The application of Analytical Psychology’s approach to dreams and dreaming to Person Centred counselling. (Masters dissertation. September 2021).

Abstract.

Dreams and dreaming, an undeniable part of human experience, whilst being afforded primacy in Analytical Psychology are, in contrast, almost completely ignored in Person Centred counselling. This paper argues that this is an area of weakness in the Person Centred approach, that it should not continue to overlook dreams and that a Jungian informed approach is not only feasible but also has the potential to deepen and enrich the practice of those Person Centred clinicians wishing to work with the dreams of their clients.

Introduction.

Analytical Psychology and the Person Centred Approach (henceforth the ‘PCA’) are two of the major schools of psychotherapy, and their founders, Carl Jung (1875-1961) and Carl Rogers (1902-1987) respectively, are two of the most famous psychologists to have lived. It is peculiar, therefore, that whilst one (Jung) placed dreams and dreaming at the centre of both his psychological theory and his therapeutic approach, the other (Rogers) almost completely ignored them.

Dreams and dreaming were of profound importance to Jung. Throughout his life, from childhood onwards, Jung experienced several powerful, often disturbing dreams which were to prove deeply influential, not only personally but also in the formation and development of his psychological theories. In his personal life Jung was in no doubt that dreams played a crucial role in his own individuation saying of them ‘I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of my soul’ (2009: 233) and professionally, Jung said of his dreams and other inner experiences, that they were the ‘prima materia of my scientific work’ (1963: 18). As a psychotherapist, Jung spent much of his working life analysing the dreams of his patients, family members, friends and colleagues (most famously Freud), using their dreams, as well as his own, to inform many of the theories that are found in Analytical Psychology today, where dreams remain an important part of both theory and clinical practice.

Rogers, on the other hand, apart from a few passing remarks about dreams as a potential area for future investigation, chose to overlook them entirely. ‘The theory I have presented’ Rogers proclaimed, ‘would see no essential value to therapy in techniques such as … [the] analysis of dreams’ (1989: 233) and, since his death nearly 35 years ago, apart from a handful of studies (Barrineau, 1992; Conradi, 2000; Gendlin, 1986; Jennings, 1986; Koch 2012), the PCA has persisted in its belief that dreams are of little therapeutic value resulting in them remaining almost entirely neglected in all aspects of Person Centred counselling, including theory, education and clinical practice.

As to the reasons why Rogers did not write about dreams, deciding instead to focus solely on the waking world of the client, there are several possible explanations. For instance, there are significant theoretical and methodological differences between Rogers’ humanistic approach to therapy and that of depth psychology, which was seen as the traditional home of dreamwork at the time, and it is well known that Rogers, who initially trained in psychoanalysis, came to deplore what he believed to be interpretive approaches in which the therapist is considered the expert. Conradi, for example, postulates that Rogers chose not to pay attention to dreams ‘out of a fear that such an exploration would indeed be irreconcilable with his deep humanistic values and profound respect for the inner wisdom of the client’ (2000: 222-223).

Other important reasons include Rogers’ belief that humans are primarily conscious organisms (1961, 1980) which meant that he paid little regard to the idea of a deep and dynamic unconscious from which, according to depth psychology, dreams emanate. Koch’s (2012: 3-4) suggestion that Rogers’ obsession with the therapeutic relationship as the main healing mechanism and, additionally, its focus on the role of the therapist as opposed to that of the client, is put forward as a further reason why factors outside of therapy, such as dreams, were neglected by him. And Elizabeth Shearer, a student and friend of Rogers, who claims that Rogers’ antipathy towards anything which might be deemed spiritual, dreams included, was due to unknown personal reasons, rather than anything professional or academic (Barrineau, 1990: 3).

Taking a wider perspective, Leonard and Dawson (2018) argue that the marginalisation of dreams, in psychotherapy and mental health in general, was part of a widespread cultural shift towards positivism which meant that scientific and evidence-based interventions, such as behavioral therapy and pharmacological treatments, gained preference over the traditional depth approaches where dreamwork was prevalent. This trend, which viewed only those phenomena which can be measured as being important, led to dreams being seen as an unreliable data source. Koch (2012: 2-3) postulates that the lack of scientific research and data on dreams may also have been a factor in Rogers’, a committed researcher and empiricist, disregard of them.

In this paper, I argue that Rogers was wrong to ignore dreams and whether his reasons were theoretical, methodological, personal or cultural, I suggest that for somebody who placed the subjective experience of his clients at the heart of his work, to have ignored dreams from the point of view of phenomenology, again, is puzzling. Unlike Rogers, I contend that dreams are an important aspect of human experience and that by not paying attention to the dreams of his clients, by definition, he was not working with the whole person. In addition, I contend that in its continued reluctance to treat dreams seriously and the resulting lack of dream theory and methodology, the PCA is now left with a significant area of weakness. This paper explores the potential for this to be addressed by Analytical Psychology and whether a Jungian informed Person Centred approach to dreams and dreaming is possible.

Firstly, positing that dreams are important, I explore the role of dreams and dreaming in the totality of human experience including a brief review of the different types of dreams and how they might impact a person’s life. Following this, I turn to the treatment of dreams in Western psychotherapy including an overview of the Jungian approach. I then provide a brief review of the key studies into the efficacy of working with dreams in the clinical context, going on to demonstrate that, despite positive research findings, dreamwork is still marginalised in mainstream counselling and psychotherapy and the attitude of therapists towards dreams remains ambivalent. However, the studies also suggest that there is sufficient therapist interest in working with the dreams of their clients to offer encouragement.

Narrowing my attention to the PCA only, I then go on to review the few previous attempts at introducing dreamwork to Person Centred counselling, hypothesising that there are some serious misunderstandings of Jungian theory and methodology which, I also postulate, may have hindered collaboration historically. The misconception this paper pays most attention to is the belief in the PCA that Jungian dreamwork is pathologising, directive and interpretive, based on a fixed view of symbolism, and does not prioritise the therapeutic relationship or client authority. Instead, I put forward the case that contemporary Analytical Psychology is also relational in approach; that, it too, values client authority over therapist expertise and that, for these reasons, collaboration is not only possible but also potentially beneficial.

I then discuss the trend over recent years towards universal, integrated models of dreamwork positing two arguments. Firstly, that the PCA does not need its own theory of dreams and would be better served in turning towards models where there already exists a deep tradition of theory and practice. Whether this is the approach of Analytical Psychology only or one of the integrated models, all of which contain aspects of Jungian theory, is the choice of the therapist. Secondly, I argue that, in order to remain included in the trend towards integrated models of dreamwork, Analytical Psychology needs to remain open and collaborative in attitude.

I conclude with some final thoughts and recommendations in which I develop my argument around therapist expertise and client authority further by introducing the notion that there are occasions in the psychotherapeutic encounter when therapist expertise, including knowledge of myth and symbolism, contrary to the belief of some in the PCA, can be beneficial. I also argue further for the ongoing need for openness and collaboration not only by the PCA and Analytical Psychology but also between them, suggesting that, in addition to collaborative approaches based on consensus or common ground, a pluralistic approach which embraces diversity as well as similarity is another, potentially even more creative, route towards a Jungian-informed Person Centred approach to dreams.

Methodology.

My research methodology consists of a comprehensive, critical review of the relevant literature in order to bring together what is already known about dreams and dreaming in mainstream counselling and psychotherapy in general and Person Centred counselling specifically. I have also studied much of the Jungian and post Jungian literature on dreams and dreaming in order to understand as much as possible the theory and practice of Analytical Psychology. Due to the limitations of this short study, however, I have not been able to find space to discuss the studies and research from neuroscience which, in many cases, have been supportive of Jungian and post Jungian dream theory (see West, 2018: 99-107). This, I feel, would have provided an additional dimension to my paper which would have been both relevant and current.

