AABCAP’s 12th Continuing Education Meeting

Wednesday, October 6th 6.30pm

The Buddhist Council of NSW
Level 1, 441 Pacific Hwy
Crows Nest

Cost: $20-$10 Student/Concession (Payment on Arrival)

RSVP: info@buddhismandpsychotherapy.org

Dr Judith Pickering is a Jungian Analyst, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Couple Therapist in private practice, senior faculty member, supervisor and lecturer for ANZAP. She is also a Training Analyst and Vice President of The Australian and New Zealand Association of Jungian Analysts and member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology.

Judith has studied Buddhism for over thirty years. She has published widely, giving papers, lectures and workshops in Australia, USA, and Europe. Her recent book, ‘Being in love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love’, (Routledge2008) is described by James Grotstein as ‘sweeping, awe-inspiring, fulfilling, erudite’.

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Saturday 4th & Sunday 5th State Library of NSW Macquarie Street, Sydney

In this paper I will discuss the clinical use of dreams in psychotherapy: including the initial dream, dream series, and recurrent images and symbols in dreams, and the analytic session as a form of dreaming activity.

I will discuss how Bion sees the intersubjective space of therapy as an analytic field in which the analyst and patient ‘dream’ together. Here I will draw on Bion’s use of reverie, how images, themes, narratives emerge in the analytic space.

Another vital concept is that of the initial dream, the ways in which the first dream a patient brings to therapy can indicate, in symbolic form, the heart of the issue bringing the patient into therapy. Dreams are multivalent, although often opaque, revealing layers of meaning only over time.

This theme will weave its way throughout a historical overview of the meaning of dreams, including Freud’s initial dream, ‘Irma’s needle’, Jung’s two seminal dreams, and Hobson’s understanding of the initial dream of a patient ‘Sam’. I will also draw on Jung’s Red Book.