Dreams: gifts from the unconscious to the conscious mind
I want to discuss two related topics of this weeks unit on Neuroscience and art. The segment from this week regarding the unconscious profoundly piqued my interest. I will discuss two related ideas, Jung’s ideas of the unconscious mind and creativity and his ideas on the collective unconscious.
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| <http://www.globoforce.com/gfblog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Flow.png> |
The ideas regarding the unconscious’ effect on creativity reminded me of the influence of improvisation and pre-cognitive creation in the arts as well as my own recent experiences of that. From bebop jazz music to 1960’s psychedelic jam bands in music to improv circles in theatre, there are many cases of improvisation, or ‘unconscious’ creations while awake, influencing or even spawning whole genres within various artforms. [1] In my interpretation of Professor Csikszentmihalyi's idea of flow (which he regards as the mind-space that improvising free jazz musicians occupy), I understand flow as utilizing both the full capacities of the unconscious as well as the conscious mind. [2] I’ve always been one for improvised music, but creating music in my dreams was an approach to unconscious creation that I hadn’t experienced before.
About three months ago, out of the blue, I started having very vivid dreams in which I was playing an instrument. Often times it was a stringed instrument such as a guitar, sometimes it was drums or other percussion instruments, while on the occasion it would be no instrument at all; I would be making physical gestures to various environmental elements, such as the wind or rain and make sounds in that way. However, most times when I wake up from these dreams I have great difficulty remembering what I had played, but I distinctly recall the action of playing an instrument. I usually remember how things sounded (tonally, for instance that the wind had a filtered white noise quality to it) but not what I played (melodically or rhythmically). On one occasion, a few weeks ago, I was noodling on the guitar and a very familiar melody came to me that I could not remember where I had heard before (a sort of musical déjà vu). I am beginning to suspect it is a motif I had encountered in one of my dreams. I am grateful for these strange experiences of the unconscious influencing my conscious mind, though I have yet to harness these sonic manifestations in wholly productive way.
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| Interpretive painting of John Coltrane, a master of free jazz http://royayersproject.com/wp-content/gallery/john-coltrane-art/by-leonid-afremov.jpg |
About three months ago, out of the blue, I started having very vivid dreams in which I was playing an instrument. Often times it was a stringed instrument such as a guitar, sometimes it was drums or other percussion instruments, while on the occasion it would be no instrument at all; I would be making physical gestures to various environmental elements, such as the wind or rain and make sounds in that way. However, most times when I wake up from these dreams I have great difficulty remembering what I had played, but I distinctly recall the action of playing an instrument. I usually remember how things sounded (tonally, for instance that the wind had a filtered white noise quality to it) but not what I played (melodically or rhythmically). On one occasion, a few weeks ago, I was noodling on the guitar and a very familiar melody came to me that I could not remember where I had heard before (a sort of musical déjà vu). I am beginning to suspect it is a motif I had encountered in one of my dreams. I am grateful for these strange experiences of the unconscious influencing my conscious mind, though I have yet to harness these sonic manifestations in wholly productive way.
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| Taemong Dreams with various Mythological and Spiritual Symbols <http://invisibleaid.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/0/8/11084091/1392595018.jpg> |
Victoria Vesna, in her discussion of the Psychiatrist Karl Jung went mentioned Jung’s idea of collective unconscious, a universal datum: "Every human being is endowed with this psychic archetype layer since his or her birth. And one can not acquire this strata by education or by conscious effort, it is innate." [2] This reminds me very much of the Korean tradition of interpreting conception dreams, or Taemong in Korean (translated literally as fetus-dream from Chinese). Taemong are dreams that pregnant mothers, or relatives close to the mother, have of the upcoming child’s birth. These dreams are interpreted for archetypal symbols, such as a tiger, boar, dragon, or apple which then create a story about the childs personality or future life path. [3] Many people become attached to the symbols of their taemong, and identify with that symbol for the rest of their life, creating a special relationship between them and that symbol. [4] Often times these taemong are intertwined with personal and family legends. Specifically, these Taemong symbols have had a large impact on Korean mythological stories, which also remind me of Jung idea of the collective unconscious, where he states: “In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious...” [5] I'm not sure if Jung himself was aware of the ancient art of interpreting Taemong and it's effect on east Asian culture, but I suspect he would be delighted to see that it is in alignment with many of his ideas of the collective unconscious.
It has been very thought provoking for me to learn more about dreams and dream traditions, while I am in the process of constructing a personal theory for the function of dreams in my own creative practice.
It has been very thought provoking for me to learn more about dreams and dream traditions, while I am in the process of constructing a personal theory for the function of dreams in my own creative practice.
[1] Teitelbaum, Richard. "Improvisation, Computers and the Unconscious Mind." Contemporary Music Review. Print.
[2] Mazzola, G., and Paul B. Cherlin. Flow, Gesture, and Spaces in Free Jazz towards a Theory of Collaboration. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2009. Print.
[3] Vesna, Victoria, narr. “Neuroscience-pt2” N.p., . web. 5 Nov 2012.
[4] Brazeal, Mark. "Full Moon in a Jar - Taemong as an Oral Tradition of Dream Storytelling". p. 12.
[5] Brazeal, Mark. "Full Moon in a Jar - Taemong as an Oral Tradition of Dream Storytelling". p 17.
[6] "Carl Jung - Collective Unconscious." Carl Jung - Collective Unconscious. Web. 18 May 2015. <http://www.carl-jung.net/collective_unconscious.html>.
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