Senoi Dream Praxis

Abstract

Anthropologists who work with the people Kilton Stewart called ‘senoi’ agree that his account of how those people talk about and use dreams is rather idealized. The inaccuracies seem to stem from unconscious but systematic methodological biases which Domhoff and I have discussed at length elsewhere (Ed. Note: See note at end of article). The following account of Senoi dream praxis draws on discussions I have had with other anthropologists, notably Geoffrey Benjamin of the University of Singapore and Clay Robarchek of the University of California. Senoi themselves, however, supplied most of the information, during conversations with me while I was Living with them in 1961—1963 and 1975. This article is therefore a critique neither of Stewart’s work nor of the therapy he pro-moted, merely a presentation of dream theory in Malaya.