How to Work with Traumatic Nightmares
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
Nightmares Are Treatable
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
The Practice of Dreamwork Has Changed
If you are like most therapists, you may dabble in dreamwork but without much confidence. Most often, it is your clients, not you, who initiate dream discussions. You may even dread the moment a client brings you a dream, worried you will have no way to help your client figure out what this nonsensical, nocturnal vignette actually means.
Homecoming in the Time of Crisis
In workshops on the grieving process over the years, I have witnessed how grief work opens one to wonder, enables one to be surprised by the unexpected and unnoticed miracles in the mundane, the extraordinary that is nestled in the folds of the ordinary, like the play of light and shadows revealing the hidden dimensions of a landscape that one has perhaps passed by so often and without notice, or the beauty of the rose that softens sorrow.
Why Work with Dreams?
I will begin with a personal example that demonstrates how dreams can facilitate more efficient therapy by bringing the conversation right to the heart of matters that concern us most deeply. This story will show how dreams can reach far back into our personal history and weave together experiences that have important features in common.
Homesickness in the Time of COVID-19
Home! What images does this word conjure up in all of us? What memories, desires, hopes and feelings arise from the depths of the soul with the very speaking of the word? Home is at the heart of these blogs because each in its own way has considered how Covid-19 is awakening this archetypal image, which is perhaps the first, oldest and deepest root of our ties to the world and which sets the rhythms of our existence as a journey between birth and death.
Animation: Experiencing Images as Alive
In Hillmans way of looking at dreams, you go beyond association and amplification to a new process called animation. In animation, you look for ways of experiencing dream images in their living, embodied reality.
The Wisdom of the Virus
How could we even consider the possibility of any connection between wisdom and virus? Framed as a question, the theme of this blog is intentionally a challenge, which is designed to make us pause. Virus belongs to the lowest possibility of life on the planet, a protein bundle on the very boundary between living and non-living entities. Wisdom belongs to the highest capacity of human reason.
Amplification: Discovering the Archetypal Depth
Amplification opens you to the great teachings that are alive and active in dream images. These stories tell about the perils of your situation, the potential positive outcomes, strategic teachings, and the collective wisdom of generations past.
Merlin and Vivienne
There are several stories about the birth, life, and death of Merlin—always a mercurial, evasive figure. In those of the Middle Ages, he is conceived when a demon sleeps with his mother, a nun. Hence, he is born with supernatural powers, including knowledge of all things past from his demonic father, and of all things future from his Christian mother.
What is a Monster?
Mary Shelley’s story of Victor Frankenstein retells the Christian story of creation in which Victor Frankenstein is the new creator god who would make use of the powers of science and technology available in his time to create a new race of beings who would never know the stain of death. In her story, the creature that Victor creates abandons, and then would destroy, haunts his maker from the margins where his side of the story waits to be told.
Who is the Monster?
In Mary Shelley’s story, Victor Frankenstein and the ‘Monster’ personify two opposite attitudes toward the natural world. Frankenstein intentionally cuts himself off from the natural order and rhythms of nature, eschewing the beauty of the changing seasons, refusing to be distracted from his work to reanimate dead matter. In his obsession, he adopts a purely utilitarian attitude toward the natural world.