Steve Mobia has come up with a proposal for a dream television show for children, called Dreamtree (oddly enough, this title came into his psyche in 1980, 15 years before our online Dream Tree was born). Steve Mobia has studied much of the literature on dreams and has a working knowledge of a variety of dream analysis techniques, including those described by Fritz Perls (the "Gestalt" system), Carl Jung (" Active Imagination"), Sigmund Freud ("Free Association") and Calvin Hall ("Content Analysis"). He has a keen interest in current sleep research, especially the work being done on "lucid dreaming" by Dr. Stephen LaBerge at the Stanford University Sleep Lab. Steve Mobia’s decision to develop Dreamtree came from a realization that even though much fantasy material is presented to children, little effort is made to stimulate the innate creativity of a child — a creativity beautifully epitomized in dreams. This material is © Steve Mobia and is published with the author’s permission.
DREAMTREE
A Dream Show for children
By Steve Mobia
Many a parent is at a loss when their child excitedly tells them a recent dream. Most of us are not trained to understand or make use of this unique mental state. As a result, children are left alone with this often-frightening unknown realm, which they may eventually suppress along with other gifts of childhood.
Most of a child’s education develops logical objective thinking. Dreamtree is intended to fill an important need in education: imaginative subjective thinking. The episodes, for children ages 7-12, will illustrate ways the mind transforms waking experience into the vivid emotional pictures we call dreams. By gaining familiarity with the ways dreams function, children will learn to overcome fears, develop a creative approach to problems and discover new communication skills.
The show will emerge out of improvisational sessions using the actual dreams of the participants. Through a combination of evocative sets, masks, lighting and suggestion, a fascinating dreamscape will be presented. Parents watching the show will acquire a deeper appreciation of their children’s inner world and may experience a resurgence of interest in their own dreams.
