Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel

by Robert Bosnak

Did you know that intentional dreaming has been used to solve life's problems? Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel sets out Robert Bosnak's practice of embodied imagination and demonstrates how he actually works with dreams and memories in groups. The book discusses various approaches to dreams, body and imagination, and combines this with a Jungian, neurobiological, relational and cultural analysis. The author's fascination with dreams, the most absolute form of embodied imagination, has caused him to travel all over the world. From his research he concludes that while dreaming everyone everywhere experiences dreams as embodied events in time and space while the dreamer is convinced of being awake; it is after waking into our specific cultural stories about dreaming that the widely differing attitudes towards dreams arise. By taking dreaming reality, not our waking interpretation of it, as the model for imagination, this book creates a paradigm shock and produces methods which can be applied in a wide variety of cultural settings. Through detailed case studies, professionals and students will find thorough discussions This book discusses a variety of techniques which may be applied by health professionals to their patients and clients. It will also be of particular interest to Jungian and relational psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists, as well as to artists, actors, directors, writers and other individuals who wish to explore the creative imagination.

Genres: Psychology

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Kenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book. It struck me as scholarly shamanism, looking at dreams for their healing potential. Encountering imaginary beings through the dream world, and learning from them. The main technique seems to be this: look deeply at dream images to identify feelings and where they are associated in the body. Make a "dream map" throughout the body of the different feelings, and hold them together. By allowing all of them to exist together, a new, unexpected synthesis can occur.
The idea of limiting dreams to feelings and body parts feels a little reductive to me, but the results Bosnak shares are impressive. I certainly see my dreams differently since reading this, noting "presences" that are trying to teach something, noticing how it feels in my body.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty academic and fairly heavy going read. If you're looking for a book which helps you to understand dreaming and some of the deeper aspects of exploring the world of the unconscious, then this might not be the right place to start. The thesis of this particular author's work is that through therapeutic, group practice, the dream characters and/or experiences that we encounter can be assumed into ourselves through the process of embodiment. The actual procedure itself was quite complicated, not necessarily something you could do outside of the therapeutic environment, which is perhaps why I found the book to be less accessible.
There were some really interesting observations on dreaming and sleep and I did gather a few takeaways in my commonplace book, but I felt pretty bogged down in parts. I think there are other books which introduce the world of dreams in a more accessible way.

[Jfish938 · Rating 4 out of 5]

practical techniques for dream work