Réo’s Reviews > The Dream Game > Status Update

Chapter 14
Three most commonly studied types of ESP: precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy
For Faraday, the existence and veracity of ESP a less important function of dreams compared to providing reflections of, insights into daily life
Parallel between ESP and psychedelic experiences, in that inner parent is "switched off" and inner child is allowed to emerge, able to find things beautiful and good just as they are

Chapter 13
"Transforming symbols" represent the dreamer's inner strength that allows them to topple a topdog, usually everyday things, not ancient symbols (eg. Jungian archetypes)
Overcoming inner conflict via a "transcendent function" isn't done by repressing it, but viewing it differently from a new level of consciousness
Rather than denial of pain/change, acceptance to understand the reason for their existence

Chapter 12
Perls: We'd rather maintain the status quo: rather keep in the status quo of a mediocre marriage, mentality, aliveness, than to go through that impasse.
Jung: People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls ... all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. (2/2)

Chapter 12
"The impasse in which we refuse to experience feeling is a kind of living death, and that is what we condemn ourselves to when we cling to the departed."
"Facing what we believe to be nothingness, the void — that is the essence of every impasse ... the inability to believe that we can have any meaningful existence at all except in terms of some self-image with which we have become identified..." (1/2)

Chapter 11 (cont.)
"The willingness to confront and 'embrace' the things you fear in yourself is the essential clue to integration, as both Jung and Perls realized, and this principle is at the heart of Temiar dream theory."

"You never overcome anything by resisting it. You can only overcome anything by going deeper into it... if you go deeply enough into it, it will disappear; it will be assimilated." - Perls

Chapter 11
Faraday views most nightmares as an exaggerated form of self-torture dream games between topdog and underdog, where one has offended the other in waking life
"Self-punishment" nightmare inflicted by topdog on underdog for defiance
"Acceptance" nightmare caused by underdog lashing out in response to suppression by topdog
Topdogs cannot be placated, must be defeated, but underdogs should be compromised with

Chapter 10
Topdogs are more overt and tend to reflect an authority figure from one's life that imposes its ideals on and expects perfect conduct from the dreamer.
Underdogs are usually more subtle and reflect the dreamers' rebellious attitude toward topdog, refusing to accede to topdog all the while hamstringing the dreamer in doing so.

Chapter 9
On the danger of underdog-turned-topdog: "... as soon as counterculturally minded people allow themselves to moralize, preaching that everyone one should [be, do, etc.] ... they fall into the very worst evil of straight society."
Identity politics, left-wing moralizing? (2/2)

Chapter 8
Some of Faraday's suggestions on how to harness "dream power" make the whole project seem nonsensical (eg. "Thank you, dream power, for the dream... Please send me another dream tonight..."), but OK, IG.
Importantly, it isn't oracular, but "it is more like a psychotherapist or a very good friend. It's fundamental concern is with the design and quality of your life, not in making you rich or famous."

Chapters 6-7
Chapter on how puns may recur in one's dreams (verbal, idiomatic, etc.) (haven't had much of this in my own experience?)
People/things can either be symbolic or non-symbolic, a la her earlier point on interpreting dreams literally vs. metaphorically
Even if a dream relates to the future or past, they reflect something presently on the mind
Dreams (the heart) don't tell us what the mind already knows