I wrote this paper in collaboration with my colleague in the English Department at Georgia Tech, Dr. Peter J. McGuire. Dr. McGuire read the paper at the Illinois State University Conference on the Teaching of Writing, May 1977.
Teachers of writing take one of three positions on the relationship between form and content in prose:
Of the three positions, the third, though embraced by a clear majority, imposes a troublesome paradox. If there is no connection between content and form, the teacher of writing is faced with two problems simultaneously: the teacher must help the student find something to say even as the student is learning how to say it. This gives rise to freshman reading books that present many essays on a single topic in the hope that the student will both learn about the topic and, apparently by osmosis, become creative; courses that expose students to industrial or business cases and ask the student to become an imaginary participant in the flow of paperwork; or courses that return, perhaps in desperation, to the analysis of literature for composition topics.
Each of these positions raises its own formal problem. The editor of any topic-centered text finds that the material appears in genres ranging from true essai, to polemic, to short story, each of which provides its own model for student prose and competes in the student's mind with other models.
This problem of rhetorical invention has been recognized and studied, but with limited success. The 1968 University of Iowa Conference on Creativity—reported on as "Theoretical Problems in Studying Creativity and Composition"—frankly admitted that no way has been found to make students more creative or to give them more to write about.4
We wish to suggest yet another solution to this problem, one that we believe is both theoretically and pedagogically sound. We believe that an approach to composition will be sound in theoretical terms, and thus ultimately in practical terms, only if it can resolve the form/content dichotomy, and with that problem behind it move toward a focus on the audience, the recipient and ultimate judge of the effectiveness of any message.
We believe that an approach to composition is pedagogically sound only if first, it devotes relatively little time to explanation of highly sophisticated techniques of analysis; second, it recognizes that there are many problem-solving techniques; and third, it gives a student knowledge of the varying modes of relationships that exist among ideas and concepts, a knowledge that is necessary both for the student's exploration of the surrounding world and for presenting to an audience the results of that exploration.
In an effort to solve the problem in our own way, some of us at Georgia Tech are experimenting with a pilot freshman level course that uses dream data to provide topics for composition. On the first day of class the students are given a brief, non-technical discussion of dreams and how to remember them, and are asked to keep a dream diary. The student's own dream material, augmented by an increasingly copious collection of previous student descriptions and analyses of dreams, as well as, in some instances, student short stories based on dreams, provides the basic course content—a content, it should be pointed out, to which the student himself is a primary contributor. Since as a phenomenon the dream is already a compressed, highly symbolic, organically structured thought, expressed in concrete imagery, and often quite vividly, it has been our experience that systematic analyses of dreams—even when the student has little or no knowledge of dream psychology or symbolism—yields a student essay strong in both form and content.
Before we consider the theoretical implications of this approach, it might be useful to illustrate by quoting several representative student essays. Except for silent emendation of errors in spelling and punctuation, the essays are exactly as the students submitted them.
My friend Bob and I were walking together between classes last week when he happened to mention a nighmare of the night before. Since my English class is using dream material for writing purposes, my curiosity was immediately aroused. It took little coaxing on my part to get him to tell me about it.
In his dream, Bob was continually annoyed by a small hairy creature with sharp claws. This little animal lived in the cellar of Bob's home. The creature would come up out of the cellar and attached itself firmly between Bob's shoulder blades. In this spot the animal was just out of his reach. Bob tried by various methods to remove this little ball of fur but it would only laugh and dig its claws deeper into the skin. Bob went to his family and friends for help when he found that he could not get rid of the creature by himself. Much to his surprise and dismay, they could not see or feel anything on his back. When he insisted that something was there, they told him that he must be out of his mind. Through all of this the little animal continued laughing and piercing its claws deeper and deeper.
The more I thought about Bob's dream the more it intrigued me. The pieces seemed to fall into place as I pondered them. I could see a common thread of significance between all the parts of his dream. The small hairy animal, I thought, might represent the burdens of the first week of a college freshman. And these burdens, like the small animal, could not be removed from their place of refuge. The claws kept digging deeper into the skin just as the pressures of college might penetrate deeply into the mind. The part of the dream in which no one else could see the animal on Bob's back suggests that subjective suffering cannot be shared. Also, the fact that the creature lived in the cellar suggests that the Bob's problems came from his unconscious mind, a place where his conscious mind could not reach and where no one else could see. Considering all these factors, I came to the conclusion that Bob's innermost self was telling him through this dream that others usually cannot grasp the reality of someone else's mental suffering.
