Though there has been little work done with
dreams and the visually impaired (Hunt, 1989, Rainville, 1994), general belief
and what little evidence we have seem to favor the notion that people dream as
they live in waking life, representing situations to themselves and others in
pretty much the same way both awake and asleep. What confuses the issue is our
habit or
cognitive style of verbal narratives that represent people and things in visual
metaphors. A quick look at the description of a dream by a blind individual may
reveal an elaborate array of visual imagery, while a closer examination of the
actual sensations of that blind dreamer reveal little or no direct visual
imagery.
Jastrow's early but major study of dreams of the blind (1900? Jastrow himself
was blind.) is well worth reading and includes other studies of the time. His
research indicates that a majority
of those who go blind before 5 to 7 years old will *not* have visual dreams.
But, though he attributes this to brain development, it is not clear from his
study if a lack of verbal development of visual metaphors was considered.
Helen Keller, relates what dreaming was like before her teacher:
"My dreams have strangely changed during the past twelve years,"
she says. " Before and after my teacher first came to me, they were devoid
of sound, of thought or emotion of any kind, except fear, and only came in the
form of sensations. I would often dream that I ran into a still, dark room, and
that, while I stood there, I felt something fall heavily without any noise,
causing the floor to shake up and down violently; and each time I woke up with a
jump. As I learned more and more about the objects around me, this strange dream
ceased to haunt me; but I was in a high state of excitement and received
impressions very easily. It is not strange then that I dreamed at the time of a
wolf, which seemed to rush towards me and put his cruel teeth deep into my body!
I could not speak (the fact was, I could only spell with my fingers), and I
tried to scream; but no sound escaped from my lips. It is very likely that I had
heard the story of Red Riding Hood, and was deeply impressed by it. This dream,
however, passed away in time, and I
began to dream of objects outside myself" (Jastrow, 353).
Later Keller relates, "I obtain information in a very curious manner,
which it is difficult to describe. My mind acts as a sort of mirror, in which
faces and landscapes are reflected, and thoughts, which throng unbidden in my
brain, describe the conversation and the events going on around me. I remember a
beautiful and striking illustration of the peculiar mode of communication I have
just mentioned. One night I dreamed that I was in a lovely mansion, all
built of leaves and flowers, My thoughts declared the floor was of green
twigs, and the ceiling of pink and white roses. The walls were of roses, pinks,
hyacinths, and many other flowers, loosely arranged so as to make the whole
structure wavy and graceful. Here and there I saw an opening between the leaves,
which admitted the purest air. I learned that the flowers were imperishable, and
with such a wonderful discovery thrilling my spirit I awoke (Jastrow,
354)."
Yet, even after such a imagistic account, Keller goes on to say, "I do
not think I have seen or heard more than once in my sleep. Then the sunlight
flashed suddenly on my eyes, and I was so dazzled I could not think or
distinguish anything. When I looked up someone spelled hastily to me, 'Why, you
are looking back upon your babyhood!' (Jastrow, 354)."
As Jastrow notices, "The dreams of seeing and hearing probably reflect
far more of conceptual interpretation and imaginative inference than of true
sensation; yet they are in part built up upon
a sensory basis (359)." Notice the phrases " my thoughts
declared," "my mind acts as a sort of mirror," and "I was
informed".
This notion that the narrative elaboration in dreams of the sighted and blind
remains constant even though specific visual imagery may vary has been tested
more recently in a study (Kerr, 1982) designed to control for other cognitive
abilities. The congenitally blind subjects without a history of former vision
were able to represent spatial relationships in dream experience without either
visual imagery or compensatory imagery in other modalities. The congenitally
blind subjects with minimal former vision saw in their dreams only to the extent
that they had been able to see in waking life. In neither group did lack of
visual imagery adversely affect the richness or narrative continuity of
dreaming. I'm including here a sample dream (about a cancer clinic) taken from a
congenitally blind subject in the Kerr study who has light perception but no
former detection abilities:
Subject(S): I was in a room that looked similar to my instant banker at work,
but it was a big machine with lots of buttons, like a car machine.
Experimenter(E): Like an instant banker machine?
S: Right, at {the bank}. And I don't know why I was there, but I guess there
was a screen and there were other buttons you could push, you could look in and
see how different cancer patients are doing.
E: Was this visual, could you see anything?
S: I couldn't, but I stood by the screen and I knew that *others* could see
what was going on through all the little panels... I guess I imagined the board
with the buttons. Maybe because I imagined in my mind, it was not that I could
really see them with my eyes, but I know what that board looks like, and the
only reason I know what it looks like is by touch, and I could remember where
the buttons were without touching them on the boards... E: O.K. Where did the
events in this experience seems to be taking place? What were the settings?
