The Power of the Dog

Director Jane Campion, who wrote the screenplay for the 2021 film, The Power of the Dog, based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, and Benedict Cumberbatch who starred in the film as a 1920s cowboy oozing a toxic masculinity designed to protect his deepest sensibilities, each drew from their dreams to enhance the authenticity and vitality of their work.

So, what did they do?

With the help of LA-based Jungian Dream Coach Kim Gillingham, Campion and Cumberbatch brought their dream characters to life, giving them space to speak and express their essences. While Gillingham keeps the exact nature of her professional processes under wraps, she combines various psychoanalytical techniques and Method Acting with dream exploration to connect artists to the energies they need to augment their work.

Drawing on the unconscious, most powerfully through dreams, opens artists of all genres to reach beyond their waking life perspectives and cultural views to bring fresh vision to their work.

I have noticed that people who work with me regularly on their dreams often become interested in developing artistically. Some deepen or expand their existing art–perhaps writing or painting–while others awaken and tap into latent skills with quite fabulous artistic results.

Sometimes it’s working with their dreams, in similar ways to Campion and Cumberbatch, that awakens my clients to their unconscious resources.

More strikingly, it’s practising the dream alchemy that we create (designed to reprogram a limiting unconscious belief or perspective revealed by a dream) that confers that extra magic. Dream alchemy practices involve working with art, drawing, writing, movement, and a range of other expressive avenues. When you do dream alchemy, you’re using an art form to express a desired transformation (or integration) of energies or dramas using symbols from your dream.

Campion and Cumberbatch used dream work to inform their art and bring us their powerful film which I would rank as one of the best of 2021.

While Gillingham’s work with artists is not necessarily directed at personal integration, healing, or transformation, I imagine this may frequently occur during their exploration, even though the main intent is mining the unconscious to enhance the artists’ work.

Let’s remember that exploring our dreams offers us the most precious gift of healing through getting to know ourselves so deeply that we empathise with our dream characters (who, like other elements of our dreams, represent aspects of ourselves), and integrate them in a way that confers personal healing and transformation.

With self-knowledge comes the opportunity to connect more authentically in all aspects of your life, and with healing comes vitality.

The particular work of exploring your dream characters also increases empathy for others – a sense of having walked in another’s shoes – as well as unconditional love for yourself.

Ah, the power of working with our dreams!

Special thanks to Jyotsna, a dream student, who sent me The Guardian article about Gillingham’s work, which you can read here.

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