I’m delighted to join the Hampstead Psychotherapy Club to talk about “Waking up to the Potential of Dreams: A Jungian Perspective”. The talk will have a ‘Tree of Life’ theme. I look forward to seeing you there!
(The event is open to Club Members only. You can register via the Club’s website at www.hampsteadpsychotherapyclub.org.uk. Membership registration is free and the event costs £13.)
Carl Jung once said that the unconscious ‘always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out their very best.’ This is true in both life and dreams. In these traumatic times, with so many global challenges before us, how shall we best live and how might our dreams help us answer this question?
In response, this talk aims to convey much of what I have learned about dreams from my own personal experience, my work as a psychotherapist, and as a dream guide, from a Jungian perspective. Jung taught that our capacity to imagine—expressed through dreams—acts as a bridge between the worlds of matter and spirit. When we explore dream images, we access a realm that transcends our individual minds, discovering more about our true nature within the multi-dimensional realm of consciousness.
From the Jungian viewpoint, in dreams our psyches are open to the mysterious and numinous, that is, the sacred and divine qualities that are also contained in the unconscious—whether described in religious or non-religious terms. In this way, the alchemy of dreams facilitates inner transformation and healing. This has great significance because, as Jung claimed, it is the encounter with the numinous that is the ‘real therapy’. When we have a numinous experience, whether in waking life or dreams, we receive emotional and physical healing that empowers us to live more fully.
Together we will explore how we might creatively engage with our dreams and help others to do the same to the benefit of humanity and the natural world.