DownloadDownload - Dreamwork Psychotherapy Handbook, by Strephon Kaplan-Williams (2009)

A Personal Statement From Strephon Kaplan-Williams

“This paper has been both a history of my working as a dreamwork psychotherapist most of my adult life and the issues and results of such work. Yet it has been also a history of the dreamwork psychotherapy movement within the larger context of the dream and dreamwork education movement. When I started there were few educators and independent psychotherapists in the field. Now the public has a greater awareness of the nature of dreaming.

The next step is to see that dreamwork with dreams is as valid a field of study and practice as the field of dreams and dreaming is in itself. Dreamwork is the new discovery of value already being recognized. Dreamwork is the dream itself worked within a variety of ways, and not the realm of any one school of psychology or research.

Part One is about the emergence of Dreamwork Psychotherapy as a separate profession from regular psychotherapy or psychology from any of the schools. The dream and its dreamwork can now exist on its own as a separate branch of psychology called Dreamwork Psychology.

Part Two of this article will contain further distinctions between Dreamwork Psychotherapy and other forms of dreamworking the dream more on the creative rather than the emotional, problem-solving side. I will go on to give examples and state the case for professionalism in the field. I will outline the core elements of professional training in Dreamwork Psychology and Psychotherapy, as well as describe my ethical considerations. I also make the statement that now through the Dream Ego Profile a basis for doing dream and dreamer diagnostics has been established, as well as an objective basis for evaluating the results of doing dreamwork psychotherapy with individuals and even groups.

Everyone has deep stuff. This is par for this reality, this life, which certainly is for everyone full of trauma and unrealized desires. Dreams are more honest than we are, more revealing than we usually want to know. Why? Probably because the dream source, the deeper psyche, wants healing to the core. Thus we need true professionals working at the core, but they must have integrity so as to give the time and the skills necessary to support a dreamer through a process.

I hope I have contributed with value to the field.”

by Strephon Kaplan-Williams
2009, September 17