Whilst I believe the literature with regards to the phenomenological significance of dreams, the clinical efficacy of dreamwork, the place of dreams and dreaming in mainstream counselling and psychotherapy, including the trend towards universal integrated models of dreamwork, to be comprehensive and, in some cases, reasonably up to date, I also believe that a limitation of my research has been in the paucity of available literature on dreams in the PCA which, as well as evidencing the PCA’s ongoing lack of interest in dreams, has also placed a heavy burden on a small number of relatively old studies. Whilst my 15 years as a Person Centred therapist and supervisor tell me that the views expressed in the literature, as well as my resulting hypothesis, are still representative of the PCA today, this paper would have also clearly benefited from studies which are more up to date.

Are dreams important?

As Jung himself poses ‘why should one consider dreams, those flimsy, elusive, unreliable, vague, and uncertain phantasms, at all? Are they worthy of our attention?’ (CW18: 431).

Dreaming, I suggest, is one of the most genuine and subjective inner experiences a person can have. Jung said of the raw, personal truth of dreams that they are ‘impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse’ (CW10: 317).

Dreaming is also a very frequent experience with much of the scientific research telling us that, whilst we might not always remember our dreams, we do in fact dream every night (Hobson, 2005). As well as the feelings and emotions we experience whilst dreaming, studies have shown that the aftereffects of dreams can also often leave the dreamer with strong feelings, troubling thoughts and important questions in his or her waking life (Kuiken and Sikora, 1993).

Dreams can affect our lives in different ways. Kuiken (2015), for example, distinguishes three types of impactful dream, these being ‘existential dreams’, ‘transcendent dreams’ and ‘nightmares’ all of which can induce strong thoughts and feelings which can stay with us long into our waking life experience. The fear we experience in nightmares, for example, and their unsettling aftereffects, according to Kuiken, are commonly brought to therapy and require a type of therapeutic approach which might differ to that of dreams which are more existential or transcendent in nature. Night terrors and sleep paralysis, according to Ellis, fall into the same category of disturbing dreams as nightmares, and can be harrowing experiences for the dreamer both during and after the dream (2020: 62).

Existential or transcendent dreams are occasionally so impactful that they prove to be life changing for the dreamer. The International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) gathered a comprehensive review of such dreams in a publication called Dreams That Change Our Lives (Hoss and Gongloff, 2017), which included examples of dreams which facilitated life changes in dreamers such as beginning and ending relationships with partners, major career moves, spiritual and religious transformations, recovery from serious illness and prevention of suicide. Such dreams may only occur once or twice in a lifetime, but they can be revisited many times over, often providing new insights or meaning for the dreamer. Jung often referred to these as ‘big’ or ‘significant’ dreams (CW8: 554) and believed they played a vital role in a person’s individuation. ‘Significant dreams’ according to Jung ‘… are often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience’ (CW8: 554). Jung believed that the most important dreams in a person’s life are dreams of the Self in which one’s God image appears and, for Jung, the numinous quality of this type of dream constituted nothing less than a spiritual experience saying ‘the voice in dreams is capable at times of manifesting an intelligence and purposiveness superior to the actual conscious insight. There can be no doubt that this is a ‘basic religious phenomenon’ (CW11: 63). There are several other types of dreams, such as lucid and precognitive dreams as well as those dreams which are recurring or form part of a dream series (see Ellis: 61-65) and, whilst an extensive exploration of dream types is beyond the scope of this paper, my argument is that the sheer variety of dreams, as well as their emotional impact, underpins the important part they play in human experience.

There are some, however, who look at the phenomenology of dreaming through a very different lens, for whom life does not comprise a simplistic, binary division between the world of waking consciousness and the world of sleep and for whom dreams are not only important but at least as important as waking experience. For example, the so-called ‘continuity hypothesis’ posits a process in which dreams and waking life continually affect each other and, thus, cannot be seen as being separate or autonomous aspects of human experience (Schredl, 2003). In a similar vein, Naiman argues that we incorrectly view life from a one-sided, ‘wake-centric’ perspective in which ‘we presume that waking consciousness is the norm and view dreaming as a secondary, subservient state of consciousness. Wake centrism’, he says ‘casts our dream experiences as weird and meaningless and discourages us from getting near, let alone going through, the looking glass’ (2017: 81). Hillman (1979) claims we do violence to a dream when we take it from the ‘underworld’ and attempt to make sense of it from a waking perspective. Jung, similarly, believing that life is not solely confined to the waking world, says ‘We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams’ (2009: 242).

Finally, it must also be noted that whilst dreams mattered very much to Jung, they were not the be all and end all and, believing the unconscious and the conscious to be equal in importance he was often at pains to present a balanced perspective saying, ‘However much people underestimate the psychological significance of dreams, there is an equally great danger that anyone who is constantly preoccupied with dream-analysis will overestimate the significance of the unconscious for real life’ (CW8: 494). Developing this point further, Jung in fact goes on to suggest, that for the psychologically well-adjusted person dreams may carry less weight saying, ‘very often the dreams contribute only the merest fragments to the conscious attitude, because the latter is on the one hand sufficiently well adapted to reality and on the other satisfies fairly well the nature of the individual’ (CW8: 494).

The treatment of dreams in Western psychotherapy.

Having explored the significance of dreams and dreaming in relatively broad terms, I now hone my discussion to the treatment of dreams in the clinical context only. I start with a brief historical overview of the various attitudes and approaches taken to dreams by Western psychotherapy in general, before providing a more detailed synopsis of Jungian dream theory and methodology.

Freud, in his seminal book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), heralded dreams as ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ or to quote him more accurately, ‘The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind’ (1900: 607). Freud pioneered working with dreams psychotherapeutically, claiming that ‘dreams always contain important material if one takes the trouble to interpret them…’ (1900: 93-97) and his premise that dreams provide valuable insights into client pathology remains a central part of contemporary psychoanalysis (Vedfelt, 2002).

Like Freud, Jung also considered dreams to be profoundly important but, unlike Freud, who viewed dreams as a form of disguised wish fulfillment, Jung believed that dreams were natural phenomena with nothing to hide, saying ‘I take the dream for what it is. The dream is such a difficult and complicated thing that I do not dare to make any assumptions about its possible cunning or its tendency to deceive. The dream is a natural occurrence, and there is no earthly reason why we should assume that it is a crafty device to lead us astray’ (CW11: 41). In addition, he believed that dreams provide crucial insights not only about client pathology but, more importantly for Jung, into the teleological process of individuation. Jung also believed that dreams often serve a compensatory function saying, ‘The dream rectifies the situation. It contributes the material that was lacking and thereby improves the patient’s attitude. This is why we need dream-analysis in our therapy’ (CW8: 482) and, as this paper goes on to discuss, dreamwork, from compensatory as well as both purposeful and causal perspectives, remains a central part of contemporary Analytical Psychology (West, 2018; Whitmont and Perera, 1991; Wyly, 1995).

Whilst dreams still enjoy primacy within depth psychology, the attitude of the more mainstream schools of counselling and psychotherapy towards dreams has been, and remains, much more ambivalent and inconsistent. That said, the clinical value of dreams is generally acknowledged, and most approaches do have something to say about dreams and dreaming by way of theory. Fritz Perls, for example, the founder of Gestalt therapy, treated dreams as expressions of the ‘wisdom of the organism’ (1969: 37). Aaron Beck, the founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), after initially distancing himself from dreams, came to view dreamwork as a valuable tool and dreams as ‘core cognitive schemas’ (Dowd, 2004). From the Existential school, Medard Boss, the founder of Daseinanalysis, whilst believing in the healing effect of dreams, challenges what he claims to be the overly symbolic and interpretive position of depth psychology. Positing that dream phenomena should be treated no differently than the phenomena of waking life he says, ‘a thing is a real thing, an animal is a real animal, a man is a real man, a ghost a real ghost’ (1957: 106). This argument is explored in more detail later, in relation to Boss’ influence on the approach to dreams taken by some in the Person Centred literature.

