To the extent that the environmental crisis has been caused by humans forgetting their vital connectedness to nature, Herb's work indicates that dreams with nature imagery can be valuable means of renewing that connectedness. Bette Ehlert has revealed the potential of dream study to aid in the reform of prison inmates and criminal offenders on parole. Bette has led dreamwork groups in various New Mexico correctional facilities, and she has found that dreams bring forth very clearly the symbolic context of the offender's particular crime, its roots in the person's usually trauma-filled life history, and its meaning for his or her potential growth and rehabilitation. Bette's work promises to deepen our understanding of why crime occurs, to help criminal offenders keep from committing more crimes, and perhaps even to suggest ways to prevent crimes from occurring in the first place. One of the major challenges facing Western society as we enter the new millenium is learning how to live in a multicultural world, a world of extremely diverse races, religions, and social systems.
Dreams provide an ideal bridge for cross-cultural communication.
On the one hand, dreaming is a universal experience that unites all humans, no matter what their cultural background. On the other, dreams are intricately shaped by the dreamer's particular cultural world, meaning that to study other people's dreams is an excellent way to learn about their society. Many dream researchers have begun journeying across this bridge, sharing dreams with people from different cultures. Jayne Gackenbach's fascinating work with the Cree Indians of Northern Alberta teaching them about Western dream theories and, in turn, being taught by them about their own Native dream theories, shows that dreams can be a wonderful means of reaching out across cultural differences. Along the same lines, Anthony Shafton's thought provoking studies of the role of dreams in African-American culture raises important questions about subtle racial biases that are built into our major dream theories and practices.