Perceptualand Motor Skills, 1990, 70, 540-542.
O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1990
DREAM IMAGES AS A TECHNIQUE FOR THE STUDY OF CREATIVE PROCESSES ' ROSSLYN GAINES AND DOUGLASS PRICE-WILLIAMS Universily of California, Los Angeles Summary.-For a group of 12 established artists who participated in 12 discussions it appears that quantitative and qualitative analyses of dream images constitute a useful method. Artists' creative processes can be explored through their dream images. This research examines two issues: fitst, whether the quantitative and qualitative analyses of dream images offer a viable procedural method and second, if useful information concerning artists' creative processes can be obtained through analyses of their dream images. The role of the artist in our culture has created feelings of ambivalence for almost as long as philosophers have mused on this topic. For example, Homer believed that the poet had some special knowledge given to him from the gods; Hesiod thought that the Muses bestowed a grace which allowed some men to become poets; Democritus considered that the poet was a man set aside from common humanity (2, 3). On the less positive side, Otto Rank (9) art~culatedthe artist's dilemma as being caught between his inner inspiration and his outward obl1g3c1ons.Rank saw genius as "closely linked to that of the Muse, which stands for an ideahzed being with whom the artist maintains an intense private relationship with regard to the creative process." Access to the "Muse" is often reported to be through dreams. In the ethnographic literature there are a number of such examples: d'Azevedols (2) monograph describes Gola artists who claim that their artistic work comes directly from pictures put into their minds by their guiding spirit, a spirit part Muse and part devil. Other groups who constructed art out of their dreams include the Saora of India (4), North American Indians (I), and the Huichol Indians of Mexico (10). Turning to present day America, Hillman (7) noted, "Since the early 1970s, a growing number of people in the United States have become involved with dreams, and a popular dream literature, guiding and encouraging this activity, has been steadily proliFerating." However, only a small portion of this involvement has concerned creativity (5, 8), and even less the characteristics or the use of artists' dreams. Our goal is to understand this phenomenon among artists in contemporary, urban society. To do this, we brought together our first sample of 12 artists who met for 12 audiotaped sessions to discuss night and day dreams, images, perceptions, and their concepts of the creative. These groups were on a no-fee basis and were not therapeutic, but, rather, had the goal of examining creative processes in relation to images. The artists were defined by membership in the following four categories: (a) the majority of their work time was spent in the production of their art; (b) the majority of their income came from the production of their art (in some instances artists worked in related fields, such as teaching, but identified themselves primarily as artists); (c) their peer groups perceived them as fellow artists; and (d) their work had achieved some public recognition in exhibitions, publications, etc. As can be seen, we define artists across media and include writers, painters, sculptors, performers, musicians, composers, directors, and choreographers. This first group of 12 artists included 8 painters, 1 sculptor, 1 actor, and 2 writers who met
'This paper was presented in part at the XI1 International Con ress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, 1988. Reprint requests sf~ouldbe sent to Professor R. Gaines, Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, UCLA, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90024-175919.