In my dream I walk into a neatly arranged grocery store and notice that I am the only customer. I wander through the long aisles of merchandise until I reach the section containing cookies and crackers. Out of curiosity, I pick up a large box of cookies and open it. I find that the first layer consists of my favorite chocolate cookies, but the bottom layers consist of types of cookies that I have never tasted. Since I am hard to please, I continue searching for a box containing only chocolate cookies. I look through every box but cannot find what I am looking for. By this time, the entire shelf is a mess.
Later, I walk to the front of the store to pay for my merchandise. I hand money to the clerk, and he pushes a button on the cash register that is supposed to give me my change. When I reach for the change, I am delighted to see that money is flowing out of the machine. I greedily start filling my pockets with money and try not to attract attention. Suddenly, to my surprise, five of my friends come running into the store and jump on the clerk. They throw him to the floor and this gives me time to run out into the parking lot. We barely manage to escape in our cars before the police arrive.
I feel that this dream is related to the rapid learning rate that I have experienced at Tech. In the dream, the grocery store is a representation of my mind as a storehouse of knowledge. Each shelf in the store holds part of my education; for example, the cookie box could be my education in chemistry. My favorite cookies on the top represent the small amount of chemical knowledge that I brought with me to Tech. The bottom layers of cookies represent the vast amounts of knowledge that I have gained this quarter. In the dream, when I go looking in all the other boxes, their layers represent how my knowledge in other areas has grown also.
The neatness of the store represents how I had my thought organized before I came to Tech. During this quarter, I have learned much that conflcts with my old ideas. I need someone or something to help me straighten out my thoughts. This conflict of ideas is represented in the dream by the way I messed up the shelf, and this requires that someone come along and straighten it up again.
The presence of the clerk at the checkout counter represents the teacher in a school environment. In a store, the clerk makes certain that every customer pays the correct price. In school, the teacher makes sure that a student earns his grade.
When we manage to escape, this represents the way in which so many students can go all the way through high school wihout ever studying and still make passing grades. The large number of people who go through high school this way is represented in the dream by the five friends who come to my rescue. However, if these people do not study hard in college, they will fail for sure.
This dream is an unconscious reaction to the pressure that I feel as the end of the term approaches. I am very worried about my grades, and I feel that I am not studying hard enough.
I dreamed that a very exciting day had finally arrived, my first chance to vote in a national election. One thing, however, was bothering me. After all the campaigning in the past few months, I still couldn't decide who to vote for. Everyone else I had talked to seemed to know which candidates to vote for.
As I stood in line waiting to cast my ballot, I continued to ponder my problem. It looked as though I wouldn't be able to decide until the last minute. Too soon, I was given my ballot and had to enter the booth. I closed the curtain and turned around, expecting to find a simple voting machine. Instead, I found myself in a small theater. There were people scattered about in the seats and they were all watching what was happening on stage. It was a debate between the two candidates themselves. I could hardly believe it! Why would this be taking place on election day? I took a seat and listened anyway, for perhaps what they were saying might finally help me make a decision. I listened intently and after a while began to lean toward one of the candidates. But I wanted to wait and keep listening so that I could be certain. For some reason I felt that my vote would determine the winner.
Suddenly, I noticed that I was the only one in the theater. Where had everyone gone? I went outside the curtain that I had closed before and found the voting station vacant. It was too late to vote! Delaying the decision had cost me my vote!
What brought about this dream was my watching the election coverage on TV. I do not look forward to voting, but it is a fact that I know already who I want to vote for. Maybe the indecision in my dream about voting reflects my indecision here at school about what I want to major in. I am still undecided on my future and know I must make a decision soon. Perhaps my unconscious feels that I will make a decision too late, and thus forfeit the opportunity to help shape my future. The question of my major was brought up just lately, with the announcement of preregistration for next term's classes. Unlike myself, most of my friends know exactly what they want to do, just as in my dream concerning the election, and this seems to be what the dream was commenting on.
It must have been an interesting dream, but, unfortunately, when I woke up all I could recall was a single image of a strange creature that was half redbird and half squirrel. Even now I can remember vividly how it looked as it stood in a glowing area of light surrounded by darkness. The front half of it was the redbird, and the back half was a squirrel with an unusually long and bushy tail. I have wished that the dream would return to me because I would like to know the context. I have the feeling that this would reveal the meaning of the symbol. I am not even sure why I feel that the symbol is important, but I do.
