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universe rather than confronted and made allies. Instead, I assume that all
figures are sources of power and growth for an individual and
thus I remind a dreamer: "This ally (no matter how initially
distasteful it appears) is power for you. It's up to you how you
use that power."
If the dream sequence concerns situations which in our culture are taboo, such as an incest dream, I encourage the participant to remove the figure's masks until the dreamer finds a face which can be dealt with comfortably and successfully. The final major difference between this Western version of Senoi dreamwork and that of the Senoi tribe is that the Senoi very frequently "kill" the dream figure as a means of conquering it. I have found that in all but a very few cases a person can make virtually any figure an ally by using means other than killing it. These alternatives include calling on enough allies to mediate successfully between the dreamer and the Main Figure and to inquire what it wants from the dreamer (6). All three of the preceding distinctions are based on the hypothesis that there is no process in a personality which is inherently evil. I have found that one's believing so is usually due to a failure of perspective. Milton Erickson (3) provides an excellent appreciation of this positive function of so-called "resistances." Though the Senoi dreamwork system as I describe it is not "pure," it nevertheless suggests how readily the Senoi philosophy can be successfully integrated into the models of psychotherapy already available in our society. I have begun using the Senoi techniques with persons who are actively hallucinating (10) so they might learn how to convert the frightening visions into friendly ones, at the same time receiving gifts from the figures which are appearing. These persons are then encouraged to render these gifts tangible. In this way delusional systems can be used to generate artistic production. Again, this is in the shamanistic tradition (11). Since the Senoi's basic unit of the dreamwork practice is the family, I am teaching the techniques to whole families as a means of establishing a positive and creative system of intrafamilial communication. I'm finding this paradigm to be particularly appropriate in family therapy once the crisis has been resolved, using more familiar counseling techniques. This model can help answer the question, "Now that we no longer structure time around crises, what can we do with each other?" Stimulated by Patricia Garfield's (5) account of lucid dreaming, I have begun a "dream lab" group to develop methods of training people to remain actively conscious while in the night dream state. It is interesting to note that the lucid dreaming phenomenon is a process complementary to hallucinating. While, at least in one sense, hallucinating is projecting a dream universe onto a waking life background, lucid dreaming appears to be a projection of a waking life foreground (i.e., active consciousness) onto a dream universe background. I am interested in exploring the natural laws of the dream 60
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