This book describes how dream work can help alleviate depression, in both long-term and time-limited psychotherapy, and in self-treatment. The author shows how dreams shed light on issues contributing to depression—including drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, death and bereavement, conflicts about sex, health and body image, parenting, workplace stress and burnout, and ancestral, inter-generational trauma.
Bogart presents a synthesis of Jungian and existential psychotherapy, detailing how attention to archetypal symbolism brings into immediate focus new responses to pressing life challenges. He shows that allowing oneself to be affected by dream images and narratives promotes emotional, relational, and spiritual rejuvenation. One of the most lucid works yet on dream work in clinical practice, this book will interest those who experience depression, as well as their therapists and loved ones. It details a method that can be practiced by couples and family members and adapted to group work in a variety of clinical, educational, and occupational settings—any place where people feel safe and free to explore, reveal, and discover themselves.