Dreamwork

Purpose – To explore what a Gestalt Therapist can do when faced with a client who claims they had past live memories dealing with unfinished situations.

Methodology – review of a case of Gestalt Therapy session the author had as the basis for a discussion and reflection upon Gestalt Therapy literature.

Findings – When using dreamwork techniques a therapist does not judge or talk about the truth or symbology of the dream. Likewise, a past life memory can be addressed in the here and now and dealt in terms of its unfinished business.

Research Implications – Since the validity of past life memories cannot be scientifically proven or disproven, there is no way to validate its truth or a falsehood. As it is a prerogative of a therapist to not judge a client based on beliefs, it is useful to have a tool to address this
issue.

Practical Implications – If a therapist rejects a past life memory because of their beliefs, their client may feel rejected. Offering a technique that can work for sceptics and believers alike, allows work to focus on the unfinished situation rather than what the client remembers.

Originality/Value – Past life memories have not been dealt with extensively in the Gestalt Therapy literature. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this as well as elicit discussion on the topic of past life unfinished business.

Purpose – To explore what a Gestalt Therapist can do when faced with a client who claims they had past live memories dealing with unfinished situations.

Methodology – review of a case of Gestalt Therapy session the author had as the basis for a discussion and reflection upon Gestalt Therapy literature.

Findings – When using dreamwork techniques a therapist does not judge or talk about the truth or symbology of the dream. Likewise, a past life memory can be addressed in the here and now and dealt in terms of its unfinished business.

Research Implications – Since the validity of past life memories cannot be scientifically proven or disproven, there is no way to validate its truth or a falsehood. As it is a prerogative of a therapist to not judge a client based on beliefs, it is useful to have a tool to address this
issue.

Practical Implications – If a therapist rejects a past life memory because of their beliefs, their client may feel rejected. Offering a technique that can work for sceptics and believers alike, allows work to focus on the unfinished situation rather than what the client remembers.

Originality/Value – Past life memories have not been dealt with extensively in the Gestalt Therapy literature. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this as well as elicit discussion on the topic of past life unfinished business.

Over the years my work has taken me into a deeper investigation of how to re-inhabit ourselves and live a life guided by embodied wisdom, responding to the question: "Once we have experienced wounding, trauma, or loss that has resulted in a subjective experience of having left the body, how do we get back in?" My long-term work as a dance therapist with a depth analytic approach that integrates somatic processes, Jungian dreamwork, and creative arts therapy approaches has taught me that there are many roads to healing. My concern is that having been raised for so many generations according to patriarchal images of spiritual "ascent," together with the quest for personal and individualistic power, our technologically advanced and acquisitive culture has caused us to nearly forget its vital counterpart: the feminine path to individuation through "descent."

The archetype of the superhero has long been related to cultural imaginings of masculinity and manhood. As geek culture has become more mainstream, there has been a steady rise in popularity of films featuring superheroes and supervillains. While deconstructions and analyses of superheroes’ masculinity and sexuality are very common, there has surprisingly been little attention paid to supervillains in their own formulations of gender and identity. Common ways of approaching the supervillain have generally been through designations of being a feminised or emasculated Other. However, the supervillain can also be representative of conflicting and new ways of being masculine. This paper moves beyond typical focus on the male superhero, to the supervillain, and dismantle the assumption that he can only be understood as feminised, marginalised, or emasculated. Using Megamind (2010) as a point of analysis, and drawing from sociological conceptions of masculinity, this paper explores the masculine construction of the supervillain in film, and examines the ways such productions not only reflect certain ideals about masculinity and manhood, but are also affirmed, problematised and reimagined. I argue that Megamind’s inversion of the superhero/supervillain narrative links to broader social shifts, anxieties and concerns pertaining to men, masculinity and manhood in Western culture, potentially challenging traditional models in a consumerist, globalised and post-feminist environment. This paper explores how anti-intellectualism, sexuality, vulnerability, and binaries of the material/natural are entangled within complex imaginings of what it means to be a man, and what such entanglements can bring to our understanding of masculinity in the broader socio-cultural and political environment.

