Welcome Dreamers!
When: March 28 (ongoing every Sunday)
Time: 6:30 - 7:30pm
Where: Zoom
Who: Limit 5 participants
Price: $25 each session
To Sign Up: call Dr. Shackelford at (210) 602-3002
( Leave a message and Dr. Shackelford will add you to the list! )
Dr. Shackelford’s upcoming Dream Time Group begins March 28, a full moon event. There will be paper work to fill out and homework to do as we each make our way into dreamtime.
It is 2021 and we need help from our Dreams as we make our way in these challenging and transformative times.
Welcome to Dreaming
Dr. Victoria Shackelford is a Jungian Psychotherapist and Licensed Professional Counselor in Austin Texas. She guides each dreamer and the group through the process of: remembering, and working with dream images, dream feelings, dream stories, dream landscapes, and honoring of the dream as a gift from the both the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.
Sigmund Freud, (1900) in his work on the analysis of dreams, described dreams as a “complex psychic product, creation, a piece of work which has its own motives and associations as non-rational energy patterns” (Jung, 1974. p. 3). The dream takes on meaning for the dreamer as these patterns compete for victory of one archetypal image over another. When the dreamer figures out the patterns the dream begins to have meaning for the dreamer.
Psychological and emotional meaning of course is the goal and begs the question:
Why does each particular person dream this particular dream?
According to Freud the Dream is therefore individual to each dreamer and relates to that dreamers psychological disposition, all influenced by the dreamers psyche past.
According to Carl Jung the images in dreams are not only each dreamers personal past held in the personal unconscious but also a universal collective unconscious psychic past, as in antiquity and in all cultures through all time.
This includes the classifications of dream image with typical motifs drawn from mythological references and universal human symbols.
Look to the following guides to find meaning and understanding as each dreamer learns to unlock the “Royal Road to the Unconscious”:
· Dream images that provoke strong emotions are of great importance with these strong feelings having a particular tone and or image form.
· These emotionally toned dream images evoke complex associations to a group of ideals that include a wish and a resistance to that wish.
· This conflict between a wish image and the resistance to that wish image make a constellating force in the psyche structure of the dreamer.
· This is felt by the dreamer as a strong gathering and pattern of emotions and feelings tones impacting greater psychic influence on the dreamer’s psychology.
· This dream material then becomes the “secret thought” in a dreamer’s psyche: being worked out in the patterns or gathering of dream images that evoke one emotional makeup.
· The recollection of our dreams is unstable.
· Their narrative is fantastic, i.e. not reality thinking or a sequence of ideals.
· Freud empirically discovered the hidden meanings of dreams coming from the personal unconscious.
· Fables and fairy tales help break down the “manifest content” of the dream images so we can use them.
· The process of working with the dream images analytically is the process that collects a group of past conscious historical images and then free associates with them through a variety of ways: associations, dance, movement, art, words as poetry, reflection and feedback from others etc.
· Dreams represents a psyche force to tell the truth about what the dreamer is repressing.
· The prospective function represents the future as in the anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements or events in a dreamer’s life. (Jung, Dreams, 1974, p. 41)
· The compensatory function represents the repressed elements and memories from the past and or previous day in a dreamer’s life as in-- compensations not able to express in conscious life (Jung, Dreams, 1974, p. 41).
Our life is spent in struggles for the realization of our wishes. All our actions proceed from the wish that something should or should not come to pass. The dream represents our wish fulfilled or put another way each dream representing the fulfillment of a repressed wish.
The powerful yet fleeting dream force is manifesting to tell the dreamer the truth about what they are repressing.
References
S. Freud, (1920 & 2007), Dream Psychology for Beginners, World Publication Group, East Bridgewater, MA.
C.G Jung. (1974). Dreams from “The Collected Works of C.G. Jung” Volumes 4,8,12,16, Bollinger Series XX, Princeton, New Jersey.
E. C. Whitmont, & S. B Perera, (1989). Dreams, A Portal to the Source, Routledge, London
F. Boa and Louise von Franz, (1994). The Way of the Dream: Conversations on Jungian Dream Interpretations, Shambhala, Boston & London.
R. Duncan… et. al.(1996). Spring Journal 59, A Journal of Archetype and Culture, Opening the Dream Way in the Psyche of Robert Duncan, Spring Publications, Woodstock, Connecticut.