Discovery and Re-Imagination Through Our Dreams
An Integrative Approach to Dreamwork with Clients.
Simply put, the idea and practice undergirding integrative psychotherapy is connecting the dots of human experience that allows them to see, conceptualize, and directly experience how human beings actually function in the relational world. The integrative psychotherapist is fundamentally curious and committed to not just how and why a client suffers but, more importantly, how and why a client heals, grows, transforms, and thrives in life. In this holistic (wholeness) perspective, not only are all the parts connected, but fascinatingly, each part contains the whole. Why did Freud land on dreams as vehicle for “curing” patients? What intuition and insights and scientific thinking led him to dreams as a cornerstone of psychoanalytic thinking? We can ask ourselves the same question regarding how we conceptualize and work with clients. For Freud, he found that there was a reduction in painful physical and emotional symptoms from trapped psychic energy when the patient became aware of unconscious, repressed memories. Freud made the connection between these unconscious memories and a method for these repressed memories to reveal themselves.
Dreams and free association somehow freed up deactivated brain states which, in turn, reduced the symptoms of suffering. What’s more fascinating is that Freud’s insights mostly came through self-analysis and interpretation of his own dreams. Right here you can see how our own personal psychological work is interwoven with our client’s work and might play out in the therapeutic journey. Human beings share human experiences and, though we are all unique as individuals, what we share psychologically, neurobiologically, socially, and culturally is what enables us to function collectively and be in relationships. What we share as human beings enables us to be therapists. What I hope to convey is that dreams, like everything else, are never only about one thing. This is the entire point of integrative thinking. As therapists, dreams and dreamwork can support and enrich our work with clients.
