6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Become Your Own Dream Expert!, July 30, 2009
This review is from: Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (Paperback)
Eugene Gendlin is best-known for Focusing. (See
Focusing, and my review.) Here, he applies Focusing to interpreting dreams. And not only Focusing, but using Focusing, Gene teaches how to better apply many different schools of dream interpretation.
Focusing was "discovered" in the 1950's, studying clients who did & didn't succeed at psychotherapy. Clients who succeeded "Focused", or said another way, they attended to their body-based felt-sense as a guide. This same guide -your felt sense of the dream - can help you interpret your dreams. As Gene says, "The interpretation comes inside the dreamer or not at all... Only the dreamer's body can interpret the dream."
Disclosure: While Gene developed this method in the 1980's, I was a trainer in his Focusing workshops. As a psychotherapist, I've used his system of dream interpretation with my clients for over 20 years.
What's a felt sense, and how is it a guide? Gene writes, "The felt sense isn't a usual feeling, like angry, scared, or sad. In addition to such recognizable feelings, a dream also leaves you with a unique felt quality that fits no category. You cannot think it. It is an indefinable, global, puzzling, odd, uneasy, fuzzy sense in your body. With our method, you direct the questions there - to [your] felt sense. Then you wait to see if something new comes in you."
With your own inner guide and his system of questions, you're not stuck in one style of dream interpretation - say Freud's or Jung's. Gene writes, "[You're] not limited to any one theory or belief system... Here is a way to use all their approaches without being committed to one..."
A big claim, but I've found Gene's system of questions plus Focusing powerful. You can see Gene's dream questions - his Stage I of dream interpretation - on-line at www.focusing.org in the Gendlin On-Line Library. The book has chapters that help you apply these questions to dreams, giving examples with many "how-to" pointers.
And there's more: Gene writes, "Dreams are mysterious, nothing about them is sure... An interpretation from one theory makes a lot of sense, but when you hear the interpretation from another theory it makes sense, too. ...stay open to all ways of interpreting."
This leads to Gene's Stage II of dream work, "bias control", which, he says is usually needed with dreams of depth or complexity. Again, Gene:
"A breakthrough may let you know what the dream is about, but you may find that it teaches you nothing you didn't know before. You can go on to a second stage... We tend to put on the dream the same... view we put on anything in life. Then the dream seems to say the sort of thing we always say to ourselves."
"...[a dream] is more than what I know. But when I interpret my own dream, I use the meanings I know. Therefore I must exactly miss more than I already know. How can I get beyond that? ...BIAS CONTROL enables my body to do it, not every time, but often."
Stage II goes beyond interpretation. Even with correct interpretations, sometimes, "the dream has not changed or taught you yet. It has not brought you anything you didn't have before. Stage 2 is for getting something new."
There's not enough space, here, to describe this process. Bias control - a very sophisticated move within Focusing, is not found in any other Focusing book. Briefly, it comes from Jung's concept of the "shadow", parts of ourselves we deny, push away, keep out-of-awareness. In dreams, the shadow often comes to the fore.
There are many gems in this book - sentences which jump out and grab you with their rightness, chapters covering many important topics, including, "Can Dreams Be Scary?" ("Most scary dreams bring something good which is not yet in a form the person can use.")
Some last bits of Gene dream advice:
"Just as I am only a part of the whole, so is the dream only a part. Neither my usual me, nor the dream alone, is the whole. Neither can be trusted alone as is. Therefore interpret the dream by letting it lead to a growth step... This dream is exactly what `the other side' sent last night - how can it be anything but positive if I interact with it and allow myself to become more whole?"
"Truth is not static! What anything is includes what it can be, and will be. You can't explain what an egg is without mentioning what it can become. Human events and dreams are like that too. What they truly are is not a fixed thing in one moment of time. What the dream truly means may be seen only if a step occurs from it... As you fit a dreampiece into the whole of you, via your body, the whole thing changes into something new."
And finally:
"Enjoying the dream is more important than interpreting it. Therefore, don't work so hard that it stops being pleasant and exciting."
If you're a psychotherapist, as I am, this book is a useful addition to Gene's
Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method -- guidelines for using Focusing in psychotherapy and combining it with many different psychotherapeutic approaches. Nowadays, few psychotherapists have training & experience working with dreams. This is sad, as dreams are often wonderful jumpstarts into where a client needs to be. Yes, today's psychotherapeutic emphasis on "current problems in daily living" and "achievable therapeutic goals" is enormously valuable. And dreams have their own changes & healing - too often neglected. Throughout this book, especially the chapter, "Interpreting Other People's Dreams", Gene gives wise, deeply experienced advice on working with others.
By the way, at www.focusing.org, in the Gendlin On-Line Library, there's a short article that you should print out & keep with this book: "Three Learnings Since the Dreambook". All three, especially the third -- "The crucial bits of help a dream brings" -- add substantially to Gene's dream approach.
Remember, too, this book can very much be used by those who simply wish to explore their own dreams, getting insights & changes. As Gene says, "A growth direction is sensed with your body. Dreams often (some people say always) bring something that can help you sense a growth direction and take a step in that direction."
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intuitive Dream Work, February 7, 2009
This review is from: Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (Paperback)
I am a huge admirer of Dr. Gendlin's work in philosophy and psychology. This book, dealing with how to appreciate and interpret dreams, and how to find further steps of growth from your dreams, is very helpful. I've had an interest in dreams for a while, and much of Gendlin's approach resonates with what I learned from my own experience. In crucial respects, his approach has also extended my work with dreams in beneficial ways, for which I am grateful.
This book is basically 'focusing' applied to dreams. If you don't know what focusing is, search it on google or poke around www.focusing.org. But it also contains a good deal of Gene Gendlin's wisdom beyond the focusing procedure, per se. You get the sense of a very wise and warm person coming across in these pages.
Gendlin's expository style is unique, and can take a little getting used to. But it's well worth doing in this case. My only complaint is that I don't think he adequately cites where certain ideas are coming from-- whilst his reasoning is usually quite lucid, he can be a bit vague about the context and direction from which ideas/methods/practices come.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in working with their own dreams, especially if 'focusing' is part of your life.
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