A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF A SERIES OF SPOKEN DREAMS IN A PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC CONTEXT AS A FOCUS FOR A THERAPIST'S UNDERSTANDING OF A CLIENT'S STRUCTURES OF EXISTENCE

The purpose of this study has been to explore and explicate the value of a phenomenological approach to dream images in a psychotherapeutic context, as a focus for a therapist's understanding of a client's structures of Existence. Modern approaches to the dream have been largely informed by a mechanistic, biological, positivistic, and natural scientific vision of man. Academic psychology has assumed the whole complex development of science, which it emulated and, while the psychoanalytic tradition has begun to reach beyond this limitation in an attempt to recover man's depths, it has also been largely influenced by it. It has been the premise of this dissertation that the assumptions which inform the natural scientific approach to the study of the dream can only end up limited by a natural scientific vision of man as dreamer. The phenomenological tradition has done much to restore symbolic understanding to a fullness of meaning which went unnoticed as the pervasive and pragmatic ideals of scientific objectivity held sway. It has opened the way for the research of this dissertation aimed at approaching the dream within an expanded context and in such a way that the study could contribute to an enlarged and less restrictive vision of man. The human scientific and hermeneutic approaches being developed at Duquesne University particularly provide for the possibility of studying the dream both in an expanded and non-reductive context as well as in a rigorous and systematic way.; The present research was accomplished by studying two subjects in the context of psychotherapy sessions, focusing phenomenologically on a series of co-elaborated dream images which were then subjected to a modified form of qualitative analysis and a series of hermeneutic reflections. This approach yielded a variety of results including an enriched narrative of the individual's ongoing life concerns, revealing the subject's existential condition and the unacknowledged or unnoticed truths of his existential predicaments. The study also showed that what dream-images can reveal, beyond our instinctual strivings, are at least four basic existential categories or dimensions of Existence, including lived temporality, lived body, being with others or sociality, and a religio-mythical dimension.; The study also showed that the above dimensions are integrated with respect to one another and with the person's being-in-the-world. In addition, the subjects were seen not only in terms of these categories and as a differentiated unity, but as animated beings who develop dialectically as well. The study also demonstrated the particular way in which images reveal these Existential findings.; The findings of this thesis were then compared and contrasted with the Jungian School of Analysis insofar as there were resemblances between the approaches. Significant similarities and differences were found.; All the above findings were seen to yield a richer and fuller understanding of man as dreamer which can expand our modern approaches to the dream as well as to help us understand why dreams held such a prominent place in many ancient civilizations.