In depth psychotherapy, dreams can often be understood as compensatory. This does not mean that dreams correct conscious attitudes in a moral or prescriptive sense. Compensation refers to balance. The psyche responds to a one-sided or over-identified position by...
People don’t recognize a psychological complex through insight. They recognize it through repetition. You find yourself drawn to the same kinds of people. You keep making the same kinds of mistakes. You are disturbed by the same patterns, again and again. These...
If dreams are meaningful, why don’t they tell us what to do? This question comes up often. People sense that dreams matter, that they carry something essential, and yet many are frustrated by the absence of clear instruction. Tell me what to do. The difficulty lies in...
Every morning, I spend an hour or so writing my dreams. I don’t do this to solve them or mine them for data. I do it because when I give attention to the images that appear overnight, my orientation for the day becomes clearer. Dreams rarely tell me exactly what to...
When clinical depression takes hold, it is often experienced as a singular condition, unavoidable and closed to movement. Many people describe it as a heavy blanket they cannot get out from under, or a thick, grey fog that settles over everything. It feels as though...