Se realiza una revisión critica de las funciones atribuidas al sueño en la teoría de la terapia gestalt y sus implicaciones en el trabajo con sueños. Se concluye que las distintas aproximaciones funcionales del sueño, esto es, compensatoria, de resolución de problemas y comunicativa, carecen de evidencia científica que las apoye y, por extensión, que fundamente teóricamente el método de trabajo con sueños de la terapia gestalt.

Fotografiet er som en firkantet skive af rum og tid.  Firkanten kan fastholde erindringer, traumer og drømme, altså vores mest af alt tavse udtryk. Den virkelighed, der helt uomtvisteligt viser sig på fotografiet, åbner op for andre billeder, nemlig erindringens, traumets og drømmens udtryk - altså fjerne, ubevidste og tavse billeder. Denne åbning bliver muliggjort ved, at virkeligheden fikseres som billede og denne fiksering er paradoksal: tiden og rummet bliver både fastholdt og ophævet ligesom i de indre billeder. De kan forenes i det øje, der med Roland Barthes tænker. I artiklen skelner jeg ikke mellem analoge og digitale fotografier, fordi jeg for det første mener, at der er tale om en kontinuitet. Fr det andet var det digitale fotografi kun i sin begyndelse med navne som Nancy Burson og Aziz/Cucher.
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English:
The photograph is like a square slice of space and time. The square can retain memories, traumas and dreams, ie our most of all silent expressions. The reality that unequivocally appears in the photograph opens up other images, namely the expression of memory, trauma and dream - that is, distant, unconscious and silent images. This opening is made possible by the fact that reality is fixed as an image and this fixation is paradoxical: time and space are both maintained and abolished, just as in the inner images. They can be united in the eye that thinks with Roland Barthes. In the article, I do not distinguish between analogue and digital photographs because, firstly, I believe that there is a continuity. Second, digital photography was only in its infancy with names like Nancy Burson and Aziz / Cucher.

This paper addresses claims that dreams can be a source of personal insight. Whereas there has been anecdotal backing for such claims, there is now tangential support from findings of the facilitative effect of sleep on cognitive insight, and of REM sleep in particular on emotional memory consolidation. Furthermore, the presence in dreams of metaphorical representations of waking life indicates the possibility of novel insight as an emergent feature of such metaphorical mappings. In order to assess whether personal insight can occur as a result of the consideration of dream content, 11 dream group discussion sessions were conducted which followed the Ullman Dream Appreciation technique, one session for each of 11 participants (10 females, 1 male; mean age = 19.2 years). Self-ratings of deepened self-perception and personal gains from participation in the group sessions showed that the Ullman technique is an effective procedure for establishing connections between dream content and recent waking life experiences, although wake life sources were found for only 14% of dream report text. The mean Exploration-Insight score on the Gains from Dream Interpretation questionnaire was very high and comparable to outcomes from the well-established Hill (1996) therapist-led dream interpretation method. This score was associated between-subjects with pre-group positive Attitude Toward Dreams (ATD). The need to distinguish "aha" experiences as a result of discovering a waking life source for part of a dream, from "aha" experiences of personal insight as a result of considering dream content, is discussed. Difficulties are described in designing a control condition to which the dream report condition can be compared.

Using two texts that survey the most prevalent current Western Euro-based dreamwork modalities, this qualitative analysis identifies common factors in dreamwork techniques. The results show a clear movement toward experiential and collaborative methods and away from interpretation by the dreamworker. The study found general agreement about most dreamwork practices among the 14 approaches surveyed except with respect to the use of associations and others’ projections, which some see as helpful and others see as leading too far from the original dream content. This analysis led to a proposed universal method for working with dreams.

La teoría del sueño creada por F. S. Perls, tradicionalmente, ha sido caracterizada como una proyección o un
mensaje existencial. Sin embargo, esta descripción sólo representa una explicación simplista de la conceptualización
más amplia y original del fenómeno onírico desarrollada por Perls. En este sentido, en el presente escrito se hace una
exposición ordenada de la teoría perlsiana del sueño, así como un análisis crítico de las proposiciones en las cuales se
fundamenta, prestando especial atención a los errores inherentes en ésta y sus implicaciones en la práctica clínica. Se
concluye que la teoría perlsiana de lo onírico evolucionó en tres etapas, a saber, modelo original del sueño, modelo de
correspondencia y modelo clásico del sueño, cada uno de los cuales constituye, por derecho propio, una teoría del sueño
en la cual se define el fenómeno onírico de una manera particular y se le atribuyen funciones psicológicas y terapéuticas
concretas, al igual que una metodología de trabajo específica