Relatively speaking, it is the humanistic approaches, of which the PCA is by far the largest, which still stand out as having had the least to say about dreams. By way of an example, it needs only a cursory glance at The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice (Schneider, Pierson, and Bugental, 2014), an eight-hundred-page publication which devotes just two paragraphs to dreams, to get a sense of the position they are afforded.

The Jungian approach to dreams and dreaming.

‘The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends’ (CW10: 304).

Jung’s different phases.

Jung’s thoughts on dreams changed and evolved over his lifetime. Zhu (2013), for example, identifies three overlapping but distinct phases in the development of his dream theory. The first one being his initial alignment with Freud followed, secondly, by the development of his own theory of compensation which, in relation to dream interpretation, is summarised succinctly in the following quote: ‘The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations, and without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor a normal psyche. In this sense we can take the theory of compensation as a basic law of psychic behaviour. Too little on one side results in too much on the other. Similarly, the relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is one of the best-proven rules of dream interpretation. When we set out to interpret a dream, it is always helpful to ask: What conscious attitude does it compensate?’ (CW16: 330). In this period, contrary to Freud’s causal and reductive approach in which dream images were treated as ‘signs’ referring to something in the patients past, Jung came to believe that dreams could also be seen as purposeful, that dream images could be seen as symbols pointing to the future and that dream interpretation could serve a teleological purpose for the dreamer. Jung said, ‘no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative’ (CW6: 717).

The third phase, Zhu believes, involved a radical shift in approach from Jung which saw him moving away from theoretical assumptions and analyst interpretation towards an approach where the client’s own experience and own meaning of the dream were placed at the centre of the work. Jung himself said of this, ‘It is far better, in actual practice, not to make any assumptions at all, not even that dreams must of necessity be compensatory. The fewer assumptions you have, and the more you can allow yourself to be acted upon by the dream and by what the dreamer has to say about it, the more easily you will arrive at the meaning of the dream’ (CW17: 189). This change in therapeutic approach, in effect, meant that Jung was now working in a way that was more relational and one which, according to Douglas (2005), heralded a client centred orientation towards psychotherapy. As I go on to discuss, Jung’s relational orientation to dreamwork forms a crucial part of the argument in this paper which is that Analytical Psychology shares similar values to that of the PCA in the way that both prioritise the freedom and authority of the client over theory and techniques.

Jungian dream theory and practice.

As I have already mentioned, a fundamental premise in Analytical Psychology is that dreams reveal the objective reality, whether positive or negative, of the dreamer’s current situation or, again, in Jung’s own words, ‘the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious’ (CW8: 505). Dreams also provide images which, whilst often appearing absurd to the rational mind, are seen by Jungians as being of potential symbolic importance for the dreamer. As Jung says, ‘a symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language’ (CW8. 644). Jung argues that certain symbols or motifs which appear in our dreams, for example the cross, the trinity, the quaternity, the hermaphrodite, the mandala, the child-hero and the squaring of the circle, in addition to any personal association for the dreamer, may also possess a more universal meaning that is representative of transformation or individuation. He says of the mandala, for example, that it symbolises ‘a union of opposites, or of mediation’ (CW11: 150) and of the quaternity symbol that it is a representation of ‘the God within’ (CW11: 101) and typical universal motifs, for Jung, may include that of the hero’s journey, the crossing of the river, friendly animals, treasure in the cave and the circumambulatio.

In addition to the images that appear in dreams, the Jungian approach also pays close attention to the dream ego which, like dream images, can also be experienced as being bizarre and non-sensical. Unlike the waking ego which, according to Jung, ‘constitutes the center of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity’ (CW6: 706) the ego in a dream, whilst still functioning as the centre of awareness, is usually experienced very differently in terms of both continuity and identity, as well as its relationship with dream material. ‘Even when a dream situation apparently involves tremendous danger to life and limb, resources and precautions that would be obvious to the waking ego will be ignored for the sake of the dream’s unfolding plot’ (Wyly, 1995: 112). Jungian dreamwork often explores the experience of the ego in the dream, for instance what it might have been thinking or feeling, and what this might mean for the dreamer.

According to Jung, a dream or a dream series can also sometimes display a narrative structure comprising an exposition, development, culmination and solution (CW8: 561-566). A dream’s exposition communicates something about the initial situation of the dreamer, including the scene, the main protagonists and the nature of the question that the dream is raising. The exposition, or opening scene, is often troubling for the dream ego and, in therapy, this may provide clues as to the current issue for the patient. The development part of the dream, for Jung, is the unfolding of the plot in which ‘a definite tension develops because one does not know what will happen’ (CW8: 562). In the culmination phase of the dream, the situation changes or something decisive takes place and, finally, the solution may hint at ways in which the issue may be resolved or compensated, unless the dream ends badly in which case the dreamer may find it difficult to achieve a solution, at least in the short term.

Finally, it is important to note that Jungian dreamwork allows for the exploration of dreams from several perspectives or levels, those being the levels of the objective, subjective, archetypal and transferential (CW7: 130) using a blend of techniques, such as personal association, archetypal and mythical amplification, reductive as well as prospective explorations and active imagination. However, rather than discuss this important aspect of Jungian dreamwork here, I return to it later when addressing the claims of some in the Person Centred literature who allege Jung’s approach to be solely archetypal, based on a fixed view of symbolism.

Dreamwork efficacy.

Returning to the importance of dreams in human experience, I now discuss the efficacy of working with dreams in the clinical context which has been comprehensively studied (Crook & Hill, 2003, Eudell‐Simmons and Hilsenroth, 2005, 2007; Fox, 2002; Keller et al 1995; Pesant and Zadra, 2004) with mainly positive findings. Not only has it been shown that dreamwork improves clients’ self-awareness and increases their commitment to therapy which, in itself, is a predictor of positive therapy outcomes (Pesant and Zadra, 2004), there is also evidence that dreamwork alone is at least as effective as other psychotherapeutic approaches (Eudell‐Simmons and Hilsenroth, 2005, 2007). The same studies also show other therapeutic benefits, for example that dreams provide information that clients are unwilling, or unable, to reveal in regular therapy and that dreams provide a useful indication of clinical progress (Eudell‐Simmons and Hilsenroth, 2005, 2007). In two major reviews summarising more than 25 studies into the effectiveness of dreamwork in the clinical setting (Hill and Goates, 2004; Hill and Knox, 2010), the results offer yet further evidence of the efficacy of working with dreams. It was shown, for example, that clients enjoy dreamwork, consistently rating it higher than the quality of regular therapy sessions and that, in addition, they are more able to explore and understand material in subsequent dreams following dreamwork. Studies have also revealed that working psychotherapeutically with nightmares was found to be healing, for example, with refugees suffering with PTSD (Ellis, 2016) and in survivors from Auschwitz (Owczarski, 2018).

Ellis (2020) summarises that working with dreams encourages more creative and engaged therapy and that dreams can bring a fresh and wider perspective to a situation that is stuck or static; that, in bypassing the usual defences, dreams are more able to point directly and impartially at the client’s most salient concerns; that dreams can be indicators of clinical progress, help to regulate our emotions and, finally, that they can be a safe pathway to working with trauma.

Dreamwork remains marginalised in mainstream counselling and psychotherapy.

However, despite the favorable evidence for working with dreams clinically, the studies also show that dreamwork within non-depth counselling and psychotherapy remains marginalised. For example, dreamwork is used infrequently, as well as inconsistently, and is most often initiated by clients rather than clinicians (Crook and Hill, 2003; Ellis, 2020; Fox, 2001; Leonard and Dawson, 2018). When presented with dreams, counsellors and psychotherapists report not knowing how to work with them beyond listening (Crook and Hill, 2003), feeling ill-equipped to attend to their clients’ dreams because they lack expertise and specialised training (Pesant and Zadra, 2004) and, consequently, clients are left feeling rejected believing their therapists to be uninterested in their inner lives (Leonard and Dawson, 2018).

