How To Alleviate Depression | Dreams and depression

This book describes how to alleviate depression using Jungian dreamwork. Learn how dream images shed light on the sources and origins of depression, including negative body image, trauma, family and relationship conflicts, separation and divorce, loss and bereavement, and low self-esteem. The author describes inspirational examples of individuals who utilized the messages and symbols of dreams to work through the emotional, relational, and existential issues associated with depression and to make beneficial life changes. The book details an easy-to-follow method that can be practiced by couples, friends and family members, in psychotherapy, and in self-treatment. Get natural relief without unpleasant side effects.

Published by Routledge

“Based on years of clinical experience and a marriage of the wisdom of Jung with the practical strategies of existential psychotherapy, Dr Greg Bogart makes the meaning of dreams come alive. He demonstrates how dream work can be a potent resource at key turning points in the life cycle—including early adulthood, marriage, midlife, retirement, and old age. His examples are extremely clear and show the impact of working with an evolving series of dreams. Dr Bogart uses dreams to address practical dilemmas in love and work but always with an eye to a universal and spiritual dimension of dreaming. I highly recommend this insightful and uplifting book. It is relevant for psychotherapists, dream analysts, and the general public, especially for those who are depressed and want to experience a unique approach to healing.”

• Alan Siegel, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; Education Chair and past President, International Association for the Study of Dreams.

‘The book you hold is a distillation of the wisdom, knowledge, and clinical technique of an inspired interpreter of dreams. Greg Bogart shows us how messages from the deep psyche illuminate psychodynamics, current life situations, and directions for healing in our patients and ourselves. He shows that even what appear to be negative dreams orient us toward wholeness. Although this book concerns the treatment of many different kinds of depression, it is far more. I regard it as a major contribution to the wider field of depth psychotherapy, one I warmly recommend. ‘

• Bryan Wittine, PhD, LMFT, Jungian Psychoanalyst, C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco

‘In this innovative book, Dr Greg Bogart makes a convincing case that working with dreams can be an effective treatment for depression. Bogart’s holistic approach combines existential psychotherapy, Jungian psychology, and cultural mythology. Each case study is a novella, filled with penetrating insights, and a joy to read. Dreamwork In Holistic Psychotherapy Of Depression is truly a breakthrough work, one that entertains as well as instructs. ‘

• Stanley Krippner, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University.

Excerpts from the book.

Chapter One

Symbols of Woundedness in Dreams

This book describes how interpreting and working with dreams can help alleviate depression. In recent decades there have been many changing trends and favored techniques used within the mental health field to treat depression, including cognitive therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, holotropic breath work, mindfulness based therapy, hypnosis and regression therapies, bright light therapy, electro convulsive therapy, and psychotropic medications. What I’ve found most effective in my own work with clients is Jungian dreamwork—a method of attending to dream symbols with an eye to both their personal significance and their mythic and archetypal dimensions. I use this with my clients because dreamwork is what has worked best in my own life. Dreams spring from an underground stream that guides and heals, and I find them to be a great source of wisdom. I like to imagine that if Carl Jung were alive and practicing during our era of managed care and time-limited psychotherapy, he would work much as he did a hundred years ago, listening to the unconscious and trusting it to provide imagery to assist a client’s growth and life transitions. Adopting this attitude, I put dream images under a microscope, magnifying their emotional and spiritual meaning using free association and creative imagination, inviting a catalytic event in the moment of dream interpretation.

In this book I offer a series of case studies and vignettes that describe how I use Jungian dreamwork in the treatment of depression, as a tool to explore various issues that can be the source and ongoing focus of depressed mood: alcoholism and substance abuse; trauma, illness, and disability; marital strife; negative body image; internalizing of feelings; divorce; relational victimization and domestic violence; encountering racism; intergenerational transmission of trauma; conflict or internal self-judgment about sexual orientation; complicated bereavement; and dissatisfaction in the workplace. Most readers will recognize issues and concerns that are familiar.

Encapsulating and going directly to the heart of our symptomatic behaviors and our present soul condition, dreams help us touch the wounds, traumas, and existential issues that can make us depressed, anxious, and emotionally distressed. Jung said that the dream “shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is, . . . not as he would like it to be, but as it is” (Jung, 1934, par. 304). Each dream compensates for or complements a deficiency in the dreamer’s conscious position; and every dream can be considered a message from a superior intelligence, the Guiding Self, director of the individuation drive, the urge to become what one is (Whitmont & Perera, 1989, pp. 17–18). These basic assumptions guide and bring orientation to my work.

