Many kinds of dream groups

Many forms of dream groups are ones which do not listen attentively to dreams but using them only as stepping stones to broader psychological, philosophical or religious reflections. Dreams become displaced by group members' opinions not originating from dreams but from our daily waking life. This means replacing the most influential elements with less important ones.

            There are innumerable orientations, which have rigid basic assumptions (be it scientific, religious, based on diverse psychotherapy schools etc.) about the meaning of dreams. I call them confessional. The more strictly one has adopted some interpretative theoretical system, the less one is able to see anything which is not concordant with his theory. One type of groups blindfolded with their theory can be found in religious and occult circles, where dreams are seen as expressions of higher wisdom, as conscious, autonomous entities, belonging to the realms of guardian angels and spiritual teachers. Typical for this kind of idealized approach is a strong need for dependency, need to become subjugated by some higher authority. The majority of dream literature reflects this viewpoint.

            There are ways to work with dreams, which are not to such an extent ideologically limited that they would always twist dreams into a standard predefined pattern. Nonetheless, many of them limit the dream process in some other ways. They may predefine the process by being too restrictive in advance, for example by having rules which define which parts of the dream the dreamer is allowed to choose, for example only the three most impressive subjects or the three most obscure subjects in the dream, which are then used as starting points for subsequent work. A dream is thus chopped and chained up and tied to a leash of a predefined format.