S: It seemed to be a large room that was oblong in shape, and there seemed to be
an x-ray machine's work. I felt like it was in an office building where I
worked.
E: And you mentioned something before about the bank?
S: Un huh, it looked like the bank where I do my instant banking (E: O.K.),
except it was larger and more oblong.
E: And is that more like where you worked?
S: No, where I do work, the room is smaller, just large enough for that
little instant banker machine.
Kerr notes : "This description of a novel setting illustrates that
visual imagery is not the only means by which spatial knowledge can be
represented in dreams. In fact, such knowledge need not depend on imaginal
representation in *any* sensory-specific modality. The subject was aware of the
size and shape of the room she was in, although she did not describe touching it
or walking around in it. She was aware of the observations panels and the
buttons on the machine without having to touch them. More generally, this
subject could create dream environments made up of elements from settings
familiar to her in waking life, but she was able to do so without representation
of specific sensations of either vision or touch (292)."
Rather than saying that visually impaired individuals have limited dream
imagery, it would be a more useful and sophisticated position to say that
imagery is inspired and carried by visual
components, but is not particularly dependent upon visual elements. Rather,
imagery is a cognitive conveyance, a way of seeing rather than something seen.
When H. Robert Blank, in
his article ( "Dream Analysis in the Treatment of the Blind," 1959)
states that the blind have no visual dreams and that, "This will surprise
only those who believe in a racial unconscious or the hereditary transmission of
memories... (190)," he misses the point that imagery is not a visual
perception, but a psychological apperception.
The post-Jungian James Hillman, in his book The Dream and the Underworld
(1973/1979) further unfolds how extensive this visual bias is. He feels is our
society's greatest cause of psychological illness is our inability to be
imaginal and metaphorical, and our continual insistence on literalness (for
example, suicide is seen as the person's confusing the imaginal need for drastic
rebirth with the literal act of self destruction.
Jung is now famous for saying the same thing about drinking--that the person
mistakes
the metaphorical need for spiritual contact with 'the spirit in the bottle'.
It is interesting that one of the great interpreters of dreams, the ancient
Greek Tiresias, was blind. Perhaps in our listening to the dreams of the
visually impaired, we may, like the those who encountered Tiresias, come to see
our own blindness.
Annotated Bibliography
Adelson, Edward T.,Ed. "Dream Analysis in the Treatment of the Blind.
Dreams in Contemporary Psychoanalysis. New York: The Society of Medical
Psychoanalysts. 188-211, 1963.
Some important considerations for clinical work and psychodynamic
insights about the issues that will arise around blindness as castration and the
identifications of the victim with the castrating father and social majority
that may lead to self persecution.
Hillman, James. Dreams and the Underworld. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
----------. "The Dream and the Underworld. Eranos. 42: 237?31, 1973.
Two versions of the same writing. Many feel put off by the
references, the obscurity, the digressions, the hard questions put to dream
interpretation, psychology and society in general. It's my favorite dream book.
Hunt, Harry. The Multiplicity of Dreams: Memory, Imagination and
Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Simply the finest readable summary of research into cognitive
studies on dreaming.
Jastrow, J. "The Dreams of the Blind." Fact and Fable in
Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900.
Worth reading just for Helen Keller's report, but also a good
summary of research at the time. Jastrow Himself was blind.
Kerr, Nancy H., Foulkes, D., & Schmidt, M. "The Structure of
Laboratory Dream Reports in Blind and Sighted Subjects. The Journal of Nervous
and Mental Disease. 170:(5), 286-294, 1982.
A good cognitive dream research study. A quote from the abstract:
"Overall, the results are consistent with the view that the dream is a
constructive cognitive process, rather than a reproductive perceptual one, and
with the view that the integrative cognitive systems responsible for both the
momentary and the sequential organization of the dream do not depend on the
presence either of contemporaneous visual?perceptual experience or of well
developed visual cognitive codes (287)."
Kirtley, Donald D. "Emperical Studies in the Dreaming of the
Blind." The Psychology of Blindness. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975.
---------------------. "Prospero: A Study of Personality Through
Dreams." The Psychology of Blindness. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975.
Rainville, Raymond E. "The role of Dreams in the Rehabilitation of the
Adventitiously Blind." Dreaming. 4:(3), 155-164, 1994.
Very interesting and useful information for clinical work and the
vital role that dreams play in the life adjustment of the newly blind. Also a
great bibliography on dreams and the blind and an interesting notation of which
of the listed authors were themselves blind.
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