Rosalea Schonbar captures these findings well saying, ‘When my patient told me her dream I felt handcuffed; my limited armamentarium gave me no way to deal with it meaningfully, apart from a comment on the mood or the feeling of the dream. I felt as if something valuable had been brought into the room and just shoved aside into the corner – or, more properly, that it lay between us untouched, thus depriving her of its potential values, and confirming her experience of my not caring. I was indeed rejecting a part of her’ (1968: 55-56).

Therapist attitudes towards working with dreams.

The literature reveals that the view of mainstream therapists towards working with dreams is largely ambivalent. There are those, still, who dismiss dreams as meaningless or unscientific or who hold the view that dreams belong within long term psychoanalysis (Ellis, 2020; Hill, 1996). However, there are also those who hold positive attitudes towards dreams, who are willing to work with them in instances when clients had recurring or troubling dreams or with those clients who were themselves interested in dreams, were psychologically minded and seeking growth (Hill et al, 2008). Studies also show that some therapists had worked with their own dreams, either independently or in therapy, had sought out training in dreamwork and, as a result, felt more confident and able to work with the dreams of their clients (Crook-Lyon et al, 2009). There is a belief, held by a significant number of mainstream counsellors and psychotherapists, that working with dreams can facilitate the therapeutic process, that dreams can help clients access core issues, provide useful material and be a reliable indicator of therapeutic progress (Eudell-Simmons and Hilsenroth, 2005).

It seems to me, therefore, that there are clinicians within the non-depth approaches who, believing in the importance and clinical potential of dreams, have an interest in working with them and, narrowing my focus to the PCA only, this paper now goes on to explore the potential for a Jungian informed approach to dreamwork for those Person Centred therapists wishing to work with the dreams of their clients.

Previous attempts at introducing dreamwork into the Person Centred approach.

Of the few previous attempts at the introducing a theory and method of working with dreams specifically within the PCA (Anderson, 1974; Barrineau, 1992; Capuzzi and Black, 1986; Conradi, 2000; Finke, 1990; Jennings, 1986; Koch, 2012; Vossen, 1990), I have selected to review the three most well-known works. Namely some papers written by Peter Jennings (1986, 1995, 2006), Phil Barrineau (1992) and Prue Conradi (2000). Apart from a few other papers mainly by German authors (Finke, 2004; Lemke, 2000) these studies represent most that has been written about dreams specifically directed at the PCA. The excellent contribution to dreamwork made by Eugene Gendlin (1986), a major figure in the Person Centred movement, is an integrated model aimed at counselling and psychotherapy in general, rather than the PCA specifically, so for this reason I have chosen to review Gendlin’s writings later when I discuss the trend towards integrated, universal approaches to dreamwork.

Jennings’ (1986) paper, The Dream is the Dream is the Dream: A Person-Centered Approach to Dream Analysis, along with two subsequent papers (1995, 2006) in which he developed and altered his ideas, is one of the best-known early attempts at introducing a theory and method for working with dreams specifically for the PCA. He eventually arrived at an approach to dreams, called the ‘self-evident’ theory, which posits that it is the dream itself, more so than any interpretation by the client or the therapist, which ‘is best able to reveal its own self-evident, personalized meaning to the individual’ (2006: 255). Throughout his writings Jennings is insistent that a Person Centred theory of dreams should avoid concepts and theory in a way that ‘preserves the fundamental [Person Centred] assumption of-self direction’ (1986: 311) and that the ‘person-centred therapist must avoid taking the position of “knowing expert” with regard to dream meaning’ (1986: 314).

Despite his intentions, however, Jennings’ model somewhat inevitably ends up containing several theoretical concepts, many of which seem to be borrowed directly from Jungian theory. For example, his idea that it is the dream alone which reveals meaning for the dreamer was something which Jung also advocated saying, ‘dream analysis emphasizes ”letting the dream speak for itself”’ (1986: 316) and Jennings’ notion that ‘Every dream is like a story line … having a … beginning … a chronology of characters … and an ending’ he proposes that ‘a dream is best understood in its chronological order of events (1986: 315), as discussed earlier, is also part of Jungian dream theory. In addition, in stating that dreams describe a person’s ‘complex conscious and unconscious feelings and reactions to the world’ (1986: 315) Jennings introduces the theoretical notion of the unconscious and, in so doing, is not only borrowing from depth approaches but also fails to address traditional Person Centred epistemology which pays little heed to unconscious processes.

Jennings’ methodology evolved into one which, in the end, also involved significant therapist intervention and direction. He advocates classical Person Centred techniques such as repeating key words or phrases back to the client, reflecting the material at a deeper emotional or thematic level, reviewing and summarizing the client’s process. His model includes asking the client certain questions such as “What does it mean?” or “What is the first thing you think of?” and, despite his belief that clients should not be directed, he goes as far as requesting the client “to look it up in the dictionary” in order to elicit the most obvious or direct meaning of a dream image. Using a technique he calls ‘contrasting’ he advocates asking the client to simply contrast a dream image against a list of other images in the same category, for example “How is a lion different from a tiger or leopard?” He also recommends that his new Person Centred approach to dreams should ‘analyze the dream into smaller parts or elements, including as much detail as possible’ and that the therapist is encouraged to ‘inquire systematically about each successive dream element’ (1986: 316). Finally, in his later writings, Jennings also proposes that the therapist should facilitate the client’s reencountering of dreams such that he or she arrives at their own directly experienced meaning.

Barrineau in his paper Person-Centered Dream Work (1992), whilst not quoting Jung directly does draw much from Purton’s essay The Person-Centered Jungian (1989). Barrineau, unlike Jennings, in his attempt to integrate dream theory from other models, including Jungian, does acknowledge epistemological differences and proposes a model of working with dreams which requires two significant revisions of traditional Person Centred theory. Firstly, like Purton, he proposes an openness towards the unconscious, suggesting that Rogers showed signs of being more receptive to the notion of the unconscious towards the end of his career. Secondly, he also proposes a revision to the Person Centred concept of ‘locus of control’ in which he argues that, whilst the client must always be the expert in his or her own dream content, the therapist possesses some expertise in the process of dream exploration.

Barrineau goes on to propose a Person Centred dreamwork process which utilises ‘clarification’ and ‘exploratory’ approaches to help the client connect with his or her present experience of the dream as it is talked about and to explore the waking life meaning of the dream for the client. In addition to the more usual ‘reflective’ responses, Barrineau encourages the Person Centred therapist to trust his or her own intuitive feelings about the client’s dream and to share them congruently with what he terms ‘idiosyncratic’ interventions. Like Jennings, he also assumes that the chronology of the client’s dream is important and advocates a ‘cumulative’ way of working with the dream’s logic, sequence and progression. Finally, according to Barrineau, any understanding or insight about the dream must belong to the client, ‘the test of its rightness’ he says, ‘rests with the dreamer alone’ (1990: 99).

Hypothesis.

The writings of both Jennings and Barrineau also highlight what I believe to be a wider problem still existing in the PCA, which is that Jungian psychology is misunderstood and misrepresented by many. With regards to dreams in particular, this misrepresentation has resulted in some conclusions in the Person Centred literature that there are certain key epistemological and methodological barriers to collaboration with Analytical Psychology which, in my view, either do not exist or are not as pronounced as claimed. This also raises the question as to the extent to which this may have been historically detrimental to the few attempts to incorporate Jungian dream theory into Person Centred counselling thus far. In contrast, this paper argues that contemporary Analytical Psychology shares more common ground with the PCA than is claimed and that it offers theoretical ideas and clinical techniques that would provide the Person Centred therapist with new and creative ways of working with the dreams of their clients in a way that need not compromise Person Centred values. I discuss in more detail some of the crucial misunderstandings found in the literature below.

Dreams as disguised wishes.