Searching through my mind, I have many ideas. It seems that when I began calling the bird by its proper name, cardinal, rather than calling it a redbird, I moved closer to what the meaning of the symbol could be. My first thoughts are that I can think of hardly any wildlife more commonly seen in this area. Surely, a cardinal is always a shock against the luxuriant green of nature. Then there is that saucy, impertinent little fellow the squirrel. Sometimes I have been sure that when an acorn fell out of an oak tree that it was really a squirrel that threw it at me as he scolded about my being there. Since these two creatures are part of my daily experience, it is not surprising that I should dream about them: but why would they have been combined? In Greek and Roman mythology there is an abundance of combined forms from nature. My little dream creature could hardly be campared with any of these, but in consideration of those sources it is apparent that it is not strange for the mind to resort to such combinations.
When I started thinking about the word cardinal, my first association was Cardinal and the Catholic Church. I recalled that my sister had told me that her daughter's boyfriend is a Catholic, and his wish is that my niece should become a Catholic too. Of course, this means that they are considering marriage; in fact, they believe they are past the point of consideration to the point of planning on it. They are both very young as they are not out of high school as yet. When I think about my miece who has long, thick hair, and I remember that she is a little saucy, then I am reminded of a squirrel with a long busy tail. I don't want to think of my niece as a squirrel, but my unconscious mind apparently made this analogy, and I don't think it is such a bad one when I really consider it.
The creature from my dream is incongruent, and perhaps this is how the marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant would be. The image reminds me further of the Biblical description of the role of the partners in the marital relationship. The man is the head, and the wife is the body as in the image, the cardinal is the head, and the squirrel is the body.
I can remember that my first reaction when my sister told me that my niece's boyfriend was Catholic was to say, "Well, at least he believes in something." I know that since that time I have been concrned about whether or not that was an appropriate reaction. It was almost as if I had shrugged off the whole area of adjustments that the couple would have to make. I wonder now what my dream really tells me about this couple, but perhaps I could only conjecture that in consideration of the light and darkness of the dream. I feel that all I really could say now would be an observation about young love. This image is in the glowing circle and obviously has the full relationship that marriage incorporates. The image is surrounded by darkness that is the way in which young lovers often view the world. They are in the light of love, and the rest of the world is in the darkness of misunderstanding.
In each instance the essay begins with a simple, straightforward description of the dream, followed by an analysis. The analysis systematically examines each aspect of the dream in such a way that the thinking process, leading to an ultimate epiphany, is made visible. Characteristic of all essays generated by this approach is a voyage-of-discovery, or mind-at-work quality, present even when some of the observations are not fully convincing.
Curiously enough, the students have not been formally trained to discern analogies: the ability is there already. All that is required is an opportunity to make full use of it, as in dream analysis. Indeed, analogy is the underlying principle in all these essays. This takes us back to a rhetoric that has not yet undergone the fundamental shifts in logic and relationmaking that occurred in the Renaissance, after which the dichotomy between content and form became even more pronounced than before.
Classical rhetoric, particularly invention, was based, as is all taxonomy, on assertions that a present experience is analogous to some past one. As the influence of both Bacon and Descartes spread, emphasis shifted, in scientific thought, from a concentration on past experience to a concentration on the facts themselves and the relations among these facts.5 Rhetoric, especially invention, here parted company with the movement of contemporary thought and was never to rejoin it again.
What resulted was an increasing inability to apply analogical reasoning. Thus we see what has been described as a "national failure" in analogy making on the ETS exams,6 reports that students "do not think analogically despite their practical need to do so,"7 and lamentations that attempts to build skills in analogy making in high school have not been totally successful.8 It is likely that weakness in analogical thinking is what implicitly underlies the negative findings by the University of Iowa Conference on Creativiity. And yet our own experience suggests that if creativity cannot be taught—a proposition that we do not accept—it can at least be encouraged by providing the students with an opportunity to express innate creativity that seems to be linked with the operation of the analogy-discerning process itself. This, we contend, is exactly what we accomplish when we incorporate dream analysis in the composition course in an attempt to resolve the form/content dichotomy.
1Donald M. Murray, "The Interior View, One Writer's Philosphy of Composition," CCC (February 1970), 21-26.
2Ray Kytle, "Prewriting by Analysis," CCC 21 (December 1970), 308-385.
3Janice Laver, "Hueristics and Composition," CCC 21 (December 1970), 396-404.
4Richard Lloyd-Jones, "Theoretical Problems in Studying Creativity and Composition," CCC 21 (December 1970), 261-266.
5James Howell, Poetic Rhetoric and Logic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 256.
6Fred I. Godshalk et al., The Measurement of Writing Ability (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: CEEB), p. 52.
7Janet Grierson, "Writing and History," College English 18 (January 1974), p. 34-46.
8David Cox, The English Teacher (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1975), p. 71.
© Copyright 2002 by Robert J. R. Rockwood. All rights reserved.