DREAM IMAGES IN CREATIVE PROCESS
54 1
the criteria. There were 5 women and 7 men. The age range was from the early thirties through the mid-sixties. Most had been in the past or presently were in psychotherapy. These 12 sessions produced over 1000 single-spaced pages of transcription. In this article we discuss only the perceptual categories used in the dreams and some qualitative aspects of their imagery. Fourteen categories were selected from an examination of the Literature on content analysis of dreams (6) and also from ad hoc decisions based on the appropriateness to this first sample. The categories were: presence and actions of the dreamer, presence and actions of other humans, of animals, architecture, interior furnishings, clothing, narure, the supernatural, shapes, colors, sensory perceptions, affect, time and space, and lastly, the catch-all category of miscellaneous objects. Two raters judged the frequencies of these categories and had high interrater reliability. A total of 67 day or night dreams were presented in the 12 sessions with a range of 1 to 10 dreams per artist. The wide range is primarily due to some artists' practice of presenting two to three dreams in one session. The analysis showed that people in the dreams accounted for the highest frequency, 27%-which comprised 11% for self-representation and 16% for the presence of other persons in the dream. The catch-all category of miscellaneous objects was also 16%. Since the majority of the group were painters, there was a relatively high percentage of dream images concerning architecture: 11%. Colors and images of a ~ e n s o r ~ - ~ e r c e ~nature t u a l were also relatively high, both at 8%. Images related to nature and to interior scenes were represented at 7% and 5%, respectively. Attention to time and location in the dream was slightly higher rhan to the previous two categories: 8%. Attention to shapes, to animals, to the supernatural, and to clothing were all rather small percentages of 3%, respectively. There was considerable affect displayed in these artists' dreams. Since it is always difficult to assess and differentiate affect, we only used three categories: negative, positive and neutral. Negative affect included feelings of fear, threatening situations, confusion, alarm, panic, and betrayal. Positive affect included humor, cosiness, "going to have a good time," eroticism and pleasantness. There were approximately 50% more images of negative affect than of positive, and there were more than twice as many ~rnagesof positive affect as neutral images. Qualitatively, there are several features o l rhese dreams that seem to us to be notable. First, poetic images are the norm as compared to prosaic images. By poetic images we refer to images such as splendid, turreted castles, beautiful landscapes flooded by sunlight, or a moon covered with reflecting silver plates. These images contrast with more prosaic dream images of lost tickets, household tasks, etc. Second, when dark images are presented, these take on a dramatic form: for example, one is not chased by policemen but by giant furies. Third, while supernatural images are low in frequency (3%) compared to other categories, nonetheless, their appearance in these artists' dreams are often dramatic: conversations are held in caves with dead fathers, or bedsheets dance together. Fourth, there are many instances in which color images are intensely vivid; for example, "the most beautiful blue water imaginable." Fifth, shape is not used abstractly as is color, but is rooted in interior and exterior architectural forms and in objects. Sixth, the over-all meaning of the dream frequently revolves around the professional identity and creative problems of the artists so that these issues were presented in their dreams. Last, the structure of the dream appears to have fewer breaks in the narrative form than the dreams of nonartists. Instead, these artists' dreams often appear to be connected sequences of events, much like a short story, where the scene changes have orderly transitions. We find this a compelling quality in that the surprising order often gives the dreams a fairy tale or story quality. We turn now to the artists' own evaluations of the usefulness of dreams; four positive examples and three negative examples are presented. Taken as a whole, the group shows ambivalence about dreaming. Some are extremely positive. One woman painter states that she learns from her dreams. Her dreams are "dialogues with herself." If she reads the messages correctly "all the answers are inside" her. I n one dream her cat appeared as a "scrawny brown Little dying
542
R. GAINES & D. PRICE-WILLIAMS
thing, sitting on her art table," and this painter saw this image as "the symbol of my art . . . I've starved that part of myself and I'm just dying to get back to it." Another woman painter stated that looking at her dreams makes "them more magical, more powerful to me instead of less." Yet another woman painter was outright in stating that "I use my personal dreams . . . to give more information about myself, and then I use my paintings . . . as a tool to work through some of the things that I found out through my dreams." A male painter recollected that he had a dream and drew some images from it, and when he looked at the pictures, he was brought back into the dream. All these are instances, in varying degrees, of artists using their dreams in a positive fashion. Others, however, expressed apprehension about using their dreams in their work. One male writer was worried that, "when you try to interpret them, all meaning and connection disappear." Another man, a writer, reported that "I can't think of ever having dreamed of an idea." A third man, a painter, was adamant in claiming that he did not operate on the premise that "I dream and then I go and paint." It should be mentioned that as the sessions continued all three men found value in working on their dreams, and the third man dramatically discovered, in telling one dream, that it was directly related to his painting. In concluding, we have presented some attitudes and uses of dreams from our first group of American urban artists. I t appears chat most artists in t h s group are using their dreams primarily to understand their selves in greater depth. Their art is primarily an expression of themselves and one important source of their creative work clearly seems to derive from their dream images. We find that the quantitative and qualitative analysis of artists' dreams is a viable procedural method and adds a comparative sample of artists from an urban, complex society to the body of knowledge about artists' creative processes. REFERENCES 1. COXHEAD, D., & HILLER, S. (1976) Dreams: visions of the night. London: Thames on Hudson. 