Dream Interpretation as a Psychotherapeutic Technique


Book Description

This inspiring new book covers the practical side of dream interpretation during the therapeutic consultation. It aids the understanding of sleep and dreams in a scientific context and provides and introduction to the biological and evolutionary foundations of sleep, dreams and dream interpretation, supporting its use in professional counselling. "Dream Interpretation as a Psychotherapeutic Technique" covers cultural, historical and religious foundations of dreams and dream interpretation, and gives an overview of the various dream interpretation theories. Psychotherapists and psychiatrists with an interest in dream interpretation will find this guide invaluable. It will also be of great interest to psychologists, counsellors, therapists and general readers. 'Excellent and very accessible, helpful, useful and flexible. I would recommend this book to any student or beginning therapist interested in working with dreams.' - Ernest Hartmann, in the Foreword. 'This is an essential book on sleep, dreams, and dream interpretation. It will reawaken dream interpretation in clinical practice as a pragmatic tool for client self-awareness.' - T Gayle Yamazki. 'A life-long student of dreams brings decades of research and practice to bear in this scholarly and fascinating work. Coolidge reveals ancient writings, the influence of human evolution on our dream life, and the latest scientific insights. In the tradition of Freud, Jung, and Perls, he uses disarming personal examples, as well as those of his subjects to teach principles of dream interpretation. The practical steps he has developed quickly enrich the therapy process.' - Michael Galvin.




Dream Interpretation


Book Description




Dreamwork and Self-Healing


Book Description

There have been many previous books on the physiology of dreaming, the history of dream interpretation, and the meaning of specific dream symbols. But there have been relatively few books exploring the moment-by-moment process of interpreting dreams. This book guides you through this interpretive process, and illustrates how dreamwork promotes emotional, relational, and spiritual transformation. It explores how working with dreams enhances our emotional life, deepens our capacity for relationship, and helps us gracefully navigate change and transitions. The author shows that dreamwork is a natural antidepressant, is effective in transforming anger, bereavement, couples conflicts and impasses, and aids the process of individuation. The book explores archetypal themes and complexes, synchronistic experiences and spiritual awakening in dreams, and representations of the body in dreams. The final chapter, "Taming Wild Horses", explores animal dream symbolism and its importance for enhancing our human sexuality. The book also describes the Dream Mandala, a method of self-transformation through the union of opposites - the charged polarities of the personality.







Working with Dreams


Book Description

Originally published in 1979, this is a dream book with an outstanding difference: it takes the interpretation of dreams out of the realm of the professionals and gives it to the ultimate expert – the dreamer. Working with Dreams stresses the uniqueness of every dream and dreamer. With anecdotes and examples from their own dream groups, the authors show how to deal with the intimacy and honesty of a dream; how to explore its meanings without distorting them; how to let a dream tell us about ourselves and add to our understanding. Dr Ullman and Mrs Zimmerman start with the question of what is in a dream – what is real and what is symbolic? – and then go on to explain what happens during sleep and the way a dream develops. They cover remembering and recording dreams and dealing with the imagery of dreams. They illustrate the many predicaments that dreams depict, the self-deceptions we practice in relation to our dreams, and then show how dream groups – whether a family or a group of strangers – can work together to uncover the meaning of dreams. And they enrich their book by discussing everything from the history of dreams to the possibilities of dreams across space and time. The result is a storehouse of information about the world of dreams.




The Relational Interpretation of Dreams


Book Description

This book explains the use of dreams as a tool in psychotherapy to provide meaning, establish and maintain a therapeutic relationship, and thus enhance and progress treatment. Maintaining a focus on the synergy between dreams and relationship, it includes interviews with four eminent dream researchers and scholars: John S. Antrobus, G. William Domhoff, Mark J. Blechner, and J. Allan Hobson. This book explores the synergistic qualities between dreams and relationships, and how that synergy generates biographically, professionally, and psychotherapeutically formative experiences. The book delineates the ways in which dreams provide a foundation for relating, provides a container (Bion, 1967/1993) for the unthought known (Bollas, 1987), creates meaning through relationships, and ultimately fosters dispersion of relational dynamics originating from the culture of the times and more. From a relational psychoanalytic perspective, this book describes the role of dreams in shaping our relational living. This book provides a unique perspective that illustrates using yourself as a tool in relational establishment, preservation, and knowing. It is ideal for students working toward an understanding of the influence of intersubjective space in clinical interactions and clinicians looking for additional and alternate ways to connect with patients.




Working with Dreams in Psychotherapy


Book Description

Working with dreams in therapy can help clients establish a focus and reach core issues quickly, and can play an important clinical role in both brief and long-term therapeutic relationships. This accessible volume integrates the latest research on sleep and dreaming with a cognitive-experiential psychotherapeutic perspective, providing a comprehensive guide to dream interpretation. In clear, jargon-free prose, elucidated by extensive case material, the author presents a three-stage model of dream interpretation based on the premises that dreams reflect waking life, that their meaning is best understood in a collaborative effort between client and therapist, and that both cognitions and emotions are important in this process. An Appendix contains a reproducible, self-guided manual on dream interpretation featuring step-by-step instructions and worksheets. This Appendix is an ideal resource for therapists to use with clients.




Psychoanalysis and Dreams


Book Description

Psychoanalysis and Dreams explores some of the cornerstones of Antonino Ferro’s theoretical model but also attempts to extend the dreamlike boundaries of the model. Based on Bion’s theory of alpha function and the analytic field, Ferro has developed his own original theorization of transformations in dreams and of work in the analytic session as a waking dream. Clearly highlighted in the book is Ferro’s theory that transformation in dreams is the activity which is constantly carried out in the mind of the analyst, who nullifies the reality-status of the patient’s communication and considers the patient’s narrative as a dream which must be constructed in real time in the encounter between the two minds at work. At the centre of Ferro's theoretical proposal stands the transition from a psychoanalysis of contents to a psychoanalysis which develops the apparatus for thinking, based on the conception of an unconscious in a perennial state of construction and transformation, which must be dreamed, and which continuously expands as it is dreamed. Psychoanalysis and Dreams is written for practicing and training psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists and will be helpful in everyday psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic work.







Cognitive Therapy and Dreams


Book Description

Expanded from a special issue of the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, this volume contains some of the most interesting and promising work on dreams coming from therapists and researchers working at the crossroads of cognitive therapy and other systemsófrom a reprint of Beck's only article on cognition and dreams to the influence of modern neurobiology on the use of dreams in cognitive therapy. These chapters provide a meta-theory of drams that is unique to the cognitive perspective. As such, they begin the process of generating a comprehensive cognitive model of dream work that includes cognitive, affective, physical and behavioral features from which future research and clinical innovations can be built.