Existential Work with Dreams
- Friday 13th November 2026
Existential Work with Dreams
Rocky Mt Humanistic Counseling & Psych Assoc
Online event
Friday, 4 December 4
4 PM - 7 PM GMT
Tickets: Existential Work with Dreams Tickets, Friday, December 4 • 4 PM - 7 PM GMT | Eventbrite
Overview
This workshop will explore an existential approach to working with dreams in psychotherapy.
Dreams can be understood phenomenologically as brief narratives that express aspects of a person's current experience, concerns, relationships, and ways of understanding the world. Rather than treating dreams as having fixed or universal symbolic meanings, existential dream work explores the meanings that emerge from the dreamer's own lived experience. Existential dream work has a substantial history, including the contributions of Medard Boss. This workshop introduces participants to Emmy van Deurzen's Structural Existential Analysis as a method for working phenomenologically, narratively, heuristically, and hermeneutically with dream material.
The workshop will provide an introduction to the theoretical foundations and clinical application of Structural Existential Analysis, followed by a demonstration of the method and supervised experiential practice. Participants will learn how to attend closely to the structure and meaning of a dream narrative while remaining grounded in the dreamer's own perspective rather than imposing predetermined symbolic interpretations.
There will be a combination of didactic teaching, demonstration, discussion, and experiential practice. Participants will have opportunities to observe the method being applied and to practice aspects of the approach with guidance and supervision. The method can also be applied beyond dreams to other narratives, stories, images, and brief statements offered by clients in psychotherapy.
Active participation will enhance learning; however, participants may choose an observational role during experiential portions of the workshop.
Tickets: Existential Work with Dreams Tickets, Friday, December 4 • 4 PM - 7 PM GMT | Eventbrite