2. D'AZEVEDO, W. L. (1975) The artist archetype in Gola culture. Liberian Studies, University of Delaware. 3. DODDS,E. R. (1957) The Greeks and the irrational. Boston, M A : Beacon Press. 4. ELWIN,H. V. (1951) Tribal art of Middle India. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univer. Press. H. (1987) Creativity and dreams. In M. Ullman & C. Limmer (Eds.), The variety 5. FAGIN, of dream experience: expanding our ways of working with dreams. New York: Continuum. Pp. 59-81. 6 . HALL,C. S., & VANDE CASTLE,R. L. (1966) The content analysis of dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. 7. HILLMAN, D. J. (1987) Dream work and field work: linking cultural anthropology and the current dream work movement. In M. Ullman & C. Limmer (Eds.), The uariery of dream experience: expanding our ways of working with dreams. New York: Continuum. Pp. 117-141. 8. JONES,R. M. (1987) Dream reflection and creative writing. In M. Ullman & C. Limmer (Eds.), The variety of dream experience: expanding our ways of working with dreams. New York: Continuum. Pp. 142-170. 9. RANK,0. (1932) Art and the artists. New York: Knopf. 10. SIEGEL,R. K., & JARVIX, M. E. (1975) Drug-induced hallucinating in animals and man. In R. K. Siege1 & L. J. West (Eds.), Hallucinations: behavior, experience, and theory. New York: Wiley. Pp. 81-161.
Accepted March 12, 1990.
O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1990
DREAM IMAGES AS A TECHNIQUE FOR THE STUDY OF CREATIVE PROCESSES ' ROSSLYN GAINES AND DOUGLASS PRICE-WILLIAMS Universily of California, Los Angeles Summary.-For a group of 12 established artists who participated in 12 discussions it appears that quantitative and qualitative analyses of dream images constitute a useful method. Artists' creative processes can be explored through their dream images. This research examines two issues: fitst, whether the quantitative and qualitative analyses of dream images offer a viable procedural method and second, if useful information concerning artists' creative processes can be obtained through analyses of their dream images. The role of the artist in our culture has created feelings of ambivalence for almost as long as philosophers have mused on this topic. For example, Homer believed that the poet had some special knowledge given to him from the gods; Hesiod thought that the Muses bestowed a grace which allowed some men to become poets; Democritus considered that the poet was a man set aside from common humanity (2, 3). On the less positive side, Otto Rank (9) art~culatedthe artist's dilemma as being caught between his inner inspiration and his outward obl1g3c1ons.Rank saw genius as "closely linked to that of the Muse, which stands for an ideahzed being with whom the artist maintains an intense private relationship with regard to the creative process." Access to the "Muse" is often reported to be through dreams. In the ethnographic literature there are a number of such examples: d'Azevedols (2) monograph describes Gola artists who claim that their artistic work comes directly from pictures put into their minds by their guiding spirit, a spirit part Muse and part devil. Other groups who constructed art out of their dreams include the Saora of India (4), North American Indians (I), and the Huichol Indians of Mexico (10). Turning to present day America, Hillman (7) noted, "Since the early 1970s, a growing number of people in the United States have become involved with dreams, and a popular dream literature, guiding and encouraging this activity, has been steadily proliFerating." However, only a small portion of this involvement has concerned creativity (5, 8), and even less the characteristics or the use of artists' dreams. Our goal is to understand this phenomenon among artists in contemporary, urban society. To do this, we brought together our first sample of 12 artists who met for 12 audiotaped sessions to discuss night and day dreams, images, perceptions, and their concepts of the creative. These groups were on a no-fee basis and were not therapeutic, but, rather, had the goal of examining creative processes in relation to images. The artists were defined by membership in the following four categories: (a) the majority of their work time was spent in the production of their art; (b) the majority of their income came from the production of their art (in some instances artists worked in related fields, such as teaching, but identified themselves primarily as artists); (c) their peer groups perceived them as fellow artists; and (d) their work had achieved some public recognition in exhibitions, publications, etc. As can be seen, we define artists across media and include writers, painters, sculptors, performers, musicians, composers, directors, and choreographers. This first group of 12 artists included 8 painters, 1 sculptor, 1 actor, and 2 writers who met
'This paper was presented in part at the XI1 International Con ress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, 1988. Reprint requests sf~ouldbe sent to Professor R. Gaines, Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, UCLA, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90024-175919.
