WORKING WITH DREAMS: PRELIMINARY IDEAS FOR A NEW SYNTHESIS

How do you work with dreams in clinical practice? Does it differ from one dream to the next, or from one patient to another? Does the dream change in either the telling or in the hearing? This two-session seminar is offered to clinicians to deepen their approach to working with dreams. The organizing thread for the series is the presenter’s approach to dream work comprised of an amalgam of analytical psychology, relational psychoanalysis, and hermeneutic phenomenology: a way of being in relation to dreams that follows images and emotion while recognizing that the meanings embedded within dreams are paradoxically both created and discovered in dialogue between the dreamer and psychotherapist. Central to this approach is the dynamism of the ego-self axis, the fulcrum around which dream meanings can be pursued. We will consider the history of working with dreams in ancient Greek, Jewish and Native American sources, explore the structure of Sigmund Freud’s work with dreams, review
C. G. Jung’s theories related to understanding the dream, and include an overview of a contemporary understanding of dreams.