Dreams and the Therapeutic Process

A journey through dreams and the therapeutic process—a path to healing from within

dreams and the therapeutic process

This book is an in-depth study of Jungian dream interpretation and its powerful healing effects. It illustrates how dreamwork promotes emotional, relational, and spiritual transformation, and aids us in gracefully navigating life transitions. The author contends that dreamwork is a natural antidepressant and can be helpful in transforming anger, bereavement, couples conflicts and impasses, as well as aiding the process of individuation. The book describes archetypal themes and complexes, synchronistic experiences and spiritual awakening in dreams, and representations of the body in dreams. The concluding chapter, “Taming Wild Horses,” explores animal dream symbolism and its importance for enhancing our human sexuality. The author also describes the Dream Mandala, a method of self-transformation through the union of opposites — the charged polarities of the personality. Dreamwork and Self-Healing will interest all readers who wish to learn about the healing potential of dreams and the therapeutic process.

Published by Routledge.

Available from Amazon.com.

Reviews of Dreamwork and Self-Healing:

‘Greg Bogart shows how Jungian dreamwork can be applied effectively in brief-term and long-term therapy, couples counseling, group process work, and as a catalyst for personal transformation. “Taming Wild Horses” is a powerful case study that’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. Bogart’s creative reading of Jung, Von Franz, and Edinger, his centering, integrative dream mandala method, and his brilliant chapter on dreams and spirituality make this book highly recommended reading.” • Stanley Krippner, PhD, Co-Author Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them

‘This is a book on dreams like no other. Greg Bogart’s inspirational approach to spiritual depth psychology is potent medicine indeed. We find ourselves drawn into these gripping stories, awed by the vitality of dreams, which reveal both the sources of our wounding and paths to healing. Bogart’s innovative approach to the Dream Mandala allows us to reach the organizing foundation of dreams, and to perceive their profound relational, archetypal, and spiritual significance. This book will be a beacon for anyone seeking the guidance and wisdom that comes to us from the mystery within.” • Linda Schierse Leonard, PhD, author of The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship

‘For followers of both Freud and Jung, our analytic work must balance the dream with the transference. While the transference relationship has been abundantly considered in the literature, the process of dream analysis in recent years has remained unaddressed. Finally, a unique and remarkable book has appeared that is valuable to the student, the patient, and the informed clinician. Bogart’s subtle, brilliant reflections provide an in-depth resource for Jungian analytic thought reflecting his extensive experience as a writer, teacher and clinician. I highly recommend Dreamwork and Self-Healing for professionals, their clients, and others given to self-reflection.” • John Conger, PhD, psychoanalyst, author of Jung and Reich: The Body as Shadow

‘That Jungian dream work can advance psychological healing is convincingly illustrated in this book. Properly understood, dreams enhance the dialogue between therapist and patient about specific problems in living, contribute to a therapist’s deductions about a patient’s internal object relations, and add to the growth of the patient’s self understanding. In his beautifully detailed accounts of clinical cases, Greg Bogart shows himself able to listen sensitively to his clients’ dreams and to share what he finds in them. He demonstrates that dream symbols, delved into with respectful curiosity, can often convert a patient’s complexes into constructive life energies.” • John Beebe, MD, Jungian analyst, author of Integrity in Depth

‘This is a rich and enthusiastic book about dreams in clinical practice. Bogart’s approach to dreams is inspired mainly by the classical and archetypal Jungian traditions. Through the many detailed accounts of his patients’ dreams (and some of his own) he explores how relationships, archetypal themes, complexes, persona and shadow, anima and animus, individuation, synchronicity, spirit and body are expressed in dream work. The clinical vignettes demonstrate the evolving therapeutic process as facilitated by dreams and reflected in them. Bogart’s passion, respect and devotion to working with dreams is palpable throughout the book and so is the therapeutic, healing effect his approach has on the patients presented in the book.” • Review in The Journal of Analytical Psychology

“The accessibility of the book and its plethora of examples make it ideal for people who are interested in learning how to understand their dreams on their own. In fact, it would be hard to identify another book so ideally suited to teaching individuals how to begin working with their dreams alone without any reference to a “dream professional.” The numerous case examples not only makes the writing extremely clear in terms of what to do and how to do it but also in terms of what kinds of immense gifts dreams represent. It would be hard to imagine anyone reading this book without being inspired to work with his or her own dreams immediately, the author makes such a compelling case. Story after story shows how, even for people who feel beaten down and hopeless in waking life, their dreams contain what they need to heal and hold up a mirror of their own resplendency in wholeness. Different aspects of Bogart’s technique are illustrated, gently educating the reader in how to work with dreams, especially how to make the connections between what might appear to be mundane, baffling, or even disturbing imagery that will unlock the symbolism in terms meaningful to the dreamer. Bogart guides dreamers through a process to unpack the meaning of all dream elements, and he shows how an understanding of Jungian symbolism can further extend this interpretive process. A compelling case is made that dreams hold the key to self-understanding, self-healing, and even self-transcendence. This is a book of hope, a book that will inspire and empower readers of any level of experience or expertise to unleash the potential of the apparently mundane revelations given to them every night. Bogart shows how dreams are blessings broadcast, and that anyone can access their foresight, hindsight, and insight for personal growth.” • Jenny Wade, Ph.D, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology

