Confronting What: An Introduction to Montague Ullman Dream Group

1. Confronting What Is an introduction to MONTAGUE ULLMAN DREAM GROUP Massimo Schinco, ITALY psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

2. Montague Ullman (1916 – 2008), psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, founded the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, N.Y. for over two decades he taught psychoanalytic candidates in Sweden, later teaching his group process to professional and lay groups alike he devoted his life to lecturing, teaching and inspiring a grassroots dream work movement within the United States the process, having spread internationally, reflects a gradual shift in dream ideology and an upsurge in popular interest in dreams Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

3. Ullman emphasizes that “we are much less separate than we think we are” and that dreaming is “an adaptation concerned with the survival of the species and only secondarily of the individual” Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

4. “dreaming is a pictorial elocution, a way of talking in pictures” so that “the dream is a metaphor in motion" by virtue of which “dreams can offer an aesthetic and creative approach to knowledge, oriented to wisdom, which is complementary to the “objective” one of science, oriented rather to mastery” Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

5. from a theoretical point of view Ullmann roots his statements in the contributionsof the physicist David Bohm for Bohm, consciousness is envisioned as an infinite collective stream in which the contents of individual consciousness are distinct but not separate explications of “wider” implicate orders Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

6. reality “explicates” and “implicates” itself in an endless “holomovement” – the movement of the whole in consequence of this, all conceptions that consider individual vs. collective, psychological vs. “material” past, present and future as ultimately separated one from the other are no longer accepted Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

7. consistent with this, Ullman’s view of dreams and dreaming is transpersonal “dream work moves us into a transpersonal domain by drawing attention to the way we are living out our membership in a single species” “in our dreams we struggle against fragmentation and move toward wholeness” Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

8. dreams are highly connected to truth and reality “the ego in a dream is at the mercy of the truth" “our dreams are the only part of us that can’t stray from the truth" “dreams are active conveyors of the truth in its broadest social sense and in its personal references" Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

9. metaphors in dreams reveal feelings, which are the “stuff itself of reality” “…that part of us which is linked to others through feeling is more real, more enduring and more significant than other dimensions of our existence. It compels belief. It dissolves distances, creates unity and links us to the real world. This is the stuff of reality” Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

10. Ullman’s privileged tool for dreamworking is the GROUP an Ullman group can last hours today, we aim to introduce you to a short demonstration based on the Ullman method in the spirit of an Ullman group Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

11. the dreamworking normally goes through 4 different stages the group is requested not to give interpretations of someone else’s dream In one stage, the dream is considered your own dream. To reinforce this attitude, before commenting, we use the words «if it were my dream» this is much more than a memo, a narrative expedient or a slogan Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

12. the statement actualizes a basic aspect of dream reality in one single dream all dreams are enfolded, merging the individual with the collective. by unfolding one’s dream through the group dreamworking, the group unfolds to a certain extent all dreaming reality so the full respect of the individual dreamer and the benefits she/he will receive can be considered in agreement with those of the group and of the community Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator

13. now the demonstrationwillbegin • if you choose to participate in this activity you shall fulfill special requirements of privacy, respect for others, focus and dedication • please turn off all electronic devices and recordings • when the dream group has concluded, voicing your reflections and other conceptual ideas is fine • however, we ask that you keep the contents of the dream you’ve heard and your notes about it to yourself • please do not leave the room once activity has begun Massimo Schinco, Italy psychotherapist Judy Gardiner, USA dream facilitator