Dreams, the Unconscious and the Person-Centred Approach: Revisioning Practice

The motivation for this paper, I agreed to write this paper on request, sharing passionately others’ concern that the Person Centred Approach (PCA) must grow or die. [have now worked for almost twenty years as a person-centred psychotherapist and have experienced significant personal and professional changes of perspective within my own practice. During the last eleven years I have had a deep and developing interest in depth psychology, in Jung, in archetypal psychology, in myths and symbols, in the new ‘writing of James Hillman, in psychology and spirituality, and most of all in dream work, which has now become a central and core element in my own practice. Yet, at the same time I am still deeply committed to the PCA. I do not impose my interests in any way on my clients, but sense I have extended or broadened the range of my own inner resources which may now be drawn upon by the client who so wishes. However, I have simultaneously grown increasingly perplexed at the singular lack of literature on the subject of dreams within the Person-Centred Approach.