Contents

PART I. THERAPEUTIC DREAMWORK

Introduction
Dreamwork and Psychotherapy
Dreamwork and Relationships
Twenty Dreams of a Young Artist

PART II. JUNGIAN DREAMWORK

Archetypal Themes
Unfolding the Complexes in Dreams
Persona and Shadow in Dreamwork
Anima and Animus in Dreams
Dreamwork and Individuation
The Dream Mandala
Synchronicity and Dreams
Spirit and the Body in Dreams

PART III. CASE STUDY

Taming Wild Horses: A Study of Animal Symbolism and Male Sexuality

Excerpts from Dream Work and Self-Healing

Dreams are healing symbols of the unconscious. They make emotionally charged material accessible to consciousness quickly and safely, give focus to inner work and the therapeutic process. They provide clues about the origins of symptoms and core life issues. Dreams activate our capacity for intrapsychic and behavioral change. They have a unique capacity to promote healing from within.

Dreams are like icebergs rising out of the deep waters of the unconscious. Some are icebergs of the past, helping us to understand early traumas and undigested memories. Thus they are retrospective. Dreams are integrative when they enable us to perceive and reconcile our many conflicting feelings and sub personalities. Dreams can also be prospective or anticipatory, harbingers of the future, depicting what is emerging, and what we have the potential to become. Looking backward and forward simultaneously, the dream’s function is to expand the aperture of consciousness, the circumference of perception, the sphere of identity. The often humorous and paradoxical messages revealed by dreams jog loose new perceptions. Received reverently, each dream becomes a pearl from the depths of the ocean of the unconscious. Reflection on the dream’s mystery often evokes a feeling approaching religious awe. We are filled with amazement at the psyche’s capacity to portray its own condition.

Anima and Animus in Dreams

My approach to Jungian dreamwork could be summarized as the practice of creating consciousness by recognizing the coexistence of opposites within the personality. This includes the urge to unite the gendered poles of our experience represented by the anima and animus, archetypes that have varied and elusive meanings. First, they signify our realization of the maleness and femaleness within all of us, the fact that both men and women possess characteristics of both genders. The classical Jungian formulation depicted anima as the carrier of a man’s unconscious eros, his capacity for feeling and relatedness. The animus was portrayed as a woman’s unconscious logos, her capacity for logic and intellectual certitude. Murray Stein wrote:

[A]nima/us is a psychic structure that is complementary to the persona and links the ego to the deepest layer of the psyche, namely to the image and experience of the self. . . . [T]he persona is the habitual attitude that an ego adopts to meet the world. It is a public personality and facilitates adaptation to the demands of physical and . . . social reality. . . . The anima/us is . . . concerned with adaptation to the inner world. . . . [T]he anima/us allows the ego to enter into and to experience the depths of the psyche. (Stein,1998, pp. 128, 130)

The anima is an unconscious feminine complex, apparent when a man (or woman) is emotionally reactive, whiny, and oversensitive, full of touchy, hurt feelings. The animus is an unconscious masculine complex that is apparent when a woman (or man) becomes overbearing, domineering, self-righteous, and stridently opinionated. She becomes bossy, pushy, domineering. According to Stein, a man’s anima is evident when he is moody, intensely emotional, and overreactive to slights. . . . The anima or animus activates the unconscious, especially when we’re stirred by our attractions to others. Whereas the shadow is generally seen in dream figures and waking life persons who are scary, threatening, or repellent, the anima and animus announce themselves through people or dream characters who attract, captivate, and fascinate us. Stein wrote: “If the image of the shadow instills fear and dread, the image of the anima/us usually brings excitement and stimulates desire for union. It engenders attraction. . . . We want to be part of it, we want to join it”(Stein,1998, p. 142). When we fall in love, we project the archetype onto someone who carries it for us. We find a person who embodies qualities of the anima or animus, which we project onto our beloved. The anima/animus often manifests as a feeling of attraction to an enticing, attractive person who we hope will complete us. The anima and animus are carriers of tempestuous storms that inspire our souls and ignite our passions. The encounter with this person (or dream figure) moves us and stirs us to change in our feelings, our thinking, and our motivations.

