LE "RÊVE EVEILLE " And PSYCHODRAMA
By: Dr. Juan Pedro Severino from
This is a
dissertation performed in the 2nd Symposium of Jungian Thought at the American
States Organisation (O.E.A.).
Image- Bond- Space
Understanding in what measure the body stops the wound
that originates between the image and the word is, perhaps, the epistemologic
fundamental problem of the psychotherapy.
The work that today concerns us, seeks to introduce in
the formulation of a technique that, operating initially from the environment
of the imaginary, it transits the word to being formulate in the body, that
concrete instance of the spontaneity. Body that is at the same time direct
descendant of the imaginary and final resultant of the word.
Through driven dream, we introduce ourselves in the
field of the image, an image that is moving and promoting into the ontological
dimensions of the temporisation and the spatialisation, impregnated of ideal
significances from where they pull up the primogenit formulations of the I, in
order to reach its definitive structure in the mundane order of the subject.
Through the psychodrama we approached the
being-in-the-world of the subject through the body "significant nucleus,
place of fork and organisation of all the experiences."
With the help of both, driven dream and psychodrama,
we seek to direct the sought Saussuriana’s controversy as for the orderly
meaning, the significant and the lacanian's proposal that determines the
significance under the order of the significant. The dramatic dream as could
denominate the technique we presented, leads us to a different formulation, the
dialectic whose formula would be: significant- significance - significant, or
its equivalent: imaginary- word- body, this last like synthetic articulator,
like final organiser, from where the total instances of our existence are
completed.
This existence that begins in the chaotic and archaic
life experiences of the imaginary, with their precarious and speculative
propping-up in order to reach the real corporeality of the subject in the
structurating order of the symbolic.
We won't stop, obviously, in the description of the
psychodrama’s technique, so will only be considered important to point out our
conception of group like global structure and the treatment of a protagonistic
situation as groupal emergent. The protagonist is, therefore, a thematic
spokesman of the group and, at the same time, their formulator and continent. The
"Driven Dream" appear for the first time in the psychotherapeutic
bibliography in the magazine Action et Pensée in 1931 by the initiative
of Charles Baudoin; in 1938 this same author prologues the work of Robert
Desoille "The exploration of the subconscious affectivity through
the Driven Dream method." The apparition of this technique in
Among the predecessors of Robert Desoille can
be mention to Pierre Janet driving the hysterical nightmares under
hypnosis, to Alfred Binet with his glass ball and his hypnotic images,
to León Duadet in his studies on the oniric production in state of vigil, to
Happich with the induction of images in the states of meditation. All these authors
only sought the projective correlation between the images and the affectivity. The
merit of Robert Desoille consisted in the use of the imaginary material with
therapeutic purposes. The Driven Dream arises as well as an original technique
that more than being the simple "exploration of the affectivity" as
Robert Desoille initially sought , it are converted in fact in a methodology in
order to approach the unconscious. Freud itself in "The I and the
this," says that:
"the thought of images is many more near to the
unconscious processes than the verbal thought and it's, without any doubt, many
older than this from the ontogenetic and filogenetic view" (1)
We considered important in this point to add a piece
more from the Freud's own text that elucidates us, in any way, the reason of
the Driven Dream:
"But not we think of- says Freud- maybe for the
sake of the simplification, forget the significant of the optic mnemonic
remains - of the things of the world -deny that it is possible, and still in
many people seems privileged, a conscious arrival of the processes of thought
through setback to the visual remains. The study of the dreams, and the
unconscious fantasies according to the observations of J. Varendonk could
provide us an image of the specificity of this visual thinking." (2)
"the remains of words, say Freud in another moment, come essentially, from
acoustic perceptions." "The word is then in itself, the mnemonic rest
of the heard word" (3)
What we find important it for our work is the place
that the images occupy in the structure of the unconscious, and that when Lacan
says that the unconscious is structured like a language, he understand the
language as structure, independently of its realisation, that is to say,
independent of the significant modality, that in the Driven Dream the analyst
what he do is "écouter le rève," listen to the dream, hear- if you
permit me, the images. (4)
This is the great discovery and the brilliant idea of
Robert Desoille: placing the subject analysed in favourable conditions for the
mobilisation of the imaginary store, from whose contents speak us by word. And
the analyst is not already here only the listens to but which imagine, the one
that it is threaten to create a different encounter and bond's space; a space
of the imaginary, that place of the original perceptions, configurators of the
unnominated reality, experimental and archaic knot from what externally is
perceived and of what internally is perceived. Experience printed in that
incarnated I that is our body.
