Dreamwork, anthropology and the caring professions - Iain R. Edgar

This book combines recent developments in the study of the understanding of dreams in the fields of social anthropology and psychology to present a novel cultural approach to dreamwork for those in the caring professions. Based on a recent ethnographic study of author-led dreamwork groups in the UK, the book develops an analysis of dreams as a form of culturally-specific metaphorical thought and shows how group members made 'sense' out of the 'nonsense' of dream imagery. Their 'sense' was developed through experiential group work methods such as gestalt, psychodrama and image work, and was derived from the language of metaphor and a political, often feminist, analysis of life events. The book reviews the current use of dreamwork by the caring professions in such diverse fields as work with the terminally ill, refugees and children. The book will appeal both to those in caring professions and also to social anthropologists in the fields of psychological and medical anthropology.