Steelhead Dreams The Theory, Method, Science and Madness of Great Lakes Steelhead Fly Fishing Book

What is particularly fascinating about Journal of Dreams is not so much Swedenborg's night visions, for most people's dreams are so personal as to be almost meaningless. Rather, it is the editor's excellent understanding of the dream process. In fact, Van Dusen's Introduction is one of the best primers extant on how dreams occur, what they mean for the individual, and how one should look at them. Because he is so eloquent --- as eloquent we think, as Emanuel Swedenborg, and a hell of a lot less daffy --- one can see a system of dream-vision which makes sense to the average reader.
Once you get used to the peculiar language of dreams they become a personal guidance system with a superior overview of the nature of one's own life. As a clinical psychologist, understanding my own dreams is a prerequisite for working on a client's dreams... Dreams are valuable guidance system. Should I be in error with Swedenborg's dreams, I would expect my own personal guidance system to tell me so. I need my own dreams to monitor my understanding of his. This might surprise you. But when you are working on something, especially when it is close to your life concerns, your dreams will tell you how well you are doing.

As some of the rest of us have discovered over the years, dreams are a feedback system, and a very sensible one. The key is learning one's own code. Dreams are a part of the brain communicating with another part of the brain, an interior movie house, free but without popcorn. At night, we are allowed to watch the fireworks, all created by us. Words are not the medium of dream communication --- rather, it's pictures, with a rich system of personal symbols:

Dreams are mostly composed of dramatic pictorial representations... its natural mode of thought is this dramatic language of correspondences --- dramatic because it is inclined to make statements by showing actual incidents involving us. It speaks in terms of dramatic events which correspond to elements in the inner life and the experience of the person.

He refers to the source of dreams as "the dream maker" (Nabokov referred to it as "the Dream Machine.") Dreams, Van Dusen says, are a function of free will. The Dream Maker presents curious incidents that we can "try to figure out or not," as we wish. The Dream Maker is "in a position to know all the memories, experiences, hopes and fears of the dreamer." Thus he (or she, or it) is a cool and unbiased commentator on our days and lives --- something necessary for our personal balance and adjustment. (In experiments, it has been found that if people were woken constantly to prevent dreams, the subjects turned a bit psychotic.)