Some of the examples I’ll share focus on brief therapy where a single dream played a significant role in resolving an emotional problem, resetting the individual’s compass, initiating change. Other examples feature a series of dreams from clients in long-term psychotherapy, illustrating the artistry of the unconscious in creating a vibrant personal symbolism with resonant healing effects. I note and emphasize the archetypal elements in dreams, portraying recurrent patterns of transformation, pathways of change. Archetypes are archaic riverbeds the unconscious cascades through, forming symbols conveying timeless experiences of womblike gestation, radiant or stormy birth, heroic quests, odysseys and initiations, encounters with lovers and adversaries, and transformative encounters with the numinous. If you look closely into any dream image you’ll find archetypal tapestry. Participation in these eternal dramas and mythic themes gives meaning and purpose to our current life challenges and benefits our mental and emotional health.

Sometimes it seems that Jungian dreamwork isn’t considered to be in the mainstream of clinical work, that it’s viewed by some as quaint and mildly amusing. I’d like to see that perception change, because dreamwork has something important and practical to offer in alleviating human suffering. I’m not saying that dream interpretation works for everyone. Some people don’t dream much, or don’t remember their dreams upon awakening, or choose to ignore their dreams. Some people don’t see dreams as meaningful at all. Others are resistant to a therapist’s interpretation of a dream. Then there’s the problem that some people suffering from depression experience insomnia and a lack of dream recall, and for this reason may require other forms of treatment. And dreams aren’t necessarily curative in and of themselves. But talking about a dream can open up a resonant discussion about a problem, bringing the conversation to a sharp focus and a deep feeling level. A shift in our awareness occurs so that healing is possible. A dream is a natural projective image inviting us to paint canvases of our inner worlds evoked by the elusive, mystifying characters and narratives. Dreamwork takes us to a place where we discover emotional and existential truths.

The Dream of the Girl in the Basement

Tina, a very quiet, shy young woman suffering from depression told me this dream in our initial meeting:

I’m in a basement trying to climb out on a wooden ladder, but the ladder breaks and falls down on a little girl, six or seven years old. The girl lies there bleeding, but she doesn’t say anything or make a sound.

I asked Tina the obvious question: “What do you remember about being six or seven?”

“I was alone a lot because my mother was in the hospital. She was schizophrenic. My dad was gone at work. Whenever I’d hurt myself or needed something he’d be very angry at me and say it was my fault. So I learned to keep quiet and not say anything.”

“So you were neglected, alone, and frightened. And you learned to silence yourself and not to show any needs or feelings. The girl in the basement is in your unconscious and carries the memory of who you are. You can’t climb up into the light of consciousness until you see that girl, see her bleeding, and rescue her, treating her with care and compassion.”

“I’ve always been afraid to think about this because I’m afraid I’ll be schizophrenic like my mother.“

I said, “You’re not schizophrenic. You’re brave and strong. You were just a little girl, and the whole world felt like it fell on you. But it didn’t crush you. You took care of yourself when nobody was there.” Tina cried for a few minutes and couldn’t speak. Then she said, “Nobody ever saw me this way before, and I never really saw myself either.” We both took in the impact of her statement that she’d never felt truly seen before that moment. Dreamwork enables us to extend compassion toward ourselves; and compassion is like water on a parched plant. We soak it in and it brings us back to life.

Attending to the Woundedness in Dream

Dreams bring emotionally charged material into the sphere of our consciousness, allowing us to feel the painful aspects of our lives, to get close to and familiar with our woundedness. Dream researcher Strephon Kaplan Williams used to ask, “What is wounded in the dream?” and “Where is the healing in the dream?” (Williams, The Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual, 1976). Similarly, James Hillman used the term pathologizing to describe the psyche’s tendency to portray images of illness, disorder, and suffering and “to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective” (Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld,1978, p. 57). The way I like to state this is that dreams portray our affliction, pain, or vulnerability in a manner that is strengthening and integrative. By recognizing the wounded elements in dreams, we can attend emphatically to the sources of depression.

