20th Annual International Conference of the 
Association for the Study of Dreams
o
June 27 - July 1,  2003
o
Berkeley, California

ABSTRACT

 

DreamTending: Befriending the Archetypal Imagination

 

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D.
Pacifica Graduate Institute
249 Lambert Road
Carpinteria, CA 93013
E-mail: dreamtending@pacifica.edu

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., founding president of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, is a Clinical Psychologist whose original research centers on a psychodynamic process of "tending the living image," particularly in the context of dreamwork. He has conducted dreamwork seminars for over 25 years throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. His publications include "DreamTending," a six-cassette series of audiotapes.

 

Summary of Presentation

DreamTending offers a life practice centered on the active engagement of the living images of psyche. Through befriending these essentials of soul, we attend to who these figures are rather than only what they mean. In DreamTending, we open ourselves to the innate intelligence of images and activate the archetypal imagination. ("Navigational tools" and elaboration of DreamTending methods will be offered.)



Learning Objectives

1) Understanding of living images as intermediaries between the dreamer and the dreaming psyche; 

2) Methods of DreamTending which facilitate forming relationship with the living images of dreams and activating the archetypal imagination; and 

3) Carrying the "life practice" of DreamTending into personal and community engagements

Evaluation questions:

1) Describe your understanding of the concept of the living image as intermediary between the dreamer and the dreaming psyche. 

2) Describe how you would use one or two DreamTending methods in working with an image from your own dreams. 

3) Describe ways you would move your own DreamTending into a waking practice during the day.

 

Abstract 

DreamTending: Befriending the Archetypal Imagination

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D.

It is startling, at times, to realize how alive the figures of dreams actually are. They have bodies; they move about; they interact with one another; and they inhabit very specific locations. These dream entities sometimes resemble familiar people and/or settings that we know. On other occasions, however, these dream persons and places seem to originate from realms that are completely unfamiliar, alien to our experience. In either case, they seem as real as most "reality" that we know. In fact, when practicing DreamTending over time, we find ourselves frequenting these landscapes and encountering these figures time and again and even establishing ongoing "friendships" with a number of them.

Living images function as intermediaries between the dreamer and the dreaming psyche. Appearing most often as a particular figure, the living image relates the dreamer to very specific life circumstances—to personal history or to an inner-subjective experience. At times, it might also suggest social and environmental occurrences associated with the dreamer. In its life as an implicit energy, the living image connects the dreamer to the energetic underpinning of the psyche—to the archetypal imagination. Connection to this generative resource gives the dreamer access to the rhythm of life itself. In both capacities—embodied figure and implicit energy—the living image makes a claim on the dreamer, affecting the way he participates in life, shaping his being and his becoming.

The dreamer, the living image, and the dreaming psyche are related to one another. They are all part of the same psychic totality, the archetypal imagination. The dreamer is necessary for an awareness of the living image. Similarly, the living image gives expression to the intentions of the dreaming psyche. The dreaming psyche, in turn, re-connects the dreamer and the living image to the harmonic of the life—an interaction which is essential for creating new life forms. Each deepens the pulse, the resonant experience of the other. The dreamer, the living dream image, and the dreaming psyche are related to and interdependent with one another.

The art of DreamTending offers a portal to the poetics of imagination. In tending dreams, images are vivified, the psyche animated. We become curious and open in the process. We befriend the archetypal imagination, and we are in turn welcomed into the presence of soul.

DreamTending, for me, continues to reveal itself as a life path, a "practice." The curiosity, wonder, and mystery in which I approach the dream is also the attitude that I wish to carry into personal and community engagements—bringing a "witnessing presence" to what life offers. The mode of tending dreams at night becomes a waking practice during the day.

 

 

 [abstracts index]  [conference index]  [member pages]
Program Chair: Alan Siegel, Ph.D.
Program Committee: Mark Blagrove, Ph.D.; Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.; Rita Dwyer; Nancy Grace, M.A.; Roger Knudson, Ph.D.; Richard Russo, M.A.; Richard Wilkerson; Lilith Wolinsky; Dave Pleasants
Conference Co-Hosts: Nancy Lund, M.A.; Steven Smith, M.B.A.; M.A.; Bob Hoss, M.S.
Host Committee: 
Host Committee :Marilyn Fowler (Volunteer Coordinator); Emily Anderson

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