Such is, in compressing synthesis the theoretical
fundament of this methodology of work, that seeks to make the driven dream and
the psychodrama a one only technique of psychotherapeutic boarding that we have
chosen to calling, at least at the time, dramatic dream.
We understand that its value resides in the fact of
facilitating us the creation of a common space to the therapeutic group, enable
for its members to spread their imagination and make good interrelation, that
allows to continue the vicissitudes of the protagonistic situation through the
mobilisation of images. The transferring of the dramatic speech of the word and
the gesture of the imaginary's field presents the advantages of the
immediateness. The image is what it is, without preambles neither ambiguities
it comes like the immediate given, as the first reality of the subject. Remembering
Pontalis when he sustains that the "Subject that speaks is whole
subject," we are able to say: The subject that imagines is the whole
subject. Stiller if we understand that the word comes after the image, this
privileges the possibility on that of showing us in the pure forcefulness of
their contents, the primary reality of the man that before than a speaking
being is an imaginative being.
I would like at this time to remember a sentence from
an Alain Miller's conference:
"what the psychoanalyst is interested in, an so
to Freud in the science of the dreams, is the speech provided by the patient
from his dream, he was never fascinated for a subjective reality that by
definition could not be visualised; we for the moment could not visualise the
dreams of the others" (5).
This is undoubtedly so, but in the technique that we
propose, the possibility of creating an imaginary common space, in the form that
we later on will describe, allow us to give the opportunity to a group to be
and communicate in the field of corpority and the imagined action.
Place from where the subject speaks, but where the
word is a pure description of the image, of the imaginary sequence, and not the
simply explanatory word. This acquires then in the course of a dramatic dream
session, the hierarchy of the speaking image, full of significance since it,
mediates in the interrelationary field of the imaginary, like the visual immediate.
The image emerges with its significant forcefulness and the word loses its
transparent vacuity in order to being an opaque and resistant object where from
I spelling and inscribe my own world and my con-mundanely.
Gaston Bachelard
with lyricism, that could reject the scientific psychology and alluding to the
image in the field of the soul's phenomenology tells us:
"But for a mere poetic image, there is not
project, it is not necessary more than a movement of the soul. In a poetic
image the soul says their presence." (6)
Methodology:
We carried out the dramatic dream's sessions in groups
of six to ten people as ideal number. Persons begins trying to achieve a good
heating as well as to facilitating the emergency of the protagonistic situation
and the main character. When this happens we request to the protagonist and to
the whole group that they could assume such way in order to achieve a good
relax, we could describe the desirable situation like a calm vigil. The
watchword is that the whole group tries to continue imaginarily the dream of
the protagonist. It proposes then a departure image that could be, or very one
of them used in the first sessions of psychotherapy through the driven dream:
the ascent to a mountain, the descent to the bottom of the sea, the meeting
with the witch or the sorcerer, etc., or one that could arise according to the
protagonistic thematic of that day's session. . We have seen in our experience
that although starting point image used don't allude direct neither indirectly
to the situation of the group in that moment, the simple fact- if could call
simple- of placing the group in the favourable conditions in order to consent
to a common imaginary and interrelation space, permits the apparition of
imaginary material with amazing wealth. The intricateness of the own imagery
and that of the other far from hindering the encounter it act in a reciprocal
synergy enriching and pointing its understanding. We almost could say that it
is the privileged moment for a collective introspection that moves and
agglutinate the group.
The therapist directs and accompanies the imaginary
sequence. He make it requesting the deamer protagonist that she alives, in the
measure that could make it the imaginary drama, that she feel acting, walking,
experiencing, not being rare the appearance of corporal sensations and
modifications of the corporal scheme. Requesting permanently that she explains
what she feels and what she is passing through.