In this chapter, David Crespy shares his dreamwork for dramatic writing workshop that he has taught through such venues as the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Hollins University PlayLab, and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. The work here focuses on dramatic writing , but the notion of the dream cache is useful to any storyteller looking for a creative method to innovate their story technique. Using the lens of phenomenology, and techniques suggested by performance theorist Bert O. States, Crespy attempts to "unmask" the way dreams and fiction interact for the playwright or screenwriter. Dreams offer an unlimited supply of ideas, form, technique, and structure for writers who are trying to surprise themselves out of clichés received from the echo chamber of Broadway and Hollywood. This form of dreamwork is about transforming as a storyteller and changing one's ideas about what makes an adventurous tale.

This paper compares the analytic and experiential approaches to dreams in order to illuminate the intrinsic and necessary relationships between the two understandings. It describes how dream work reflects the bimodalness of symbolism, thought and ultimately human consciousness. An extended example of dream work reflecting both analytic and experiential modalities is presented.

Transgressive Dreamwork explores the side of dreaming and dreamwork that is involved with the exceeding of limits and creation of alternative modes of action and understanding. This essay mixes historical overview with teleological suggestions, noting the transgressive in the nature of dreaming, past dreamworks and possible new dreamworks.

It has been posited that the experience commonly called “déjà vu” can be subdivided into several types of déjà experience.  For the past nine years an Internet questionnaire has collected data about what are called “déjà vécu” (already lived through) and “déjà visité” (already visited) experiences.  It is clear from the data that déjà vécu experiences occur more frequently than do déjà visité ones. Further analysis of the data has shown that déjà vécu experiences were rated as being significantly longer than those of déjà visité. In addition, the mean age of the first experience was lower for déjà vécu experiences as compared with déjà visité ones. Moreover, positive emotions outweighed negative ones for both experiences while both tended to have sudden onsets.  More déjà vécu experiences were said to occur in a state of hyper-alertness, tended to be more comprehensive, were remembered in greater detail, and involved precognition more often than occurred in instances of déjà visité.  It appears one may be justified in considering these as two separate experiences. In the future, it would be desirable to conduct representative studies to obtain information about the frequencies of occurrence of the various types of déjà experience in the general population and in-depth analyses regarding their situational context and content.

In this chapter, David Crespy shares his dreamwork for dramatic writing workshop that he has taught through such venues as the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Hollins University PlayLab, and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. The work here focuses on dramatic writing, but the notion of the dream cache is useful to any storyteller looking for a creative method to innovate their story technique. Using the lens of phenomenology, and techniques suggested by performance theorist Bert O. States, Crespy attempts to “unmask” the way dreams and fiction interact for the playwright or screenwriter. Dreams offer an unlimited supply of ideas, form, technique, and structure for writers who are trying to surprise themselves out of cliches received from the echo chamber of Broadway and Hollywood. This form of dreamwork is about transforming as a storyteller and changing one’s i...

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Unconsoled (1995), this essay argues, can be understood in the context of Freud’s account of the Oedipus complex. Of particular significance is Freud’s interest in the figure of Oedipus as one who solves riddles, or reads, because The Unconsoled is a text which is concerned also with the act of reading. This essay, following Pietro Pucci’s line that Oedipus’s life as a result of the prophecy is governed by both telos and tukhê, shows that Ishiguro’s novel exposes the ways in which the narrative order in the line of the text depends on the intervention of chance to preserve its apparently natural progression towards a determined end. These interventions manifest in the novel as a series of uncanny repetitions, the textual equivalent of the crossroad where, in a chance encounter, Oedipus slays his father. The crossroad, ensuring that what is fated comes to pass, seems to serve the death-drive by guaranteeing that the authored text becomes a death sentence. However, this paper finds that, at the crossroad, not only is the fated and death-defined narrative preserved, but a twin lineage is also generated by life-giving chance, so that birth and death do not occur only “in the beginning” and at “the end” of Ishiguro’s novel. What emerges instead is a figure of the reader as one who is created and who creates. The reader is both that which is written, like Fate, and dies with the text which authors it, and that which lives to ensure that what once was written is written again.