Clinical Aspects of Dreams

Study morning with Otto Rheinschmiedt.

Why are dreams a significant tool in clinical practice? In their psychosomatic function, dreams are a processing form of unresolved emotional issues, reaching into individual life history (autobiographical fictions), trans-generational family themes(transmission of trauma), and historical consciousness (ethnic and cultural identity). The narrative nature of dreams takes the dreamer back on the time line of life, serving the recovery of trauma, but also experiences of an aesthetic nature, but it also creates futures.

Dreams give expression to the fundamental human drives: the conundrum of fear, the propensity for destructiveness, the search for love , the search for knowledge, the search for beauty, the ‘will to power’, and our spiritual searches.

Otto started his professional career as a clinical psychologist. He has worked as a group analyst, psychotherapist, dream researcher, and lecturer for over thirty years. His book on the narrative nature of dreams, entitled The Fictions of Dreams: Dreams, Literature, and Writing, was published by Karnac/Routledge in 2017.