Waking Dreams – Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, with Allan Frater, on Saturday May 13th, 2023, on ZOOM

This workshop will be on zoom from 9.30am to 2pm. £40 to members, £50 to non members. To pay by bank transfer, HACP sort code is 090151 and account number is 43775502  To access the generic day training application form, please click on Training Days and Conferences on the home page and you will then find the form at the bottom of the page.

Therapy with images as a primary focus, with author Allan Frater.

Imagination has a valued place in psychotherapy. The images found in memories, relationship entanglements and future fantasies are the raw material of therapeutic work. And yet, faced with a significant dream or transference projection it can be difficult to resist the temptation of a clever interpretation. In this way, imagining is often eclipsed by thinking, turning images into ideas, missing out on the transformative potential of imaginative experience itself.

This workshop will be of interest to therapists who want to work more creatively and freely with images as images. Instead of treating images as symbols pointing to meaning elsewhere, the day will present an image-centric approach, including:

• A broad understanding of imagination as present in all perceptions, actions and relationships (not just as pictures ‘inside the mind’)
• A ‘waking dream’ method applicable to traditional ‘eyes-closed’ active-imagination and art-based approaches as well as the activity of images in generic therapeutic work and everyday life beyond the consulting room as an ‘eyes-wide-open’ waking dream.
• A skills base to better notice, validate and respond to the spontaneously irregular, unexpected and seemingly chaotic imaginings that most often point the way to creative change.
• A non-interpretative fractal patterning which links dream work to the on-going story of self and world in everyday life.

The result is an appreciation of image-work, not just as a means to rational insight but as an embodied imaginal sensibility at the heart of human potential and creativity.

Workshop Sources: The approach incorporates a critical development of ‘active imagination’ alongside paradigm shifting approaches from transpersonal psychology, ecotherapy, complexity theory and fractal geometry.

Allan Frater is a psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer and author of ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life’ published by Transpersonal Press Sept 2021.

The introduction and first chapter of ‘Waking Dreams’ can be sampled here: https://wildimagination.uk/book/

Further information and background here:

Wild Imagination