6 Week Dream Group Experience with Jill Fischer

NOTE: This group is limited to 12 attendees. Register early!
This group will meet via Zoom online 10AM-12PM Eastern on the following Saturdays:
November 2, 9, 16, 23
December 7, 14
*There is no class on November 30 due to the Thanksgiving holiday

 

A 6 Week Dream Group Experience for Interested Dreamers, Writers, Artists, Storytellers, and Clinicians

You are invited to join a small interactive dream group experience to explore your own and the dreams of others. This is not a therapy group, but individuals will learn a method of working with dreams and the creative imagination that will enhance their understanding of how dreams can influence their creative projects. Clinicians will also learn to use this method in their work with clients.

During the dream group, participants will be guided to re-enter the landscape of one’s dreams. A slow and careful exploration of the dream images, from a variety of perspectives, elicits sensations and affective states that are experienced in the body. This work is known to lead to an increased depth of the creative imagination and a profound sense of one’s own humanity.

Jill Fischer headshot

This group will be led by Jill Fischer, PsyA, APRN, BC, IAAP, a Jungian Analyst and a board-certified advanced nurse practitioner with worldwide experience presenting papers and working for over 50 years with the dreams of individuals and groups both in-person and on the Internet. She is a training analyst at the CG Jung Institute-New England and past president of the New England Society of Jungian Analysts (NESJA). She is presently the Co-Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the IAAP, the Director of Clinical Services at the Malinalco Healing Sanctuary, and she co-wrote with Judith White, the section on Embodied Imagination in Barrett, Diedre and McNamara, Patrick, editors. Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams [2 volumes]: The Evolution, Function, Nature, and Mysteries of Slumber, Greenwood, 2012.

Objectives:

  1. To participate in a collaborative, interactive, dream group that will focus on exploring the creative imagination.
  2. To demonstrate the ability to re-enter the landscape of a dream using an Embodied Imagination® approach. 
  3. To slowly and carefully explore dream images from a variety of perspectives while attending to sensations, affects, and transformative states experienced in the body.
  4. To discuss the concept of Dream Incubation and its implementation as part of the creative process.
  5. To develop a critical grasp of working with the creative imagination.
  6. To develop an understanding of what happens in the brain during sleep, how it affects dreaming, and the way we work with dreams.  
  7. To develop an understanding of the phenomenology of dreaming. 
  8. To critically evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of working with dreams from an embodied imagination perspective. 
  9. To discuss the implications of working with the creative imagination from an embodied perspective. 
  10.  To distinguish between working with dreams and/or memories when involved in creative projects. 
  11.  To be able to bring an embodied approach to creative projects. 
  12. To develop the facility to be flexible working with dreams in a clinical setting.

Suggested Readings:

  • Bosnak, Robert. The Little Course on Dreams. Shambala, 1986.
  • Bosnak, Robert. Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel. London: Routledge, 2007.
  • Chodorow, Joan (Ed). Jung on Active Imagination. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.
  • Jung, C.G. Memories Dreams Reflections. New York, Random House, 1989.
  • Lippmann, Paul. Nocturnes: On Listening to Dreams. Analytic Press, 2000.
  • Nixon, Dan (2020). The body as mediator.
  • https://aeon.co/essays/the-phenomenology-of-merleau-ponty-and-embodiment-in-the-world
  • Patton, Kimberly. “A Great and Strange Correction: Intentionality, Locality and Epiphany in the Category of Dream Incubation” History of Religions, 2004, pp. 194-223.
  • White, Judith and Jill Fischer. Embodied Imagination. The Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams, Barret, Deirdre and Patrick McNamara, (Eds.). Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2012, pp.244-247.
  • https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-dreaming/

This is an online zoom only class. Zoom link will be emailed upon registration.