DREAM IMAGES IN CREATIVE PROCESS
54 1
the criteria. There were 5 women and 7 men. The age range was from the early thirties through the mid-sixties. Most had been in the past or presently were in psychotherapy. These 12 sessions produced over 1000 single-spaced pages of transcription. In this article we discuss only the perceptual categories used in the dreams and some qualitative aspects of their imagery. Fourteen categories were selected from an examination of the Literature on content analysis of dreams (6) and also from ad hoc decisions based on the appropriateness to this first sample. The categories were: presence and actions of the dreamer, presence and actions of other humans, of animals, architecture, interior furnishings, clothing, narure, the supernatural, shapes, colors, sensory perceptions, affect, time and space, and lastly, the catch-all category of miscellaneous objects. Two raters judged the frequencies of these categories and had high interrater reliability. A total of 67 day or night dreams were presented in the 12 sessions with a range of 1 to 10 dreams per artist. The wide range is primarily due to some artists' practice of presenting two to three dreams in one session. The analysis showed that people in the dreams accounted for the highest frequency, 27%-which comprised 11% for self-representation and 16% for the presence of other persons in the dream. The catch-all category of miscellaneous objects was also 16%. Since the majority of the group were painters, there was a relatively high percentage of dream images concerning architecture: 11%. Colors and images of a ~ e n s o r ~ - ~ e r c e ~nature t u a l were also relatively high, both at 8%. Images related to nature and to interior scenes were represented at 7% and 5%, respectively. Attention to time and location in the dream was slightly higher rhan to the previous two categories: 8%. Attention to shapes, to animals, to the supernatural, and to clothing were all rather small percentages of 3%, respectively. There was considerable affect displayed in these artists' dreams. Since it is always difficult to assess and differentiate affect, we only used three categories: negative, positive and neutral. Negative affect included feelings of fear, threatening situations, confusion, alarm, panic, and betrayal. Positive affect included humor, cosiness, "going to have a good time," eroticism and pleasantness. There were approximately 50% more images of negative affect than of positive, and there were more than twice as many ~rnagesof positive affect as neutral images. Qualitatively, there are several features o l rhese dreams that seem to us to be notable. First, poetic images are the norm as compared to prosaic images. By poetic images we refer to images such as splendid, turreted castles, beautiful landscapes flooded by sunlight, or a moon covered with reflecting silver plates. These images contrast with more prosaic dream images of lost tickets, household tasks, etc. Second, when dark images are presented, these take on a dramatic form: for example, one is not chased by policemen but by giant furies. Third, while supernatural images are low in frequency (3%) compared to other categories, nonetheless, their appearance in these artists' dreams are often dramatic: conversations are held in caves with dead fathers, or bedsheets dance together. Fourth, there are many instances in which color images are intensely vivid; for example, "the most beautiful blue water imaginable." Fifth, shape is not used abstractly as is color, but is rooted in interior and exterior architectural forms and in objects. Sixth, the over-all meaning of the dream frequently revolves around the professional identity and creative problems of the artists so that these issues were presented in their dreams. Last, the structure of the dream appears to have fewer breaks in the narrative form than the dreams of nonartists. Instead, these artists' dreams often appear to be connected sequences of events, much like a short story, where the scene changes have orderly transitions. We find this a compelling quality in that the surprising order often gives the dreams a fairy tale or story quality. We turn now to the artists' own evaluations of the usefulness of dreams; four positive examples and three negative examples are presented. Taken as a whole, the group shows ambivalence about dreaming. Some are extremely positive. One woman painter states that she learns from her dreams. Her dreams are "dialogues with herself." If she reads the messages correctly "all the answers are inside" her. I n one dream her cat appeared as a "scrawny brown Little dying
