The Daily Omnivore

Dreamwork differs from classical dream interpretation in that the aim is to explore the various images and emotions that a dream presents and evokes, while not attempting to come up with a single unique dream meaning. In this way the dream remains ‘alive’ whereas if it has been assigned a specific meaning, it is ‘finished’ (i.e., over and done with). Dreamworkers take the position that a dream may have a variety of meanings depending on the levels (e.g. subjective, objective) that are being explored.

A tenet of dreamwork is that each person has his or her own dream ‘language.’ Any given place, person, object or symbol can differ in its meaning from dreamer to dreamer and also from time to time in the dreamer’s ongoing life situation. Thus someone helping a dreamer get closer to her or his dream through dreamwork adopts an attitude of ‘not knowing’ as far as possible.

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Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. In many ancient societies, such as those of Egypt and Greece, dreaming was considered a supernatural communication or a means of divine intervention, whose message could be unravelled by people with certain powers. In modern times, various schools of psychology have offered theories about the meaning of dreams.

One of the earliest written examples of dream interpretation comes from the Babylonian ‘Epic of Gilgamesh.’ Gilgamesh dreamt that an axe fell from the sky. The people gathered around it in admiration and worship. Gilgamesh threw the axe in front of his mother and then he embraced it like a wife. His mother, Ninsun, interpreted the dream. She said that someone powerful would soon appear. Gilgamesh would struggle with him and try to overpower him, but he would not succeed. Eventually they would become close friends and accomplish great things. She added, ‘That you embraced him like a wife means he will never forsake you. Thus your dream is solved.’

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Wounded healer is an archetypal dynamic that psychologist Carl Jung used to describe a phenomenon that may take place, both positively and negatively, in the relationship between analyst and analysand. For Jung, ‘a good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor’s examining himself…it is his own hurt that gives a measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the Greek myth of the wounded physician.’ Latterly, the term has expanded from Jung’s original concept to cover the study of any professional healer who has been wounded, including counselors, psychotherapists, doctors and nurses.

 In Greek mythology, the centaur Chiron was known as the ‘Wounded Healer,’ having been poisoned by one of Hercules’s arrows; but because he wasn’t able to heal himself he suffered thereafter from an incurable wound. It is also possible that Jung derives the term from the ancient Greek legend of Asclepius, a physician who in identification of his own wounds creates a sanctuary at Epidaurus in order to treat others. By contrast, Apollo Medicus subverted the folklore of the wounded healer, in so far as it was not his own suffering which empowered him to heal.

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The concept of psychological archetypes [ahr-ki-tahyps] was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung [yoong], c. 1919. Jung described archetypes as highly developed elements of the collective unconscious (structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species) that can be seen repeated in story, art, myths, religions, and dreams. They are common motifs in human cultures such as ‘the mother,’ ‘the child,’ ‘the trickster,’ and ‘the flood,’ among others.

Carl Jung understood archetypes as universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world. They are autonomous and hidden forms which are transformed once they enter consciousness and are given particular expression by individuals and their cultures.

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