The Dream of a Passenger’s Death and a Cop

In my practice I often see clients who are taking several psychiatric medications. Many of these people report lethargy, emotional numbness, weight gain, diminished sex drive, digestive upset, jitteriness, and mental fog. And they’re still depressed, anxious, restless, and uneasy. So their doctors keep upping their dosages. I believe we have a better tool at our disposal, something that can help us touch the emotional wounds, traumas, and existential issues that make people depressed, anxious, and unable to sleep at night. Certainly many people need meds. They help a lot of people. I’m not disputing that. But meds on their own don’t heal. Dreamwork can heal.

Chris, age twenty-seven, had been diagnosed by various psychiatrists as suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and attention deficit disorder, and he was taking a cocktail of psychiatric drugs, including two antidepressants, anti-psychotic medication, sleep meds, and meds for ADHD. Chris had been fired from his last two jobs and was on the verge of walking out of his current job, in the middle of a demanding project, stating that he was too burned out to continue. After taking his history and speaking to him for an hour, I had doubts that Chris merited the diagnosis of schizophrenia. He presented as completely lucid mentally, but physically and emotionally unhealthy. His most acute problem was alcohol abuse. He drank excessively (plenty of the hard stuff), which could be especially problematic in combination with some of the medications he was taking, and he was a hermit who stayed up all night and slept during the day. His whole pattern of existence went against the grain of the collective. Chris worked in computer systems programming and was much sought after, earning a six-figure income. He had prodigious intellectual capacities and was recognized as an innovator and genius in computer science and mathematics. He’d published several articles and taught at universities, although he had no graduate degree. Chris was wired and eccentric, but not visibly psychotic or delusional. He exuded a rebellious, disrespectful attitude that had gotten him fired from several jobs, and he was currently in trouble at work because of his erratic behavior and poor work habits.

Chris told me this dream:

There was a passenger in my vehicle. I killed him in an accident, and I didn’t know what to do. I left the body there. A cop drove past.

I asked Chris about the passenger, who reminded Chris of “my best friend Morty from high school. He shaped me in various ways. Throughout high school he had a better defined sense of identity; he was a brilliant dude who played in a punk-rock bar band. He was the most rotten alcoholic. I drank with him for years. He was troubled, got kicked out of school.” This was Chris’s role model. He had to be that guy, a defiant, alcoholic troublemaker.

I said, “Your dream suggests a need to kill or sacrifice the attitude represented by Morty—heavy drinking, getting kicked out of schools and jobs, being a badass punker and hell-raiser. This attitude of consciousness is ready to die. It has caused you trouble at work, and psychological trouble. You need to shed this part of you. The cop makes me think of guarding, protecting, maintaining order, self-ordering. You need to have an ordering principle watching out for yourself more closely so you don’t do things that hurt you.”

Chris took these comments to heart and made immediate changes. He quit drinking abruptly after his doctor told him that he was on the brink of cirrhosis of the liver at age twenty-seven. That was his wake-up call. He started going to bed at a reasonable hour, regulating his sleep cycles, eating more consciously, and working out at a gym, which caused him to lose twenty-five pounds. He combed his hair and started online dating; and he tapered off his medications, under his doctor’s supervision. Chris also owned up to his defiant, disrespectful attitude. He went to his boss and explained some technical issues that had prevented him from completing his work project, and then made the effort to set things right and complete his contracted assignment. He learned that communicating his needs directly was a more adaptive coping strategy than pickling himself and refusing to answer phone calls from the office. And that was the course of the therapy—from schizophrenic to mensch in four months. The death of Morty in the dream was death of the puer, death of an immature attitude. The dream shed light on Chris’s drinking and arrogance, and created a bridge to the threshold of a different life.

Perhaps some will say that I’m making this sound too simple, that no one changes so dramatically like this. But sometimes people do change like this. I formulated my interpretation of “Morty dying,” stating it with confidence. And Chris was able to get the message, and make life changes swiftly and gracefully, as befits a highly intelligent man. Constructive change is possible when we respond to the prompting and messages of dreams. I don’t mean to claim that dreamwork is always clinically effective, but I don’t want to sell the unconscious short either. Chris’s dream provided exactly the perspective that he needed and helped bring about a small healing miracle.