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Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys

Author(s) : Philip M. Bromberg

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But, these essays are no esoteric attempt at theory construction for its own sake. Bromberg consistently brings the reader into the felt human experience at the heart of the clinical encounter. Dreams are approached not as texts in need of deciphering but as means of contacting genuine but not yet fully conscious self-states. From here, he explores how the patient's "dreamer" and the analyst's "dreamer" can come together to turn the "real" into the "really real" of mutative therapeutic dialogue. The "difficult," frequently traumatized patient is newly appraised in terms of tensions within the therapeutic dyad. Such patients, Bromberg finds, sense dangers within the dyad that the analyst unwittingly heightens. And then, there is the "haunted" patient who carries a sense of preordained doom through years of otherwise productive work - until the analyst can finally feel the patient's doom as his or her own. Laced with Bromberg's characteristic honesty, humor, and thoughtfulness, these essays elegantly attest to the mind's reliance on dissociation, in both normal and pathological variants, in the ongoing effort to maintain self-organization. "Awakening the Dreamer", no less than "Standing in the Spaces", is destined to become a permanent part of the literature on therapeutic process and change.

Table of Contents
Introduction: When Reality Blinks. Part I: On Self States. Bringing in the Dreamer. Playing with Boudaries. "The Gorilla Did It": Thoughts on the Real and the Really Real. Part II: Collisions and Negotiations. Potholes on the Royal Road: Or Is It an Abyss?Treating Patients with Symptoms, and Symptoms with Patience. The Analyst's "Self-Revelation": Not Just Permissable, but Necessary. Part III: Safe but Not Too Safe. One Need Not Be a House to Be Haunted: A Case Study. "Something Wicked This Way Comes": Where Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience Overlap.