Firstly, in Jennings’ writings in particular, Jungian dream theory is conflated with that of Freud. Jennings (1986), for example, dismisses all depth approaches, because in his view they see dreams ‘as disguised expressions of unconscious wishes, urges and complexes, which in turn, imply the active operation of unconscious mechanisms of repression that prevent the true sexual or sadistic content from reaching awareness’ (2007: 254). As I have already discussed, contrary to Jennings’ assertion, this is one of several major disagreements Jung had with Freud and, in Jung’s own words, ‘The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfilments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides’ (CW16: 317).

Fixed archetypal symbolism.

Secondly, there is a view that all depth psychological approaches to dreams, including Jungian, is dependent on fixed ideas of symbolism. Again, Jennings arguing that a Person Centred approach should ‘disavow any assumptions about universal structures or ”contents” in dreams’ (1986: 311), accuses Analytical Psychology of having the same rigid approach to dream images as he also accuses Freud. For example, that the dream image of ‘an umbrella could be a disguised symbol for a penis in Freudian theory; a wolf could be a disguised symbol of the shadow archetype in Jungian theory’ arguing that, in contrast, in his self-evident theory ‘the umbrella in a dream could be an umbrella … a wolf could be a wolf’ (2007: 255).

In defence of the Person Centred literature, the criticism that the Jungian orientation has a fixed view of symbolism is not entirely unfounded. In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), for example, Jung discusses several patient case studies some of which are not without a distinct air of firmness in his interpretation of their dreams (1963: 135-168). Samuels, also, states that ‘analytical psychology has had its … problems with fixed interpretation based on a pre-existing symbological lexicon. It is still common’ he claims, ‘if a man’s dream has a woman in it, to hear talk of an “anima figure” before any real entry into the dream has been achieved’ (Samuels, 1985: 231). However, in the main, Jung believed that Freud’s causal approach of assigning a fixed meaning to a symbol was too rigid and that his, more purposeful, approach ‘perceives in the dream image the expression of an altered psychological situation. It recognizes no fixed meaning of symbols’ (CW8: 471) and, contrary to Jennings’ claims, this paper goes on to contend that most contemporary Jungians do not employ fixed symbolism and, instead, that they work relationally in ways that put the client’s autonomy before anything else.

Neither does Analytical Psychology view dreams solely from an archetypal level, another claim of the Person Centred literature. Instead, as I introduced earlier, Jung posits that dream images can be interpreted on several different levels including objective, subjective and transference levels in addition to the archetypal (CW7: 130). Returning to Jennings’ dream image example, at the objective level, therefore, in Jungian dream analysis a wolf could simply be alluding to a wolf. This might include the possibility, for instance, that the dreamer had seen a wolf or been reading about wolves prior to the dream or that a wolf had simply appeared, as a wolf, in the dream without any association with the dreamer’s waking world in the same way that Jennings’ self-evident theory, and that of Boss before him, advocates.

On a more subjective level the dream image might be pointing to whatever a wolf might represent for the dreamer. Jung was consistent in his concern with the personal associations of the dreamer saying ‘always ask the patient how he feels about his dream-images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment’ (CW18: 248). In this way, therefore, looking at the dream image through the subjective lens the wolf may symbolise something important, but as yet unknown, for the dreamer such as an unconscious desire to be a ‘lone wolf’ or, alternatively, a need for more connection with others, to be ‘part of a pack’ so to speak.

From the archetypal perspective, the dream image might be more symbolically representative of a universal quality in common with similar images throughout time. What, for example, might be shared by images of the wolf that appear extensively in myth, religion and fairy tales. Animal figures, in Jungian dreamwork, may point to certain instincts or drives within the dreamer that require further explication. Jungian dream interpretation might also incorporate aspects of both the archetypal and the subjective simultaneously, for example Whitmont and Perera say ‘The particular nature of the drive quality is expressed by the character associated with the dream animal, by the dreamer, as well as archetypally and mythologically, by folklore and collective religious traditions’ (1989: 107).

The transference level of dream interpretation is probably best understood in the context of dream images of significant others (such as parents, children, siblings, partners, colleagues, therapists, clients and so forth) rather than dream animals and, for this reason, I discuss the transference level of dream interpretation later, in the specific context of client and therapist welfare.

Jungian dreamwork is pathologising, interpretive and directive and does not prioritise the therapeutic relationship and client authority.

These misunderstandings in the Person Centred literature I believe are part of a wider misconception, still present today, that Jungian dreamwork, and psychotherapeutic orientation in general, is pathologising, interpretive and directive, within which the Jungian analyst is firmly cast as expert, and theory takes precedent over the therapeutic relationship and client autonony. Jennings, quoting Caligor and May (1968: 8), typifies this widely held opinion claiming that, in Jungian dream interpretation, ‘the meaning of the dream turns out at worst to be the therapist’s meaning rather than the patient’s, or at best the patient’s formulation in terms and categories he has learned from the therapist’ (1986: 314) and, in the PCA, where client authority is afforded primacy, such an approach is inevitably seen as incompatible. ‘A person centred method of dream analysis’ according to Jennings ‘rejects the standard “interpretive approach,” which basically attempts to “translate” dream symbols into corresponding waking-life events, conflicts, issues and personal history’ (1986: 318) and, in the same vein, Barrineau argues that therapist expertise on dream content is ‘an untenable posture in the PC approach’ (1992: 101).

In contrast, I contend that the Jungian approach is not directive and interpretive in the way the PCA believes and is essentially relational in orientation. Whilst Jung’s approach to his patients was sometimes interpretive in style, this paper argues that his favoured approach, especially in his later career, was one in which he prioritised the client and the client’s dream, over theory and technique. There are some (Douglas, 2005; Sedgwick, 2014) who believe Jung was a pioneer in the relational approach and Greenberg and Mitchell (1983), for example, cite evidence that Jung was advocating relational psychotherapy as early as 1912 in lectures he delivered at Fordham University in New York. Hargaden and Schwartz (2007), whilst acknowledging the significant contribution of Rogers, trace the start of relational therapy as far back as Eugen Bleuler’s work with his schizophrenic patients at the Rheinau Hospital for the insane in the 1890s. The point is that Rogers did not invent relational psychotherapy, neither does the PCA have the monopoly over it and, contrary to the view of the PCA, depth approaches, including contemporary Analytical Psychology, consider the relationship to be important (Colman, 2013; Loewenthal and Samuels, 2014). The emergence of organisations such as The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy is, I believe, further evidence that depth approaches, including Jungian, are committed to the relational approach which, in some cases, has also meant a willingness to challenge their own techniques when necessary. For example, Lambert (2018) argues that the practise by some Jungians of eliciting dreams from their clients should be let go, because it compromises the spontaneous flow of material as well as also making the client feel obliged to bring dreams to therapy.

Returning to the PCA literature, Conradi (2000), in her paper entitled Dreams, the Unconscious and the Person-Centred Approach: Revisioning Practice, offers a more discerning view of the Jungian approach to dreams. Believing that much of recent psychological thought, including Person Centred, has evolved with a bias towards the scientific, rational world, at the expense of imaginal and spiritual dimensions, and that ‘the very essence of soul … cannot live and thrive in such arid ambience’ she goes on to say, ‘Where the ego has supremacy over the Self, psychological thought becomes reductive in a terrible way, and as such goes against soul, which always has a way of its own. (2000: 224). ‘Jungian psychology’ she argues ‘could enable the PCA to open out and extend significantly the phenomenological world being explored’ (2000: 227).

Conradi’s paper, which looks solely at Analytical Psychology’s approach to dreams, argues for an extension of Person Centred theory to incorporate a Jungian informed Person Centred dream theory and that ‘there is no contradiction in retaining the core theory of the [Person Centred] approach, of trusting and empowering the individual but extending the approach to take better account of the unconscious, symbolic, and metaphorical worlds.’ She goes on to claim, ‘It is simply not good enough to say that these realms fall outside of the approach. If a client wishes to explore these areas … then a therapist has a duty to meet this challenge … or else fail in this task of deeper exploration sought by some individuals’ (2000: 223).

