The Power of Dreams

Certificate in Dream Interpretation

Six Monday Evenings starting September 17,

(CPD Points will be awarded)

led by Ireland's leading Jungian Psychologist Jasbinder Garnermann

Read Jasbinder's Book on the Transforming Power of Dreams - Song of The Soul:

In a world which increasingly pulls us towards an external collectivized existence away from our authentic being, our dreams offer us a way back to the sacred, restoring our sense of reverence in the midst of banality, channeling our instincts, revealing layer upon layer of our souls, helping us to make friends with ourselves and the world in which we live. 

Day One

Dreams and Mental Health: Dreams close the gap between our conscious and unconscious drives, so that instead of the neuroses caused by inner division, we can function as wholes, balancing our outer and inner needs, and also ensuring harmony between ourselves and our environment. 

Day Two

Types of Dreams: Personal, Collective and Archetypal. Some dreams make us aware of our personal needs and the complexes that inhibit us from living fully. Others reveal our entanglement with social and collective values that might have become meaningless for us but which still hold us prisoner in the prejudices of our times and tribes. When our personal and collective resources fail us,  archetypal dreams come to our aid with a renewed weltanschauung which gives our life new meaning.

'Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.' - C.G. Jung

Day Three

The archetypes of the collective unconscious: These dreams can often be hard to interpret due to a lack of personal associations, However, an acquaintance with mythology and the archetypes of different cultures provides us with an exciting key to understanding our most powerful drives and yearnings, providing continuity between  past, present and future. 

Day Four

Tuning in to our dreams: Our dreams speak to us in a language that is intimately ours, a language that contains our most personal history, memories,  and experiences, meant for our ears alone, our original mother-tongue. Learning this language is the essence of dream-interpretation and the more we can comprehend its logic and grammar, the greater will be the treasure that we discover in our dreams. 

Day Five

How to choose the right interpretation: With each type of dream, many possible associations, ideas and meanings will occur to us. This is where dream-interpretation becomes an art, and we begin to train ourselves to listen with sensitivity on many levels: sensitivity to visceral reactions to the energy charge in the dream, our childhood reveries, the stirrings of insights and feelings that are emerging from our conscious engagement with the dream symbols, sensitivity to who we really are and to our inner truth, all of which will combine to give us the thrill of the AHA experience - the interpretation which has hit the mark. At this stage, we will also find it useful to create  personal and meaningful rituals to help tie down and ground the energy of the symbols. 

Day Six

The release of energy: the right interpretations of our dreams create new psychological structures, freeing us from complexes , giving us a fresh perspective, modifying ego-defences, restoring healthy instincts, and above all, unifying the psyche. Jung termed these unifying symbols the irrational third or the transcendent function which gives us the facility to rise above the either/or split in our natures. Instead we gain a supra-rational perspective which is large enough to embrace seeming opposites such as masculine and feminine, body and spirit, personal and transcendent, etc.. This brings an enlargement of consciousness which Jung believed was the only hope for safeguarding the future of humanity and the fate of the world which so poignantly hangs upon it.  

Read Jasbinder's articles on Dreams

• Dreams published in Network Ireland Magazine

• An Introduction to Dreams

• Dream-Analysis

• The Origin of The Shadow

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