Diving deep: three experiential approaches to working with dreams and nightmares

Abstract

ABSTRACT Dreams have the potential provide intimate access to psychotherapy clients’ inner lives. When therapists are able to help clients experience their dreams in a curious, open, focusing-oriented way, the client gains direct access the dream’s tendency to carry their life situation forward. This paper offers evidence of a paradigm shift away from analytic to experiential, client-centered approaches to dreams. It then describes three experiential dreamwork practices: finding the help in a dream (from focusing), re-entering a dream element (from Gestalt) and dreaming the dream onward (from Jung). Included are several clinical and personal examples which show how entering a dream experientially allows the dreamer to discover something new and how this often leads to a change-moment or, in focusing terms, a felt shift. Several clinical and personal examples illustrate that while dreams may be helpful in their own right, engaging deeply with them in an experiential way allows their fuller potential for personal growth and forward movement to be realized. Over time, this way of engaging with dreams can become a natural ongoing undercurrent, both in dreaming and waking, that is always available and evolving.