Conradi’s position that Person Centred values need not be compromised by a therapist with experience in, and knowledge of, the metaphorical and symbolic world of the deep unconscious, offers balance to the views of Jennings and Barrineau and this paper goes on to develop her argument that therapist expertise in dream content, as well as process, when skillfully introduced can help the client’s exploration of his or her dreams with no threat to freedom or authority.

In conclusion of my review of the PCA literature, my final suggestion is that, unlike Jennings and Barrineau, a Person Centred model of dreamwork is not needed and that, instead, collaboration offers a better way forward for those Person Centred therapists who wish to work with the dreams of their clients. Given the PCA’s poor track record thus far, it seems to me that a Person Centred dream model remains a very distant prospect and, for this reason, I argue it would be better served in working with those theories where there already exists a deep and rich tradition. Whether this is the Jungian approach or an integrated approach including Jungian theory, which I discuss next, is the choice of the individual clinician. I also go on to propose that collaboration need not depend on a revision of Person Centred epistemology in the way that Conradi advocates.

The trend towards an integrated, universal approach to dreamwork.

Historically, the approach to dream theory by the various schools of psychotherapy, including Jungian, has been marked by isolationism and conflict rather than self-examination and collaboration (Vedfelt, 2020: 88). More recently, however, we have also seen a growing trend towards approaches which, being directed at all mainstream therapies, are more open and universal in appeal, and which integrate the theories and methodologies from several schools including, in all cases, Jungian (Ellis, 2020; Eudell-Simmons and Hilsenroth, 2007; Gendlin, 1986; Hill, 1996; Lewis and Krippner, 2016).

In this section, I discuss two such multi-disciplinary models. Firstly, I look at the writings of Eugene Gendlin who has created an integrated approach for working with dreams which, despite its Person Centred roots and the fact that it has been in existence since the eighties, remains largely overlooked by the PCA. Secondly, I discuss the more recent works of Leslie Ellis.

I propose that integrated, universal approaches to dreamwork offer an excellent resource for the PCA to draw upon, particularly for those therapists who do not wish to be tied to the theory of a single school. In addition, I also make the point that the Jungian world, if it wishes to remain included in the universal trend, needs to demonstrate an open and collaborative position with other schools of psychotherapy. In fact, it seems that such a multi-disciplinary approach was something that Jung himself also seemed to favour, saying that ‘no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need an interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences’ (CW8: 527).

The philosopher, psychologist and close colleague of Rogers at the University of Chicago in the 1950s Eugene Gendlin developed a form of somatic inquiry practice called ‘focusing’ (1996). In his early career Gendlin, like Rogers, didn’t believe dreams to be important but eventually came to see dreams and dreaming as an integral part of human experience and went on to write several papers on dreams as well as a book, called Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (1986).

Focusing, like Person Centred theory, is based on an organismic and optimistic view of human growth but differs in its view that dreams are a natural expression of this. Gendlin believed that what is needed or ‘what is unlived or missing’ (1986: 55) in a person’s life comes in dreams which will remain, or recur, for as long as the need continues. He thought that dreams possess life force and that the therapeutic goal of working with dreams is to become aware of, engage with and, ultimately, embody this life-giving energy. ‘Dreaming is a living process, not just frozen pictures’ according to Gendlin and ‘When we let the pictures bring their bodily quality, dreamwork continues the living process’ (2012: 8).

Whilst some dreams may point towards a resolution, Gendlin argues that dreams are largely ‘unfinished events’ and that solutions tend more often to come from undertaking further work with them in which the dreamer, through focusing, experiences a ‘felt sense’ of what the dream is about (1986: 146). In this way, Gendlin believes that dreams unfold through interaction with them saying, ‘Except in rare cases, the step forward is not actually in the dream. It comes from the energy that the dream’s images imply and create.’ For Gendlin, ‘What is next is only what the client’s body makes of the dream’ (1996: 200). ‘Such a breakthrough’ Gendlin claims ‘comes with a physically felt release, a bit of energy freed up in your body. Before the breakthrough, various ideas could fit the dream. Now there is no question of mere fitting, mere likelihood. You know what it is about’ (1986: 1-2).

Gendlin (1986) advocates additional experiential ways in which dreams can be explored further, for example, ‘being a dream element’ and ‘dreaming the dream onward’ and, in his book, he provides a list of sixteen questions in order to help facilitate deeper dreamwork. Again, Gendlin’s emphasis that dreamwork takes place in the body, rather than being contemplated in the mind, remains paramount, saying ‘The interpretation comes inside the dreamer or not at all … Only the dreamer’s body can interpret the dream’ (1986: 25).

Gendlin’s work on dreams is by far the most significant to have been written by a Person Centred author. Aimed at the wider community of counselling and psychotherapy, rather than solely the PCA, he draws upon several different dream theories, including Jungian, and views this to be a major advantage in that ‘Here is a way to use all their approaches without being committed to one of them’ (1986, 1). For some therapists, Person Centred or otherwise, Gendlin’s model may be sufficient. However, things have moved on since Gendlin’s day, with newer and more comprehensive integrated dream models now available, some of which are also starting to incorporate the findings from neuroscience, and it is to one of those, the recent works of Ellis, that this paper now turns its attention.

Leslie Ellis’ study A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (2020) draws most heavily from the theories and methodologies of Jung and Gendlin and, to a much lesser extent, Gestalt theory (Perls, 1969). Ellis also calls for a closer collaboration between psychotherapy and science arguing that the latest research findings ‘suggest that dreams facilitate the consolidation of memory and/or the process of emotional regulation. Both activities are also key functions of psychotherapy, so it makes sense to weave them together in a way that brings combined benefits that are greater than the sum of their parts’ (Ellis, 2020: 3).

As is argued throughout this paper, Ellis’ own research also suggests that there has been a distinct movement away from interpretation in dreamwork towards more client centred, experiential approaches and, drawing upon two of the most comprehensive and recent research works (Lewis and Krippner, 2016; Bulkeley, 2017), she identifies common strands and proposes the following generic dreamwork method which she argues has the flexibility to adapt to individual therapist preferences and differing therapeutic modalities (2020: 31–37):

Tell the dream. According to Ellis, whilst telling the dream is always the first step, the remaining steps can be undertaken in any order. She found, in her common factor research, that every dreamwork approach advocated that the dreamer is asked to re-experience the dream as they were telling it using methods such as using first person and present tense and re-entering the dream using as many senses as possible.

Explore the setting, including the emotional landscape. All dreamwork approaches, according to Ellis, advocate that the dream setting, along with the dreamer’s feelings and mood whilst in the dream, should be explored as this often holds important material.

Ask into associations. Originating in Freud’s method of free association, this is a common factor, according to Ellis in all but one of the dream approaches and is undertaken to explore memory sources of the dream and links to waking life issues.

Experiential exploration of dream elements. Examples of experiential exploration include, inviting the dreamer to experience the dream from the perspective of another character (human or animal) or object in the dream or to engage in dialogue with them. The dreamer can also be invited to dream the dream on from the point where it ended or felt unresolved.

Explore metaphorical and other connections to waking life. Most dream theories agree that dreams speak the language of metaphor which often means that ‘the dream is not taken at literal face value’ according to Ellis but in a way that ‘make[s] sense only to the dreamer’ (2020: 33).

Name and explore new insights and growth steps. This involves the exploration of new steps or actions the dreamer may wish to pursue in his or her waking life as a result of insights from dreams.

In addition to the above core methods, Ellis also includes some optional techniques in her model for the therapist to consider such as the use of art or creative expression, consideration of compensatory aspects of the dream, exploring the dream’s story or plot structure, finding help in the dream, exploring lucidity and, in groupwork, the possibility of group projections onto the dream. Ellis also suggests that therapists may wish to consider the amplification of dream images using symbols or myth, a topic which is explored in the next section of this paper in relation to the threat to client autonomy that some in the PCA believe this approach poses.