From the whole literature that has taken place about
Driven Dream we considered that the following transcription, belonging to
Levine, allows to bring us near to the essential of a session. This author
says:
"In the Driven Dream, under the form of a filmic
construction, with an analogical language, animist, metaphoric, the unconscious
problems find a continuation whose natural and spontaneous character surprises
to whom hasn't passed the experience of the method. Inside a development often
dramatic, and like from an interior uncontrollable impulse, are related there, with
regard to personages animals, symbolic objects, a history with situations more
or less unusual, surprisingly articulate to each other. The subject is not
surprised of this at the same time. He live his Driven Dream like an actor,
feeling the throbs, the anguishes, the hate and the fondness that the
descripted situations inspire him and at the same time he looks at them like
spectator, but without perceiving, for a first moment, the conductive thread of
his speech." (7)
We considered important to highlight that in some
moments of the imaginary sequence the therapist makes out, additionally to the
above pointed, interventions in order to interpret and mark.
Once finished the Driven Dream itself, are passing to
the second part. The comment of the happening and the dramatisations with the
emergent material. When the Dream finishes is notable to observe, like a
constant, the high affective and emotional content in the environment of the
group as well as the corporal readiness to board to the dramatic sequence. At
this time the therapist doesn't differ in his chore to what happens in a common
psychodramatic session. We could say that his ability rests in co-ordinate the
scenes appropriately that, proposals initially to the imaginary level, they
look for their elaboration and resolution in the field of the dramatic as if. Image,
word and body converge so in a definitive act whose purpose is in last and
first instance, to place the body like fundamental instance between the image
and the word. Operating on the compensatory act of fancying], to
intellectual and inoperative prevalence like creative and productive act, in
order to transform it in creative prospecting imagination. Permitting the
subject to access to the his imagined history's environment and contact with
the personages and situations of his fantasies in the symbolic order of the
dramatic expressive.
We remember the case of a member of a training group
as an only and clear example. The proposal was the entrance to a forest and
explore it. The protagonist is placed in it with an enormous ombú(*1) between
whose gnarled roots there is a cave in whose interior waits for him an old
woman with "sweet and tender eyes" with a long and white apron. Between
her extended hands sustains a braided bread with candies, that still hot and
discharging an aroma owner to the breads newly taken out from the oven, she
arouse emotion in her deeply. She don't encourage up to approaching. We urged
it to do that but she are not able to, she just crouch down to the feet of the
elderly woman and are wrapped up between the pleats of their apron experiencing
a "deep fondness." When finish the dream's session she looks us
surprised and tells us "but is my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. I
never knew her, I heard very little about her. Is that my parents, being
emigrant Jews, escaped from the war, they come to
An important piece of my history. Thank you, A. She
says to the partner that acted as the grandmother in the investment of rules,
"I believe that in your eyes, in your body and in your arms my grandmother
was."
This is our first communication of the works that we
are carrying out around this technique that how we said, we has called it
Dramatic Dream.
We believe that after all the important thing it is
not the name but all that it have raised in us when we began to elaborate it
and to work with it.
Twenty years ago we in
Here in this
Thank you!
Dr. Juan Pedro
Severino. ( R.O.U.)
References:
(* 1) Ombú: Typical argentinean big tree.
Bibliography:
(1) J. LAUNAY,
J. LEVINE y G.MAUREY. "El Ensueño Dirigido y el Inconsciente". Ed.
Paidós. Argentina 1982.
(2) FREUD
SIGMUND, Obras Completas. "El Yo y El Ello". Tomo XIX Amorrortu
editores. Buenos Aires 1979.
(3) Idem.
(4) DUFOUR R. "Ecouter le Rève". Ediciones Robert
Laffont. Paris 1978.
(5) ALAIN
MILLER J. "Cinco conferencias caraqueñas sobre Lacan" Ed. Ateneo de
Caracas (La edición carece de fecha de publicación).
(6) BACHELARD
G. "La poética del Espacio". Breviario Fondo de Cultura Económica.
México 1975.
(7) LAUNAY J.,
LEVIENE J. y MAUREY G. "El ensueño dirigido y el Inconsciente". Ed.
Paidós. Buenos Aires, 1982.
