1969: I was living in Paris, studying to become a Soviet Studies specialist when I had a life-changing dream. Before waking that morning, like most people, I had thought little about dreams. After 15 months in Paris, I went back to Princeton University (which I had indirectly helped to co-educate). I was thrilled to be in the Russian Studies program, but I was longing to read more about dreaming. How could my education have left out a serious exploration of how my, and everyone’s minds work every single night?
At the very end of my junior year, I switched majors for my senior year so that I could, one day, dedicate myself to teaching people how to shed formulaic interpretations and appreciate the immediate, practical applications of dream insights. That summer I spent on an island near Stockholm reading the entire collected works of Carl Jung and writing a junior paper on his work with dreams. In my senior year, I hit upon the core strategies of the Dream Interview and thought it would be a more direct route to understanding dreams than my New York City analyst had used. Still, the following year I went to the Jung Institute in Zurich to see if dream interpretation worked better there. Nope! Dream interpretation in that world was still vague, and mostly the fruit of indoctrination with Jung’s writings and beliefs about the nature of the male vs. the female brain. Jung’s formulations of the female mind looked to me like archaic shackles to insight, and did not fit my experience as a career woman in the years following the Women’s Liberation Movement in the USA. I did not appreciate the indoctrination that went on at the Jung Institute, and so decided not to become a Jungian therapist after that year. I was determined to develop a more transparent, client-centered, and secular approach to dreaming. A master’s degree and a doctorate in Northern California followed, and there I happily settled to live and work. It was an environment in 1974 that supported my dreams’ consistent encouragement to remember my flamboyant inner exuberance.
Throughout my adult life, my dream insights have helped me make wiser choices and live more adventurously. Getting to know myself better, improve my relationships with my parents and friends, saw me through a good marriage and a kindly, but heart-wrenching divorce. Later, my dreams were there for me, helping me to navigate and enjoy the singles’ world with enthusiasm, and good sense. My dreams’ commented on every fellow I dated, sometimes screaming “Gayle, what are you thinking?!!? My dream tutor sharpened my ability to choose a man who was a good fit for me. I credit my dreaming mind for having kept me from committing to a new relationship that would likely not work in the long run, so that I would be free when the Right Guy came along. My dreams comforted me through the sad times, and showed me how to bounce back. They clearly have broadened the spectrum of my experience and increased my capacity for joy and delight in the world.
Over five decades ago, I developed the Dream Interview Method (DIM) of interpretation (1971), and created a secular, DIY form of dream incubation in the same year. One sunny San Francisco day my new colleague, Loma K. Flowers, MD called me to suggest that we teach the Dream Interview Method to professionals and amateurs. Loma’s ideas are good and fun. So we created the Delaney & Flowers Dream Center in San Francisco (1981). For the next two years, I became the Founding President of the Association for the Study of Dreams, and Loma was generous enough to take on the task of being the IASD’s first Chairwoman of the Board. Busy years. I wrote 6-7 books, on dreaming, and lectured at universities and to a wide variety groups. This mix of helping, teaching, and performing has been perfect for one of my independent, passionate, nature. This is especially true of my couple of decades working with my beloved colleague, Loma Flowers. Collaborating with the most insightful person I know, sharing our time, knowledge, and enthusiasm for training people in DIM, was a tremendous joy! Working together and being enriched by Loma’s clear-eyed, practically-oriented, non-dogmatic psychiatric training and practice skills added much to my career in dreams. Loma’s influence in our work and my life has been a gift beyond the scope of this page to describe.
My favorite job was as a KVI-AM radio host on a daily, 3-hour afternoon show, “Dream Talk with Dr.Gayle Delaney” what fun it was to demonstrate how to ask non-leading questions at the right time and let all those listening, follow along as the DREAMER would find her own answers! People from Seattle, Everett, and Tacoma, at the end of a commute or driving the children home from school would arrive at their destinations and stay in the car until the dreamer figured out what her dream meant. to 20-40 years later those children would call me up to ask for a dream session! Even as teens, they had been impressed when they heard caller after caller working out the meanings of their dreams, no smoke or mirrors, just a transparent method of asking questions. As I played the role of an alien interviewer, surprisingly practical, specific insights would surface. It is so satisfying to think that thousands of people were learning to put their dreams to good use in their lives. I’ve spoken of dreams in three languages on thousands of Radio & TV shows, including Oprah, NBC Nightly News, The View, Today, GMA, The Costanzo Show, Il Tappetto Volante, and regularly on many local shows around the country. It is thrilling to think that my work gets people excited about learning how to understand their dreaming minds.
It is important to get the word out that dreams are not brain babble. They are the product of our minds working in a different language, that of feeling-laden visual metaphor. But I must tell you, many people still think of dreaming as a sport of fools. During my book tours starting in 1980, I regularly encountered a palpably dismissive attitude emanating from my TV or Radio Host and journalist interviewers. But my Publishers were always sure, on the back cover, to mention that I was among the first women to attend Princeton and that I had graduated Summa Cum Laude (with highest honors). The moment they saw that, their tone changed, they leaned into our interview, and they listened. Most of them asked me to help them with a dream after the show. Yet, with all my media work, writing, training and attending our IASD conferences, and all the work of hundreds of members and researchers within the International Association for the Study of Dreams have done over 40 years, we STILL have a lot of educating, demonstrating, and researching to do!
Once understood without the trappings of dogma and superstition, our dreams can be a shockingly powerful, direct, and practical engine for solving life’s troubles and puzzles. You can find many examples of how my dreams influenced my life in my first book, Living Your Dreams, and In Your Dreams is a good book to start your own explorations. Now that you know how I came to value dreams, would you like to leave us a note telling us how you became interested in dreaming?