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The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 66, No. 2, June 2006 ( 2006)
DOI: 10.1007/s11231-006-9011-9ON DREAMS: DISCUSSION OF PAUL LIPPMANNS PAPER
THE CANARY IN THE MIND1Marilyn CharlesPaul Lippmanns paper The Canary in the Mind (preceding paper in
this issue) is in the psychoanalytic tradition in that it encourages us to
take seriouslyand also playfullythe tensions between what we believe
we know and what we fail to see. Much as Bion (1967) warned against
memory and desire as forces occluding perceptual possibilities, he also
warned against believing too firmly in our theories or conceptual constructs and in this way inhibiting our own learning (Bion, 1977).So then, we come up against this issue of the dream that Paul so
delightfully captures in his image of the canary in the mind. I found
myself playing with this metaphor, thinking first of the dream itself as a
canary in the mind, warning against whatever might become lost or occluded if we fail to give it due thought and respect. But then, I saw that
that is not really what Paul is pointing to. Rather, he is showing us how
dreams, themselves, come to carry meanings within a culture and how
we can see the collective fate of our unconscious selves cast against the
light of how dreams are faring in our more public lives and mind.Paul points out to us how the virtual dream, in the form of the external screen, is coming to the forefront in our culture, in this way obscuring
and demeaning the more private, more personal screen of the individual
dream. He suggests that the dream is falling to the same fate as other
commodities we hold dear, that we fail to treasure through greed, lack of
foresight, and a narrowing of vision. In this culture where we useand
abuseour resources and fail to provide ourselves sufficient space or
time to reflect on our mutual coexistence and interdependence, and thus
to more fully appreciate our debts and experience our gratitude, we are
faced with the consequences of this abuse at every turn.We see before us myriad manifestations of the limitations of our ability
to control nature, as well as the various prices we pay for those attempts.
So, then, the lion in the zoo faces...