Reverse image of Statute at the Ming Tombs
~ Original photo courtesy of Steve Byrne
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
~ Carl Jung

Dreams, Hallucinations, and Obsessive Fantasies

~ Gary N. Massey ~

Dreams, hallucinations, and obsessive fantasies emerge from the ocean of the unconscious. Some images require depth charges to break free, while others readily rise and surface. Certain symbols float like marker buoys, while others require recovery by pressurized exploration at deeper levels of the personality. These symbols, figures, scenes, images and their changing configurations have their own emotional wave lengths and intensity levels. Symbols and images readily adhere or repel each other when and wherever they connect, contrast, touch or play off one another. The specific gravity of a particular image sequence is spun from memory, recent experience, anxst and expectation into a space-time vortex bound by personal relativity and meaning.

The imagination casts symbols and images from the unconscious configurations based on principles of operation much like spaceage transport or tractor beams which pull or draw in figures and objects into a carefully constructed environment. At other moments activity may be more akin to the movement of gooey, amoeboid creatures readily orienting, fluttering toward, adhering and engulfing, or incorporating other imaginal elements. On occasion the magnetic attraction of the imagination reverses polarity and symbols and images are slung out of an unconscious configuration as though lost in space, sucked into a whirlpool or waterspout, or torn away toward the imaginal/anti-imaginal ring crescent of an individual black hole.

Mixed, confusing or seemingly contradictory images and symbols can in effect initiate and prompt the conscious mind, much like a centrifuge, to refocus and ferret seemingly disparate images and figures from mere debris in the current, or on the sands, of mind. Just as when beachcombing following a storm, when surveying and digging through fantasy, dream, and hallucinatory imagery, some of the greatest discoveries and most special of treasures lie in the fragments and shards thrown up by the sea.

Imaginal objects and structures are the props and supports against which intrapsychic and interpersonal queries, cues, concerns and conflict are cast.

Figures play out phases in individual emotional psychic growth or serve as foils to pinpoint personal roles, behavioral tendencies and approaches to others in our waking lives.

The imaginal landscapes frame and fill-in the latitude and attitude composition of near past, current, or impending intrapsychic and interpersonal environments and atmosphere.

Colors shade in the tints and hues of mental, emotional and interpersonal energy level and intensity, with color mixes drawing out shadows in light as well as the blends and mixtures of counterpoised human energies.

The imaginal body in movement, posture, body part or organ functioning orients us to our carriage, mode of transfer, direction, agency, focus and skills level operation and manipulation in life.

Symbol clusters and configurations mark the rites of psychic and interpersonal passage and transformation through initiation, wounding and betrayal, fragmentation and decompensation, triage and reintegration, into healing and wholeness.

The dimensions of the unconscious thus sculpted in the imagery of hallucinations, dreams, and fantasies are comparable to the depths, currents, and creatures of the sea; just as the forces of time and space encountered in one's movement through the universe reflect how intimately interconnected is our microcosmic place among the stars.

Copyright © 1990 by Gary N. Massey. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication of contents without written permission.

Gary N. Massey, Ph.D., LMSW-ACP, LPC, LMFT, CGP  has pursued the study of dreams and their application in clinical settings throughout his professional career. He provides professional workshops for practitioners within the mental health and educational fields.