Dream Studies

Certificate Program Directors: Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. and Jacquie Lewis, Ph.D.

One hundred years after Freud we are still grappling with questions about dreams: what are they? What do they mean? How do we access them?

In the years since the publication of Freud’s seminal Interpretation of Dreams at the turn of the 20th century, dreamwork in western society has slowly developed into an area of scholarly respect. With the formation of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) in the mid-1980’s, clinicians, scholars, and the general public have gathered every year to celebrate the dream and try to understand its mysteries. Despite 50 postsecondary institutions offering dream courses in North America and Europe, there are very few certificates or degrees specifically devoted to dream studies. Saybrook was the first school to offer students a Dream Studies certificate program at a distance at the graduate level.

Despite this growing professional and public acceptance of the importance of dreaming and dreams, few psychologists obtain any formal training or certification of expertise. In fact most clinicians enter their professional life with absolutely no such training and often feel frustrated or baffled when a client presents a dream in the therapeutic process. Psychology scholars too are poorly trained to understand and appreciate the richness that dreamwork has to offer their explorations of the human condition. Increasingly cognitive psychology is telling us that considerable human information processing occurs outside human awareness , yet what Freud called the "royal road to the unconsciousness" still remains too little investigated and understood. This certificate program is designed to address this inequity.

The Dream Studies Certificate will give students an understanding of dream research, practice, and personal meaning.

Approach

The Dream Studies Certificate is designed to help students gain an understanding of important research about dreams and to implement that knowledge in order to accomplish personal and professional goals. Our teaching approach encourages the student to explore personal interests and learn through experience as well as to come to an appreciation of research in the field.

Course Work

Each student will complete 16 units consisting of four three unit courses and a one unit Integrative Paper.:

Three Required Courses

• One Experiential - CSP 3160 Personal Mythology and Dream Psychology
• One Neurological - CSP 3150 Neuropsychology of Dreams and Dreaming
• One Research Based - CSP 3010 Art Based Inquiry

One elective course that can be of particular interest (e.g., clinical work, spiritual development, social action, peace work) as long as the student can demonstrate papers were primarily related to the study of dreams. .Students can also develop an Independent Study course for this component, working with an affiliated faculty member in an area of interest.

Practicum

The practicum is a special project specifically tied to a research interest of the student. This can be a scholarly study or an experiential one. Projects that could be evaluated might include the students own dream journaling and analysis; reflections and report on clinical uses of dreams; or a research/scholarly study.

Integrative Final Paper

The purpose of this culminating assignment is to give the learner an opportunity to draw together and integrate the most important aspects of the four courses and the practicum experience, to assess strengths and identify further learning needs, and then to develop a specific plan for continuing personal and professional development.

Learning Objectives

The four courses, practicum, and final paper requirement for this certificate are designed to give students a theoretical, experiential, cross cultural, and research foundation in dream studies.Upon completion students will have the skills in the neuroscience domain to:

• Appreciate the characteristics of the sleeping brain, the various stages of sleep, and the differences between rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.
• Understand the major neuropsychological models of dreaming, to highlight similarities and differences between these models, to recognize how they explain the process of dreaming, and to identify the data or arguments that support or contest each of them.
• Explore the implications of an understanding of the physiology and neurochemistry of wakefulness, sleep, and dreaming, for a range of associated phenomena.

Students will also have the skills in the personal experiential domain to:

• Understand the concept of "personal mythology" and its relationship to dreams.
• Become aware of one's own guiding personal myths as expressed in dreams.
• Understand Feinstein and Krippner's 5-stage process to determine which of their personal myths are functional and adaptive, and which are dysfunctional and maladaptive through dreamwork.
• Develop proficiency with methods that can be used to help a person explore the nature of his or her own personal mythology as expressed in dreams.
• Understand how the personal mythology and dreams concept can be used for personal growth, counseling, and/or psychotherapy.
• Understand the role of metaphors in dreams.

Regarding the cross-cultural domain students will have the skills to:

• Appreciate the wide range of cultural differences in how the dream is understood.
• Experience their own dream(s) from the perspective of a culture different from their own.
• Become sensitive to anthropological uses of dreams in understanding the nature of culture.
• Apply cross-cultural understandings of the dream to clinical settings.

Meeting

The meeting attendance requirement can be fulfilled with at least one attendance at the Dream Studies Certificate meetings for students held at the College's residential conferences. The Dream Studies Certificate meetings will include a number of short presentations by students and faculty including featured presentations by certificate graduates. There will be no cost for the meeting but non-matriculated students will be responsible for transportation, lodging, meals, and any other expenses.

Independent Study Format

Learners in the online independent study format download a syllabus, complete the assigned reading, and write three essays for each course.

Elective courses and the practicum are planned with the certificate director.