A Dream in the World: Poetics of Soul in Two Women, Modern and Medieval

by van L)ben Sels,Robin

• ISBN13: 9781583919187
• ISBN10: 158391918X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

A Dream in the Worldexplores the possibility of genuine religious experience during the process of depth psychotherapy. At the heart of this book is a series of archetypal dreams presented by the author's patient during an analytic process. These dreams heralded an unanticipated breakthrough encounter with the divine - an "experience of soul" - that reoriented and energized life and became what the author calls a "dream-in-the-world." To explore the phenomenology of this religious experience, the author compares her patient's religious encounter with mystical experience in general and with the visions and poetry of Hadewijch of Brabant, a thirteenth-century woman mystic, whose ecstatic experience of the divine closely parallels the patient's material. A Dream in the Worlddetails a classical Jungian psychotherapeutic process through analysis of a modern woman's dreams. It searches out relationships between religious encounter and psychotherapy, and psyche and soul, and itdemonstrates the gradual unfolding and maturation of what C. G. Jung called a "religious instinct" in the human psyche. Robin van Loben Sels serves on the faculty of the Center for Depth Pscychology and Jungian Studies in Katonah, New York. She is currently in private practice in Manhatten and Katonah (New York) and Ridgefield (Connecticut).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	x
Introduction	1	(20)
Dream-in-the-world	3	(2)
The dream sequence	5	(1)
Religious experience and the psyche	6	(5)
Religious experience and the body	11	(1)
A quantum stance	12	(2)
A new story of our place in the cosmos	14	(7)
1 Theoretical approaches to mystical experience	21	(33)
The body as a locus for religious experience: Mairi and Hadewijch	21	(7)
A capacity for religious experience: quantum mind and the psycho-spiritual senses	28	(1)
Quantum mind	29	(3)
Dreams as portals to the quantum mind	32	(2)
Psycho-spiritual senses	34	(2)
Fully human consciousness: paradox and the capacity to participate	36	(5)
Jung's religious terminology. Self (and spirit), soul (and psyche)	41	(1)
Self and individuation	41	(4)
Soul and spirit	45	(2)
Self-directive dreams	47	(7)
2 The dreamer and her dreams	54	(72)
1. Red circus tent	63	(1)
2. Flaming angel	64	(3)
3. Snowy mountains, two children	67	(1)
4. Ordeal by spiders	68	(5)
5. 'Two-ness' beneath the ocean	73	(3)
6. Artichoke dream	76	(3)
7. Lightning strike	79	(2)
8. Silver fish kiss	81	(7)
9. Burning stone	88	(3)
10. Three angels	91	(2)
11. On the beach, naked woman, fiery skin	93	(1)
12. Four colors	94	(1)
13. Buddha with a globe	95	(2)
14. Statue of a woman	97	(2)
15. Swami B. is dancing	99	(2)
16. Rose dream	101	(4)
17. Bird with jeweled wings	105	(2)
18. White elephant on a white sea	107	(3)
19. Self birth	110	(1)
20. The lunar tree	111	(5)
21. The solar tree	116	(2)
22. Hands holding the Earth	118	(1)
23. Cowlick and re-entry	119	(7)
3 "Falling through": Experience of soul	126	(48)
Psychological commentary	148	(2)
Self-directive dreams and initiation	150	(6)
Personification, personalisation, and "indwelling"	156	(2)
Winnicott's personalisation and indwelling	158	(3)
Beyond personalisation to personhood	161	(3)
Reflections on psyche and soul	164	(1)
Limitations of Winnicott's view of religion as "necessary illusion"	165	(9)
4 Hadewijch's paradox	174	(30)
Hadewijch and the Beguines	176	(6)
Literary contributions	182	(1)
Beguine spirituality	183	(2)
Mysticism and the body	185	(8)
Hadewijch and the feminine	193	(3)
Soul and self-transformation	196	(8)
5 Summary and conclusions	204	(23)
Individuation and the religious instinct	208	(7)
Centrality of the soul in religious experience	215	(6)
Anima mundi	221	(1)
Loss and recovery of a world view	222	(5)
Select bibliography	227	(20)
Index	247