Do you ever wonder what your dreams are about?
There are many ways to work with dreams. Gestalt Dreamwork, developed by Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, is based on the idea that every aspect of a dream (the people, the objects, the weather, etc.) represents the dreamer and that the dream provides an “existential message.” Sometimes, the people and things we dream about are projections of parts of ourselves that we have disowned. For example, if you are dreaming about being chased by a monster, you are the "you" in the dream as well as the monster. In a typical session, the dreamer retells the dream in the present tense. One way to get more insight into the meaning of our dreams is to talk from the perspective of a person or an object from the dream, or to create a dialogue between these people or objects. For example, you can tell the dream from the perspective of “you the runner” and “you the monster.” This helps the dreamer feel the part of themselves they may have disowned. An example of a disowned part can be our aggression which plays an important role in our life such as pushing us to go after what we want. Disowned parts of the self are out of awareness and integration is the work of therapy. Unlike Freudian and Jungian analysis, Gestalt Dreamwork does not focus on interpretation. Rather it uses experiential techniques to allow the dreamer to safely and directly confront and work through difficulties, deriving the meaning of the dream themselves.
