April 16, 1996 Contact: Jennifer McNulty (408) 459-2495; mcnulty@ua.ucsc.edu

DREAMS DEMYSTIFIED: NEW BOOK BY UC SANTA CRUZ PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS DREAMS CAN HELP UNLOCK CREATIVITY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--In the days following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, few subjects of a dream study recalled any of their dreams, says psychologist Veronica Tonay. During the second week, subjects experienced extraordinarily happy dreams full of joy and good feelings. It wasn't until the third week that they started dreaming of earthquakes and of being afraid.

Tonay, author of a new book about dreaming and creativity, suspects that dreams helped quake survivors to cope with the stress. Dreams are an important outlet for many emotions that often go unexpressed during our waking hours, says Tonay, a lecturer in psychology and director of the Psychology Field Study Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book The Art of Dreaming (Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts, 1995), offers practical guidance for those interested in exploring dreams as a new channel of self-understanding.

Tonay, who has a private counseling practice in Santa Cruz, has interpreted more than 15,000 dreams. Her book is based upon research she performed on 3,000 dreams of 200 people. Tonay also draws on the work of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and others to present an engrossing analysis of dreams and creativity and to offer guidance for those eager to interpret their dreams.

Tonay lays the foundation for her exploration of creativity and dreams by describing the similarities among dreams across cultures and the differences between men's and women's dreams. "I want to help readers identify what is unique about their own dreams and avoid overinterpreting what is common dream material," says Tonay. She urges dreamers to keep a dream journal and to study a series of dreams--rather than individual dreams--to identify meaningful themes, and she offers exercises and tips for assessing their creativity, interpreting dreams, and working through creative blocks.

In her book, Tonay defines creative people as those who produce "original and worthwhile creative products, such as ideas, paintings, poems, mathematical theorems, business plans, stories, sonatas--and dreams." Emotions are important for creative individuals because "creativity can get blocked when we are not expressing our feelings," says Tonay. "The themes in our dreams show us the feelings we need to address in waking life so we can move on. For creative people, exploring dream themes can unlock energy that fuels creative work."

In her research, Tonay compared the dreams of highly creative people with those of less creative individuals and found that creative people were far more likely to dream about loss, confronting natural obstacles, and children who are endangered.

"Studies show that creative people are more likely to have experienced loss as children, and it turns out that they also dream more often of loss--loss of a possession or person, death, or illness," says Tonay. "That kind of traumatic childhood experience stays with you and can come up again and again in dreams."

The theme of obstacles appears in the form of natural barriers like boulders, trees, or rivers that threaten or block the dreamer's progress in the dream. "These elements often come up around work issues, or when people feel stuck, like writers who write themselves into a corner," says Tonay.

Tonay describes a writer who was facing a creative block and had a series of frightening dreams of encountering boulders blocking his path: First, he veered his car off a cliff to avoid the boulder; in another, it took days to drive around the boulder; and in the last dream, he rented a backhoe to chip away at it. The dreams showed the man his fear of failure and helped him realize that his way of coping with his anxiety about running out of ideas was to avoid writing, says Tonay. Ultimately, he resolved that in order to get beyond the block he needed to continually chip away at it and write every day, even if he felt hopeless.

Dreams about endangered children may reflect the dreamer's emotional experience of being a child in danger, says Tonay. "The themes that pop up in our dreams offer signposts for getting past where we're blocked," she says. "They reflect the depth of our emotions and mirror our struggles. And in addition to showing us our characteristic ways of dealing with challenges, they illustrate new solutions."

"Dreams are especially important right now because we've become such an overly rational culture," says Tonay. "Anything irrational or emotional is held suspect. It's important to be rational, but the balance has tipped--there's too much rationality and too little genuine feeling in our culture today."

For those who rarely remember their dreams, Tonay offers encouragement. Her research has shown that there are no personality characteristics that explain why some people remember their dreams and others do not. "You really just have to have an interest, and once you start paying attention, recall increases," says Tonay.

Editor's Note: Veronica Tonay can be reached on campus at (408) 459-4410 or via e-mail at veronica@zzyx.ucsc.edu. To receive a review copy of The Art of Dreaming, call Jennifer McNulty in the UCSC Public Information Office at (408) 459-2495.

This release is also available on the World Wide Web at UCSC's "Services for Journalists" site (http://www.ucsc.edu/news/journalist.html) or via modem from UC NewsWire (209-244-6971).

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