Dream Work & Arts-Based Psychotherapy
The following quotes from C. G. Jung are important guideposts for my therapeutic method. Allow them to wash over you if they don’t make sense right away—like the first time through a poem or new song. You can always return to them later.
1. “Dreams are the guiding words of the soul.” (The Red Book, p. 233)
2. “To understand the dream’s meaning we must stick as close as possible to the dream images.” (Practical Use of Dream Analysis, p. 174)
3. “Image is psyche.” (Alchemical Studies, p. xxx)
I come from the school of archetypal psychology, which holds that a therapy of imagination is therapy of the soul. This follows from Jung’s odd idea above, that image is psyche, and also from the fact that “psyche” is the Greek word for soul.
Psychotherapy translates literally as “soul-care,” but in our consulting rooms today, we hear little about the soul’s poetic nature or how this might transform the way we do therapy.
As an archetypal psychologist, I bring an ancient and Renaissance sense for soul to my arts-based practice. The goal of this method is to learn how to engage the psyche on its own aesthetic terms.
Since the psyche’s offerings and uprisings are poetic and imagistic, my job as an arts-based practitioner is not to interpret figurative language, but to help clients relate with it—engaging imagination and providing tools needed to re-shape their experiences into creative forms.
Inspired by the way Jung worked with dreams, source material for this somatic practice is gathered from both dreams and wakened life. “Real” life is as vexing as the dream-world and almost every human achievement originates with some kind of dream, daydream, or imagination. Arts-based care of the soul begins as we pay close attention to our experience—internal and external—and re-present it in creative forms.
Focus turns inward toward memories, dreams, imaginations, fantasies, and moods; and outward to themes of relationship, work, and survival in a volatile world. The work takes shape in multiple mediums and through various lenses to generate the most robust view of whatever is coming up. In the course of this re-visioning process, shifts in perspective occur which often coincide with transformations of attitude and subsiding tensions.
In my own practice, I employ techniques of the sketch-artist, the journal-writer, the storyteller, the playwright, the poet, the songwriter, the musician, film-maker, sculptor, painter, architect, wood-worker, cook, baker, gardener, alchemist, and mythologist.
Most any creative medium may be employed, and no artistic experience is required to begin.
Please contact me if you have questions or would like to schedule a session.