Robert Bosnak

Did you know that intentional dreaming has been used to solve life's problems? Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel sets out Robert Bosnak's practice of embodied imagination and demonstrates how he actually works with dreams and memories in groups. The book discusses various approaches to dreams, body and imagination, and combines this with a Jungian, neurobiological, relational and cultural analysis. The author's fascination with dreams, the most absolute form of embodied imagination, has caused him to travel all over the world. From his research he concludes that while dreaming everyone everywhere experiences dreams as embodied events in time and space while the dreamer is convinced of being awake; it is after waking into our specific cultural stories about dreaming that the widely differing attitudes towards dreams arise. By taking dreaming reality, not our waking interpretation of it, as the model for imagination, this book creates a paradigm shock and produces methods which can be applied in a wide variety of cultural settings. Through detailed case studies, professionals and students will find thorough discussions of: ways to flashback into dreams and memories while in a hypnagogic state of consciousnessthe practice of embodied imagination and its profound physical effectspsyche as a self-organizing multiplicity of selvesthe nature of subjectivitythe body as a theatre of sense memoriesthe limitation of reasonthe process of dissociationthe treatment of traumaThis book discusses a variety of techniques which may be applied by health professionals to their patients and clients. It will also be of particular interest to Jungian and relational psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists, as well as to artists, actors, directors, writers and other individuals who wish to explore the creative imagination.

This is a hands-on manual for anyone who is interested in dreams. At the same time, it is the story of a personal journey through the dream world by the author and several of his patients and students. Robert Bosnak offers exercises and strategies for studying dreams, including: - Remembering and recording dreams - Analyzing a written dream text - Studying a series of dreams for its underlying themes - Using the techniques of active imagination and amplification - Working on dreams alone, in pairs, and in groups Through this "Little Course in Dreams " it becomes clear that the imagination is a powerful force that simultaneously "poisons" us and provides the remedies to the soul's ills. Dreamwork thus opens the way to the healing and transformation of the soul.