Vol. 28 of Prof. Kawai’s Essay Series in Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru was Published
A new installment in Prof. Toshio Kawai’s essay series, “Kokoro’s Forefront and the Layers of History” was published in the December 2018 issue of Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru.
The theme of this month’s essay is “Modern dreams and how they are shared”.
The author argues that kokoro, due to its lack of physicality, exists only insofar as its value and content are shared with others. In modern psychotherapy, meaningfulness emerges from the therapist and the client sharing what is resides in kokoro. The same can be said of the dreams that the client shares with the therapist. However, in psychotherapy, clients’ dreams are only shared with the therapist, which is different from how dreams were shared within the community during medieval era.
The author discusses his clinical experience in which he has observed how the sharing of dreams leads to changes in clients and that posits that it is meaningful to be able to share dreams beyond psychotherapeutic settings.
（Commentary by Hisae Konakawa Research Fellow）
Kokoro’s Forefront and the Layers of History (vol. 28)
Toshio Kawai
In pre-modern times, people had a direct connection to a world of dreams (e.g. dreams that come true). However, our modern consciousness is not capable of sensing directly the external reality of dreams, and thus we need to use psychology as a tool for interpreting them. In the medieval era, people went to fortune tellers and mediums for interpretation. In pre-modern times, the importance of one’s dreams was that they were shared with others.
Excerpted from the essay
The website page
https://www.minervashobo.co.jp/book/b378552.html
2018/12/12