Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life

In a waking dream, we inhabit the dreamworld with an awareness of doing so-as sometimes happens upon waking from sleep when a dream continues to feel present alongside an awareness of lying in bed.

Taking perspectives from transpersonal psychology, ecotherapy, complexity theory, and fractal geometry, this book develops new possibilities within waking dream practice (also known as "active imagination" and "guided imagery") to show:

- how the in-between waking/dreaming experience allows us to become aware of not just what we imagine but also the process of how we imagine-a process that reveals the principles and skills of image-based transformation and healing.

- how a broad understanding of imagination-as present in all perceptions, actions, and relationships (not just as pictures "inside the mind")-allows for an image-centric approach to psychotherapy and everyday life as an ongoing "eyes-wide-open" waking dream.

The result is an experiential and theoretical appreciation of imagination, not just as a means to rational insight but as a creative ability at the heart of human potential.

If you are interested in cultivating a richer, story-filled, and enchanted existence, or you are a therapist wanting to help others do so, this might be the book you have been waiting for.

Author: Allan Frater
Publisher: Transpersonal Press
Published: 09/01/2021
Pages: 222
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.47d
ISBN: 9781912698080

About the Author
Frater, Allan: - Allan Frater grew up on the edge of a small village near Edinburgh, reading comics and walking his dog Jet in the surrounding countryside. He survived an engineering degree and a failed career as a maths teacher by watching movies and reading novels. Inspired by Jack Kerouac and Herman Hesse, he spent his twenties living and working in Buddhist communities where he came across the east-meets-west fusion of transpersonal psychology and eventually trained to become a psychotherapist. His psychotherapy practice and teaching career at the Psychosynthesis Trust have researched the meeting place between transpersonal psychology and an image-based approach to ecotherapy, the results of which are presented in this book. Now living in North London, married and middle-aged, he feels fortunate to have kept touch with his original sources of inspiration, continuing to read comics and spend time outdoors walking his dog Milly.