Ellis’ model is an excellent contribution to, and continuation of, the trend towards universal models of dreamwork and, although aimed at mainstream clinical approaches in general rather than Person Centred counselling specifically, it offers the most up to date option for those Person Centred clinicians who might not wish to restrict themselves to the theory of a single school. A large element of Ellis’ model is Jungian and, as I argue throughout this paper, for the Jungian approach to dreams to remain included in this movement, it is vital that it stays committed to openness and collaboration.

Final thoughts and recommendations.

The question of therapist expertise and client authority.

So far in this paper I have argued that the PCA’s view of the Jungian approach to dreams, as being one which tends to impose the expertise of the clinician in ways that are reductive and pathologising, is both one-sided and outdated. In addition, I have also posited that this flawed perception represents a barrier to collaboration which need not exist and that, contrary to the PCA’s view, the relational approach of contemporary Analytical Psychology shares much in common with that of Person Centred counselling in the way it also values the autonomy of the client over theory. However, taking a slightly different tack, I now also put forward the idea that therapist expertise may sometimes be useful in dreamwork.

Whilst some in the Person Centred literature concede that clinical expertise on process can be helpful, most believe that therapist expertise on content to be conflictual with the Person Centred belief that the client is the expert in him or herself. For example, Barrineau (1992: 90), argues that whilst the sharing of symbolic meaning with a client which arrives spontaneously or intuitively in a session, in other words via process, is compatible with Person Centred values, the offering of symbolic meaning from the therapist’s acquired knowledge of universal myth and symbolism, in other words content expertise, is untenable. I argue, however, that therapist expertise in content, including myth and symbolism, need not be problematical for client autonomy and that, when offered thoughtfully and collaboratively in a way that the client remains free to accept or reject, instead it has the potential to provide additional fresh insight for the client in a way that might be unachievable for a therapist without such knowledge.

I also do not believe that the existence of learned myth and symbolism in the therapist’s store of knowledge and experience necessarily precludes the possibility of symbolic meaning arising spontaneously or intuitively for the clinician, in the same way that Barineau argues it would as part of process expertise. In other words, if an intuitive thought or feeling arises in the therapist concerning the possibility of symbolic meaning for his or her client, from whence that intuition comes is not important. In fact, it seems to me that the greater the store of potential intuitive knowledge on the part of the therapist, the greater the potential for such insights to arrive and the greater the benefits for the therapy.

Rogers said about insight in the context of the relationship dynamic, ‘what I wish is to be at her [the client’s] side, occasionally falling a step behind, occasionally a step ahead when I see more clearly the path we are on, and only taking a leap when guided by my intuition’ (1986: 25). It appears that Rogers, despite the PCA’s obsession that therapy should be non-directive, also believed that the therapist, via intuition, is sometimes able to see the way forward more clearly than the client. Purton, also arguing that knowledge of myth and symbolism need not be an obstacle to the spontaneous arrival of insight for the therapist, says ‘intuition is largely a matter of perceiving the pattern and significance of things, and is not essentially mysterious. … One may have had experience of people in similar situations in the past; there may be echoes from one’s own experience, and so on. The Jungian will add that another source of intuitive knowledge lies in the fact that, as human beings, client and therapist share all manner of archetypal patterns of thought and feeling’ (1989: 412).

It seems to me that the problem of therapist expertise in relation to client autonomy has, in some ways, become a dilemma of the PCA’s own making in that, on the one hand, it has a preoccupation with placing client authority over theory but, on the other, it is also not devoid of theoretical concepts of its own, not to mention the many found in the schools it integrates with. Despite this, as Purton says ‘It is not uncommon to hear [in the PCA] that we should approach our clients with no preconceptions, with no conceptual scheme at all. It seems to me that this is impossible, and that the therapist who claims to do it is in fact unconscious of what his or her preconceptions are’ (1989: 412). In other words, therapist expertise is unavoidable, and, rather than denying it or running the more harmful risk of unconsciously directing the client, the challenge for the clinician is to be aware of the knowledge that he or she carries into the therapeutic relationship and to find a way of working such that, at worse, this does not compromise the client’s freedom and, at best, through the skill of the practitioner and the co-creative nature of the relationship, it is transmuted into the client’s own knowledge of self.

Both the PCA and Analytical Psychology, I believe, have their methods in an attempt to do this. In Person Centred therapy, for example, one method is referred to as ‘bracketing’ which, according to Worsley, is an ability to ‘Bracket off your preconceptions and prejudices by first becoming as fully aware of them as you can, and then set them aside’ going on to say, ‘Know that you will not succeed fully’ (2002: 60). From the Jungian world, Michael Fordham in his paper On Not Knowing Beforehand, uses the metaphor of a filing cabinet in which Jungian analysts are encouraged to ‘empty one’s mind and, so to speak, lock up one’s knowledge, memory, and desires in that filing cabinet’ in a way that that ‘gives space for the patient’ (1993: 136). Jung himself said ‘I always advise my pupils: “Learn as much as you can about symbolism and forget it all when you are analysing a dream.” This advice is so important in practice that I myself have made it a rule to admit that I never understand a dream well enough to interpret it correctly’ (CW18: 483). ‘Even if one has great experience in these matters’ Jung says, ‘one is again and again obliged, before each dream, to admit one’s ignorance and, renouncing all preconceived ideas, to prepare for something entirely unexpected’ (CW8: 543).

There is another interesting and, in my view, highly pertinent lens through which therapist expertise in relation to client authority can be viewed. William James (1890), another early proponent of the relationship as well as a major influence on Jung, thought that the relationship between the therapist and his or her theoretical approach was far more than a mere intellectual one; that it was also emotional and that the therapist’s choice of modality said much about his or her personality type. For this reason, James believed that the therapist’s relationship with theory and knowledge runs deep and possibly too deep for it to be simply set aside, in the way that bracketing advocates. Instead, James argues, it must be acknowledged and embraced as a relationship in its own right which, in addition to that between clinician and client, also has an important role to play in the therapeutic encounter.

Client safety and therapist self-care.

Finally, in my exploration of therapist expertise in relation to client autonomy, I would like to go further and suggest that not only can the knowledge and experience of a clinician sometimes be of benefit to the therapeutic process but that, in the case of dreamwork, there are also occasions when it might help protect the client from the disturbing aftereffects of some dreams. For example, let’s say a client comes to a session and is clearly very traumatised by a nightmare the previous evening in which he or she had murdered their own young child and, more worryingly for the client, that they had felt pleasure in doing so. My argument is that a therapist with dream expertise, both content as well as process, would be better able to work with the client’s trauma than the therapist without. A therapist with dream expertise would know that the dream does not need to be taken literally and that it could be looked at symbolically from both subjective and archetypal levels, as I discussed earlier. For example, the dream image could be explored subjectively as the dreamer needing to ‘kill off’ certain juvenile or immature aspects of him or herself or that, archetypally, it represents a universal symbol pointing towards something important in the client’s individuation and, at the transference level, that the dream image may be hinting at an unconscious relational dynamic in need of further exploration, for example that the parent may be unwittingly causing the child to suffer in some way. Exploring the dream in this way, may also result in the pleasurable feeling tone experienced in the dream taking on a different meaning for the dreamer.

Similarly, I also argue that there are occasions when expertise in dreamwork can help with the clinician’s own self-care. For instance, let’s say a therapist has a disturbing dream in which a current client appears. Looking at the dream from the transference level for example, as well as providing additional material for the clinical work, the therapist might also discover that this client is troubling him or her, at an unconscious level, more than was realised. As Beauchamin claims ‘Such dreams can also alert the counsellor-dreamer to possible issues of vicarious traumatization resulting from providing counselling services. Why? Because helping people sometimes hurts the helpers’ (2018: 4). At the archetypal level, a study conducted by Kron and Avny (2003), which examines clinicians’ dreams about their patients from both Jungian and relational perspectives, found that therapist self-care issues were highlighted via the presence of the ‘wounded healer’ archetype in dreams about their clients. Again, I do not believe that a therapist without dream expertise would be able to achieve the same depth of reflection.

