The wildly popular new film A Star Is Born, a tragic musical love story starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, has revived interest in a somewhat obscure field: dream analysis.
Cooper, who also directed the film, said in a recent New York Times interview that he used his subconscious to make rituals for his character. Cooper and Lady Gaga worked with acting coach Elizabeth Kemp, Cooper’s mentor, who taught him the technique and to whom the film is dedicated, before her death last year.
While not exactly a mainstream practice, dream study goes back at least 3,000 years and has a devoted following today. I was curious, so I decided to give it a go.
Humans have an estimated three to five dreams a night, with Rapid Eye Movement (REM), or dreaming sleep, most commonly falling towards the end of the night. “Dream work” has roots in the techniques of the famed theater actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski and the theories of psychologist Carl Jung, Kim Gillingham, a teacher of the technique, told me.
Dream work is not just for actors, Gillingham said. Having coached film-makers, directors, novelists, dancers and scientists in how to use dreams to find greater authenticity in their work, Gillingham says she has seen dreams’ transformative potential for people across the professional spectrum.
“For one thing, if we have an unresolved trauma or something from childhood, or a pattern that’s inhibiting us, or a pattern that’s drawing us again and again to addictive behaviour, self-loathing behaviour, an old tape running in your head, the dreams will serve up the reality of that for us to work with,” the 55-year-old, who has been in the field since discovering it in her 20s, told me a few days before the workshop.
She also believes that dreams present solutions. “Psychologically, physically, emotionally, I believe wholeheartedly in the comprehensive healing package of what the dream brings for everyone – for the plumber, saint, all of us, have this genius guiding material coming through in our dreams in the night.”
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