The Dream of the Handsome Prima Donna

A woman named Frieda dreamed:

I was with a tour group in a country akin to Tangiers or perhaps somewhere in Mexico. There was a man on the tour who was a bit of a prima donna, very handsome but also a bit of a jerk. I didn’t want to be near him, but I was also a little intrigued with him. We ended up in a group ritual with each of us paired up man/woman. He was my partner. I was disappointed, anxious, and excited too. There was some sort of Tantric exercise to explore with each other. I lay down. He said, “Sit up and meet me.”

The dark, mysterious man was the animus, seeking her out for union. Frieda said, “I saw him as foreign and a jerk. Yet I was also attracted to him because intuitively I knew he would bring me healing.”

“What about him was attractive to you?”

“His power and good looks. He was very outgoing and confident.”

“I think these are qualities you’re developing.”

“But I didn’t want to be associated with his arrogance. He was unable to see he was a jerk; it was something unconscious. I feared being taken over by him, consumed by him.”

I asked Frieda about his being a prima donna. That reminded her of being “a showoff, like how I was as a youngster.”

“So the prima donna is a symbol of healthy narcissism, self-esteem, inner radiance. That’s what your animus possesses: healthy self-esteem.”

“That’s what I keep looking for in a partner. I project this out onto men.”

“He projects himself outward, without inhibition. Perhaps that’s what you need to learn to do.”

“Bingo,” she replied.

The animus has a captivating quality that evokes admiration. Emma Jung said the animus is characterized by logos, which encompasses four masculine principles: will, word, deed, and meaning. Will refers to drive and ambition. Word refers to a gift with words. Deed means that one becomes a person of action. Meaning is the orientation toward philosophy and spiritual practice (Jung, 1981 [1957], p. 3). The handsome prima donna embodied a capacity for will and deed that Frieda admired. . . .

The anima/animus often appears in dreams as a person or character who enlivens and inspires us, quickening our feelings, longings, and aspirations. The anima/animus is what animates us. It’s the archetype of life and love, and the struggles we endure to sustain love beyond projections and expectations. Once we take back the projection-making factor and find our own inner feeling of aliveness, the anima/animus anticipates our wholeness, and internally incites us to attain it. . . .

The secret to resolving the moody depression, sensitivity, and unhappiness of the male anima is to find what inspires us, bringing beauty and soul to daily living. We men tend to get moody when we feel our beloved is not sufficiently nurturing, affirming, responsive, or exciting—just as women get angry when they feel their intelligence and leadership are not validated. We look for a spouse or lover to carry the positive, enlivening anima or animus. We can unfold these archetypes by finding something what animatesus and brings us alive—a source of pleasurable fulfillment. In my own life, I live the anima through music, guitar, composing songs, playing in jazz bands. . . . .

Here I’ll recount a dream reflecting my own work to integrate this archetype.

The Dream of the Lace Curtain, an Open Book, and the Refined Woman’s Painting

I climbed a staircase to a room in a tower or turret. I walked past a delicate white lace curtain in the doorway into a room where a very refined, beautiful woman with long hair had left an open book and one of her watercolor paintings sitting on a table. She wasn’t in the room, but I was hoping to see her. I noticed there was a stain or smudge on the painting.

This dream reminded me of several artistic women I’d loved in the past and my feeling of inner emotional union with them. The delicate, white lace curtain, the refined woman, and the watercolor painting all evoked feeling, purity, sensitivity, and artistic and spiritual inspiration—qualities suggesting the presence of anima. The white lace was like gossamer, a shimmering, delicate, see-through fabric, representingthe ultimate in feminine beauty and refinement. The refined woman reminded me of Sophia, gnostic goddess of wisdom. In India, the same archetype appears as Saraswati, goddess of art, music, philosophy, culture, and education. The stain on the painting represented sadness about relationships that had ended, beautiful love that had been stained, but also a streak of self-doubt and self-denigration that stained my soul’s purity. The smudged painting reminded me of making something beautiful and then ruining it. When this dream occurred, I was in a loving relationship but was afraid I’d do something to spoil it. The stained painting made me aware that loving somebody means learning to accept that person’s imperfections, and also to express the ways that he or she is beautiful and precious to you. The open book in the dream was also significant. To be an open book means to let people see in, rather than remaining hidden. It shows a desire for relatedness; it suggests becoming visible to others, making oneself accessible, not hiding. Climbing the stairs to the room in the tower reminded me of entering my own private space of solitary, introspective study and self-reflection. The dream conveyed the insight that I myself was the beloved anima I longed for.