One of my weaknesses is a tendency to over-explain, and certain aspects of the dreamwork process seem to require an awful lot of explaining. Recently, a new potential dream group member with an intelligent, analytical mind was trying to understand the concept of projective dreamwork, and I worked so hard at explaining that I ended up confusing him further. I also confused some other group members who have been doing projective dreamwork comfortably for years. I even confused myself! Since we are actually doing many things besides projective dreamwork in my groups, every word I said was prefaced with exceptions and tangential information, which made the confusion worse. In retrospect, it’s clear to me that some (maybe all?) dreamwork concepts can be understood much better through exploration than through explanation. 

Projective dreamwork, for example, involves recognizing that when we hear another person’s dream we naturally begin to project our own experiences and insights onto that dream. After I wrote that last sentence, I proceeded to write several more sentences describing what “projection” is, what we need to do in a dreamwork context to “own our projections,” what questions are useful to ask the dreamer so that we clarify the “objective” content of the dream (if there even is such a thing), and what kinds of questions are likely to be part of our own projection, therefore leading the dreamer toward…. And so on, and on, and on. As I wrote all this, I was proving my own point so well that I recognized it would probably be better not to make you suffer through such a good example of excessive explanation. Complicated explanation tends to require more and more complicated explanation, so I deleted those clumsy sentences. 

Let’s try this again. “Projective dreamwork” is a big name for a simple experience. When someone tells a dream, we open ourselves to that dream as if we are dreaming it, and then we share what we discover about ourselves in the process. The clarification questions we ask the dreamer should be about the content of the dream, not about the dreamer. Of course, whatever rules we make in the course of such an intuitive practice are likely to get broken—because we are human and we make guesses and assumptions about each other all the time. This is not a problem, and doesn’t require correction (or explanation)—just awareness of our own motivations, and respect for each other’s privacy and feelings. 

Why do we do dreamwork anyway? Either on our own or with others, we choose to work with dreams because dreamwork feels intrinsically meaningful and valuable to us, not because we particularly need to learn the best techniques for working with dreams. If it doesn’t feel like a meaningful or valuable process, we probably won’t do it. And detailed instructions or explanations won’t make us better at finding something meaningful and valuable. We are all finding meaning and value in various things all the time, and we all know how to do it even if we don’t know we are doing it. For people who are interested in exploring dreams (like you and I), too much instruction just makes us self-conscious about doing what we already know how to do. How much is too much? Well, if you start getting bored or confused about what usually evokes your interest, then it’s too much. The purpose of instruction of any kind is just to cover the basics and establish some ground rules. If there’s essential information we don’t have, we need to get that information. We also need to agree on how we are going to treat each other and ourselves in this endeavor. Beyond that, instruction starts causing the very problems it’s supposed to prevent.

Even when you’re alone with your own dreams, if you’re psychoanalyzing yourself and forcing those dreams to fit a formula, censoring your instinctive responses, judging the dream figures or images, or measuring your dreams against some standard of what a dream should be, then you’re not treating yourself very well, and a little more instruction or guidance could be helpful. Perhaps you could seek advice from those who’ve been working with their own dreams in many different ways for a long time, instructors or guides who have discovered what kinds of approaches are most likely to make dreamwork worthwhile. Personally, I think the best possible instruction for dreamwork might just be “Lighten up!” And that would be good advice for those of us who tend to over-instruct and over-explain as well.

In a group context, I keep reminding myself, instruction doesn’t contribute a whole lot to the process of sharing dreams. We haven’t come together to engage in an intellectual exercise. We want to tell our own dreams because our dreams interest us, and we want to hear others’ dreams because we are curious, and this whole sharing business brings us together, helps us feel connected. That’s good enough to get things rolling, and no one here is more of an expert dreamer than anyone else—except that some of us have more experience with dreamwork and might have gotten clearer on some good ground rules (usually by unintentionally breaking them).