542
R. GAINES & D. PRICE-WILLIAMS
thing, sitting on her art table," and this painter saw this image as "the symbol of my art . . . I've starved that part of myself and I'm just dying to get back to it." Another woman painter stated that looking at her dreams makes "them more magical, more powerful to me instead of less." Yet another woman painter was outright in stating that "I use my personal dreams . . . to give more information about myself, and then I use my paintings . . . as a tool to work through some of the things that I found out through my dreams." A male painter recollected that he had a dream and drew some images from it, and when he looked at the pictures, he was brought back into the dream. All these are instances, in varying degrees, of artists using their dreams in a positive fashion. Others, however, expressed apprehension about using their dreams in their work. One male writer was worried that, "when you try to interpret them, all meaning and connection disappear." Another man, a writer, reported that "I can't think of ever having dreamed of an idea." A third man, a painter, was adamant in claiming that he did not operate on the premise that "I dream and then I go and paint." It should be mentioned that as the sessions continued all three men found value in working on their dreams, and the third man dramatically discovered, in telling one dream, that it was directly related to his painting. In concluding, we have presented some attitudes and uses of dreams from our first group of American urban artists. I t appears chat most artists in t h s group are using their dreams primarily to understand their selves in greater depth. Their art is primarily an expression of themselves and one important source of their creative work clearly seems to derive from their dream images. We find that the quantitative and qualitative analysis of artists' dreams is a viable procedural method and adds a comparative sample of artists from an urban, complex society to the body of knowledge about artists' creative processes. REFERENCES 1. COXHEAD, D., & HILLER, S. (1976) Dreams: visions of the night. London: Thames on Hudson. 2. D'AZEVEDO, W. L. (1975) The artist archetype in Gola culture. Liberian Studies, University of Delaware. 3. DODDS,E. R. (1957) The Greeks and the irrational. Boston, M A : Beacon Press. 4. ELWIN,H. V. (1951) Tribal art of Middle India. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univer. Press. H. (1987) Creativity and dreams. In M. Ullman & C. Limmer (Eds.), The variety 5. FAGIN, of dream experience: expanding our ways of working with dreams. New York: Continuum. Pp. 59-81. 6 . HALL,C. S., & VANDE CASTLE,R. L. (1966) The content analysis of dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. 7. HILLMAN, D. J. (1987) Dream work and field work: linking cultural anthropology and the current dream work movement. In M. Ullman & C. Limmer (Eds.), The uariery of dream experience: expanding our ways of working with dreams. New York: Continuum. Pp. 117-141. 8. JONES,R. M. (1987) Dream reflection and creative writing. In M. Ullman & C. Limmer (Eds.), The variety of dream experience: expanding our ways of working with dreams. New York: Continuum. Pp. 142-170. 9. RANK,0. (1932) Art and the artists. New York: Knopf. 10. SIEGEL,R. K., & JARVIX, M. E. (1975) Drug-induced hallucinating in animals and man. In R. K. Siege1 & L. J. West (Eds.), Hallucinations: behavior, experience, and theory. New York: Wiley. Pp. 81-161.
Accepted March 12, 1990.
