reenter the dream and engage the dream image, our perception can sharpen and details reveal themselves. George did not mention the room when he described the dream, and perhaps he was not even aware of the room when he first remembered the dream upon waking. Yet we can see through his unquestioned response that, for George, the image of the bowl and the dream image as a whole have obvious and unarguable traits—one being links to more images, as in the room. George is not making up the idea of the room; he knows intuitively that the room is part of the dream. Yet he needs to engage the unconscious creatively in order to reveal deeper traits of the image. Beyond the bowl, the rabbit, and the water, George finds many more details surrounding these initial images that might serve to illuminate the meaning of the dream as a whole. Although a dream may be described in only a few lines, through active imagination, it can become a wellspring of seemingly hidden details, feelings, and associations.
As George and Bosnak go on to dissect the dream image further, the bowl, the rabbit, and the water all reveal rich characteristics and trigger deep associations for George (as well as for Bosnak and the other participants in the group). Through the active imagination exercise, George interacts with the rabbit, the water, the bowl, and the room. He finds many associated feelings. At one point, the image of the rabbit transforms to a living entity. George reports, “It’s putting its ears down. It’s like it’s giving me permission to pet its head . . . The rabbit now feels like a pet. I can feel the bones in its head. And its ears. It’s almost a dog. As if it were my pet” (100-101). Interacting with his own dream image, George comes to realize that he has a longing in his heart for a part of himself rooted in a childhood memory. Bosnak describes how the dream becomes an emotional opening for George to connect with himself in a meaningful way, for after all, the dream is his. A single dream image holds associations, related memories, and fact-like details, all stemming from and relating to the dreamer’s own psyche. In a general sense, the dream brings with it an “emotional atmosphere” (Bosnak 101) that can be accessed through active imagination. In his book Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson writes, “Through active imagination it becomes more and more clear that the images . . . are in fact symbols, representing deep interior parts of ourselves” (139). Incorporating an imaginative mode of thinking, active imagination, like any effective underworld methodology, allows access to the symbols of the unconscious. The exercise is a bridge between the opposites as it connects depth and surface. Jungian analyst Joan Chodorow writes, “This ability to bear the tension between conscious and unconscious is the essence of active imagination” (10).
Another characteristic of underworld methodology discerned in mythology is simultaneity. Berry says of the dream image, “An image is simultaneous. No part precedes or causes another part, although all parts are involved with each other” (60). She elaborates, saying, “There can be no priority in an image—all is given at once. Everything is occurring while everything else is occurring, in different ways, simultaneously” (61). In George’s case, the room, the bowl, the water, and the rabbit are all present, together. When he discovers the associations to a particular image, they are present regardless of how they might fit into a narrative understanding of the dream. The characteristics of the bowl (at one point in his exercise it becomes silver, and at another point porcelain) exist separate from a singular or linear understanding.
Simultaneity is, by definition, nonlinear, and working a dream image, again, allows for a modal change, “shifting our standpoint from perceptual to imaginal” (Berry 59). The previous exploration of the Amduat demonstrated the necessity for imaginal thought in order to understand the multiform nature of ancient Egyptian religion. Simultaneity as a mode of thinking helps us understand how Re and his cohort transform spontaneously, like George’s bowl, yet each manifestation exists simultaneously as part of the underworld journey.
Depth psychological dream work is essentially working oneself, one’s unconscious, with a nonlinear, creative, underworld methodology. From this process comes creative transformation, which, in George’s case, is the emergence of a deep emotion that helps him find “a restored contact with the heart of childhood” (Bosnak 102). Through active imagination, the dream, or dream image, is transformed into an experience of depth. “Jung often points out that active imagination is not so much a technique as it is a natural process,” says Chodorow (13). In this way, we can rely on not only depth as our invisible connection but also underworld methodology as something we inherently possess. Before leaving dream work and moving on to alternative methods of underworld engagement, I present an updated triangle diagram. On the point of underworld methodology, dream work is added, and on the point of framework for fluidity, dream image is added—for the dream image, like the bark in the Amduat, distinctly contains all the potentialities for change, amplification, association, and interpretation (see fig. 2).
