Story and Mystery

The stories we tell one another, the dreams we dream, contain hidden meanings. Once revealed, they are rich in wisdom...

by Fiorella Gatti-Doyle

Mrs. Jones and her friend, Mrs. Lawrence, are sitting in a cafe. They have been chatting for some time. Suddenly Mrs. Jones remembers an event from her youth.

Mrs Jones: I had just turned 17. My life at home was unbearable. My mother's behaviour had become suffocating, she wanted to know all my movements, all 1 did, where 1 went, who 1 saw or spoke with. One day, when 1 couldn't take it any longer, 1 decided there was only one solution......

Mrs. Lawrence listens attentively: Well ? Go on then, what did you do?

We are forever telling stories. They are part of our daily interactions. We hear a story and we stop, we listen. And every story we tell or hear conceals another, a hidden meaning. Yet we do not know what that meaning is until we learn to unravel it.

A new theory of unconscious communication has been developed which is at the forefront of psychotherapeutic practice. It is called Communicative Psychotherapy - a theory for the nineties and the new millennium. The approach has considerably advanced our understanding of the way we process information and emotions. It views our existence in the wider context of theories of evolution.

Each story we tell reveals two parallel ways of perceiving and responding to ourselves and to the world around us - it unveils two modes of being and communicating that are often in contradiction with each other.

Dreams and narratives are our responses to stimuli perceived in everyday life. These stimuli are triggered by events that awaken certain emotional responses in ourselves. The implications that these events hold for us are not registered in consciousness, yet they create various forms of disturbance that can affect our emotional life, and create conflict in our private relationships.

Research carried out in this area of unconscious communication has revealed that we all possess a highly developed perceptive intelligence which strives to make itself heard, but of whose existence we are largely unaware, since its messages are never directly spoken. Their urgent meanings are expressed by ourselves outside our knowledge, hidden in the narratives of our daily interactions, in the dramas of our dream life, in the conflicts arising from our relationships with others.

Whereas we are aware of how we communicate consciously and directly, we are not aware of sending out hidden messages. Their meanings lie outside our conscious reach, and are disguised in the language of many of our behaviours and relationships, in our dialogues with ourselves, in our dreams. What we say in this disguised form, however, usually contradicts much of what we believe we have said directly. This does not mean that we are consciously lying but, rather, that we are out of touch with fundamental aspects of ourselves.

The stories we tell one another, the dreams we dream, contain hidden meanings. Within these meanings lies a mystery which, once revealed, is rich in wisdom. This is a wisdom that speaks of our unconscious attempts at putting order in our lives, at dealing with our conflicts. It speaks also of our efforts at communicating with ourselves, and at finding solutions to our problems. Yet, in order to gain access to our unconscious wisdom, and benefit from it, we must learn to unravel our dreams and narratives.

A series of seminars/workshops will introduce this theory of unconscious communication and explore its application in various areas of life and work. They will demonstrate a radically new approach to the interpretation of dreams.