Finally, for all the reasons I have discussed, I argue that professional training in dreamwork is crucial for the Person Centred therapist wishing to engage with the dreams of his or her clients. In addition, I believe it is vital that therapists should have undertaken their own personal dreamwork. As Jung himself said, ‘For dream-analysis is not just the practical application of a method that can be learnt mechanically; it presupposes a familiarity with the whole analytical point of view, and this can only be acquired if the analyst has been analysed himself’ (CW8: 498). I would also recommend clinical supervision by a supervisor with expertise in dreams and dreaming, including the possibility of this being a Jungian.

Openness and collaboration.

In this paper I have argued that Rogers was wrong to ignore dreams and that, in its refusal to move on from his position, the PCA is now left with a gap in its clinical model. In so doing, I believe that the PCA has unfortunately also created what has become a closed system in the way that it continues to disregard dreams and dreaming. However, I also believe this to be uncharacteristic of the PCA as, in many other regards since Rogers’ death in 1987, the openness of the PCA has seen it evolve into what is now a diverse family of orientations (Sanders, 2012). Most contemporary PCA training courses are integrative in nature and the modern-day Person Centred therapist is well versed in working collaboratively with theories and methodologies from other schools. In comparison, Analytical Psychology has remained much more closed in its approach, restricting itself primarily to the realms of analytical practice (Papadopoulos, 1997) and, in so doing, has also suffered the inevitable consequence of being misunderstood by other schools as, for instance, I have shown to be the case with the PCA. As Saban argues, ‘If Analytical Psychology, the psychology that Jung created, is to outlive him, if it is to remain alive … then it must itself continue to individuate, and that means changing, transforming, reacting to, and engaging with the world around it’ (2019: 3).  Openness and collaboration, I argue, are important for the future of both Person Centred counselling and Analytical Psychology in general and, in relation to dreams specifically, for the PCA if it wishes to break free from its hitherto closed approach towards dreams and, for Analytical Psychology, if it wishes to remain included in the general trend towards integrated models of dreamwork discussed in this paper.

I would also like to see more collaboration between the PCA and Analytical Psychology as, thus far, this has been extremely rare, comprising a very few attempts by Person Centred authors (Conradi, 2000; Purton, 1989; Thorne, 2012) and even fewer by those from the Jungian world (Samuels, 1995). However, in terms of what has already been said, there are reasons to feel encouraged that these two schools can work together. Purton (1989), for example, in his paper entitled The Person-Centered Jungian, identifies several areas of common ground, such as ‘client authority’ (which I have developed further in this paper) and ‘personality divisions’, as well as some useful comparisons in theory, such as his claim that the Jungian notion of ‘individuation’ and the Rogerian concept of the ‘actualising tendency’ are both teleological processes towards wholeness. For these reasons, Purton proposes that a Jungian informed Person Centred approach is entirely feasible.

Conradi (2000), also arguing in her paper on dreams that Jungian theory can be incorporated without compromising Person Centred values, calls for more credence to be given to the unconscious, including dreams, and for a re-evaluation of the Person Centred notion of self, in a way that considers the Jungian notion of the ego-Self axis. She also calls for further clarification of the Self within the Rogerian notion of self-actualisation arguing that ‘there are clear limitations to an ego-based psychology; without inclusion of the archetypal dimension, the ”work” remains in the domain of ego consciousness and the personal’ (2000: 230).

Purton and Conradi agree that the most significant epistemological difference between both schools is that Jungian theory assumes the existence of a deep and dynamic unconscious, collective as well as personal, whereas Person Centred theory, whilst not denying its existence, largely does not acknowledge the importance of unconscious processes and both authors call for an extension of Person Centred theory in order to accommodate it in some way. Purton, for example, proposes an ‘addition to the [Person Centred] core conditions of empathy, acceptance and congruence, an attitude that could be called “openness to the unconscious”‘ (1989: 411).

As I suggested earlier, as well as my belief that a Person Centred theory of dreams is not needed, recommending instead a collaborative approach, I also believe the PCA does not need a revision or extension of Person Centred theory for collaboration to take place. I propose that, instead, the Person Centred practitioner can work with Analytical Psychology in the same way he or she might already integrate other approaches, including those which have quite different epistemologies such as CBT, as well as those that share similar theoretical foundations. In relation to the unconscious, for example, whilst some form of openness or concession to unconscious processes, in the way that Purton and Conradi advocate, may make integration more straightforward, I also posit that, for those in the PCA who are unwilling to accept such a different epistemological position, full consensus need not be a prerequisite for a Jungian informed Person Centred approach to dreams. In these cases, I propose a pluralistic approach which embraces diversity, as well as similarity, encouraging the practitioner to hold the tension of opposing positions in a way that also has the potential to bring a freshness to the therapeutic process that may in fact not be achievable through unity. In the words of Samuels, pluralism is ‘an instrument to make sure that diversity need not be a basis for schismatic conflict’, arguing instead that ‘competitive bargaining between conflicting interests produces creative rather than destructive results’ (1989: 1). To illustrate what is meant by a pluralistic approach, it might be useful to revisit Jennings’ dream image of the wolf, which was discussed earlier. If, for example, Jennings was willing to view the dream image through the Jungian lens, something he was opposed to, and his own ‘self-evident’ lens at the same time, then this opens up the possibility of something appearing which transcends both.

As a practising Person Centred therapist with a deep interest in Analytical Psychology and, importantly, as someone who has also experienced both therapeutic approaches as a client, I am confident that the two schools can be brought together. I have already discussed the strength of the PCA in its ability to synergise with other theoretical approaches and, like Samuels (2017), I also believe that a strength of the Jungian approach lies in its ability to synthesise with other clinical schools, particularly humanistic and relational. It is my hope that this paper goes some way towards furthering the dialogue and fulfilling the untapped collaborative potential between Person Centred counselling and Analytical Psychology.

Conclusion.

This paper is an exploration of whether Jungian informed Person Centred dreamwork is possible. I have argued that Rogers was wrong to ignore dreams and that, in so doing, he was neglecting what is an important aspect of human experience. I have also posited that the PCA, in continuing to overlook the dreams of its clients, is now left with a significant weakness, both theoretical and methodological, in its approach.

After arguing that dreams and dreaming are important and that they should not be neglected, I provide an overview of the treatment of dreams in Western psychotherapy, including the approach of Jung and Analytical Psychology. I then go on to discuss that, despite the evidence that dreamwork is clinically beneficial, it remains a marginal activity within mainstream counselling and psychotherapy, including the PCA. Following a review of the previous attempts at introducing dreamwork to the PCA, I hypothesise that there have been, and remain, some serious misconceptions within the PCA about the theory and clinical approach of Analytical Psychology, in particular the belief that Jungian dreamwork is interpretive, pathologising and directive in ways that do not value the therapeutic relationship or client authority. I argue, instead, that contemporary Analytical Psychology is relational in approach and that, like the PCA, it also prioritises client autonomy over therapist expertise and that, for these reasons, a Jungian informed approach does not represent a threat to Person Centred values. Later in the paper, I go on to develop this theme further suggesting that there are also occasions in therapy when therapist expertise, including knowledge of myth and symbolism, can be beneficial, again, without compromising client freedom and authority.

This paper also discusses the trend over recent years towards universal, integrated models of dreamwork all of which include significant amounts of Jungian theory, arguing that, in order to remain included, it is important that Analytical Psychology is open and collaborative in attitude. In addition, I argue that the PCA, rather than developing its own theory of dreams, should instead focus on partnerships with schools where there already exists a deep tradition of theory and practice, such as that of Analytical Psychology or, alternatively, one of the integrated models such as that of Gendlin or Ellis. I go on to argue that, in addition to collaboration based on shared theoretical positions, a pluralistic approach which embraces and works creatively with disparate views is another, equally valid, route towards a Jungian-informed Person Centred approach to dreams.

 

 

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