Since the wonderful process of dreamwork, individually or in groups, is as meaningful and valuable as the dreams themselves, I want to explore much more than I want to instruct or be instructed. The best experiences of dreamwork feel like taking myself back to kindergarten, a place where I’m ready to discover what I need to know and it’s not yet too complicated. Do you want to go with me? We’re stepping away from our desks, moving our chairs into a circle. We don’t need our pencils. There will not be a test. Everyone settled? Who would like to share a dream? One of my weaknesses is a tendency to over-explain, and certain aspects of the dreamwork process seem to require an awful lot of explaining. Recently, a new potential dream group member with an intelligent, analytical mind was trying to understand the concept of projective dreamwork, and I worked so hard at explaining that I ended up confusing him further. I also confused some other group members who have been doing projective dreamwork comfortably for years. I even confused myself! Since we are actually doing many things besides projective dreamwork in my groups, every word I said was prefaced with exceptions and tangential information, which made the confusion worse. In retrospect, it’s clear to me that some (maybe all?) dreamwork concepts can be understood much better through exploration than through explanation. 

Projective dreamwork, for example, involves recognizing that when we hear another person’s dream we naturally begin to project our own experiences and insights onto that dream. After I wrote that last sentence, I proceeded to write several more sentences describing what “projection” is, what we need to do in a dreamwork context to “own our projections,” what questions are useful to ask the dreamer so that we clarify the “objective” content of the dream (if there even is such a thing), and what kinds of questions are likely to be part of our own projection, therefore leading the dreamer toward…. And so on, and on, and on. As I wrote all this, I was proving my own point so well that I recognized it would probably be better not to make you suffer through such a good example of excessive explanation. Complicated explanation tends to require more and more complicated explanation, so I deleted those clumsy sentences. 

Let’s try this again. “Projective dreamwork” is a big name for a simple experience. When someone tells a dream, we open ourselves to that dream as if we are dreaming it, and then we share what we discover about ourselves in the process. The clarification questions we ask the dreamer should be about the content of the dream, not about the dreamer. Of course, whatever rules we make in the course of such an intuitive practice are likely to get broken—because we are human and we make guesses and assumptions about each other all the time. This is not a problem, and doesn’t require correction (or explanation)—just awareness of our own motivations, and respect for each other’s privacy and feelings. 

Why do we do dreamwork anyway? Either on our own or with others, we choose to work with dreams because dreamwork feels intrinsically meaningful and valuable to us, not because we particularly need to learn the best techniques for working with dreams. If it doesn’t feel like a meaningful or valuable process, we probably won’t do it. And detailed instructions or explanations won’t make us better at finding something meaningful and valuable. We are all finding meaning and value in various things all the time, and we all know how to do it even if we don’t know we are doing it. For people who are interested in exploring dreams (like you and I), too much instruction just makes us self-conscious about doing what we already know how to do. How much is too much? Well, if you start getting bored or confused about what usually evokes your interest, then it’s too much. The purpose of instruction of any kind is just to cover the basics and establish some ground rules. If there’s essential information we don’t have, we need to get that information. We also need to agree on how we are going to treat each other and ourselves in this endeavor. Beyond that, instruction starts causing the very problems it’s supposed to prevent.

Even when you’re alone with your own dreams, if you’re psychoanalyzing yourself and forcing those dreams to fit a formula, censoring your instinctive responses, judging the dream figures or images, or measuring your dreams against some standard of what a dream should be, then you’re not treating yourself very well, and a little more instruction or guidance could be helpful. Perhaps you could seek advice from those who’ve been working with their own dreams in many different ways for a long time, instructors or guides who have discovered what kinds of approaches are most likely to make dreamwork worthwhile. Personally, I think the best possible instruction for dreamwork might just be “Lighten up!” And that would be good advice for those of us who tend to over-instruct and over-explain as well.

In a group context, I keep reminding myself, instruction doesn’t contribute a whole lot to the process of sharing dreams. We haven’t come together to engage in an intellectual exercise. We want to tell our own dreams because our dreams interest us, and we want to hear others’ dreams because we are curious, and this whole sharing business brings us together, helps us feel connected. That’s good enough to get things rolling, and no one here is more of an expert dreamer than anyone else—except that some of us have more experience with dreamwork and might have gotten clearer on some good ground rules (usually by unintentionally breaking them).

Since the wonderful process of dreamwork, individually or in groups, is as meaningful and valuable as the dreams themselves, I want to explore much more than I want to instruct or be instructed. The best experiences of dreamwork feel like taking myself back to kindergarten, a place where I’m ready to discover what I need to know and it’s not yet too complicated. Do you want to go with me? We’re stepping away from our desks, moving our chairs into a circle. We don’t need our pencils. There will not be a test. Everyone settled? Who would like to share a dream? 

[This article was originally published in in the Winter, 2025 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]