Wolfgang Giegerich is a Jungian psychoanalyst, now living in Berlin, and an author of numerous books, among them What Is Soul? and Neurosis: The Logic of a Metaphysical Illness. His most recent works are The Historical Emergence of the I and What Are the Factors That Heal?

I. What is a dream?

The dream as a conscious phenomenon. The dream as text

Ontological rupture

The dream as interpretation

"Ontology" of the dream-internal world

1. The seeing of a dream.

2. Mutability and malleability.

3. Shadowiness.

4. Lacunality.

5. 'Just in time' apparition, not substantial being.

6. Concepts cloaked in sensible shapes.

II. Why Dreams?

The significance of dreams in therapy

a) The soul's speaking.

b) "I do not know the answer either."

c) Dreams versus sandplay and painting.

d) Listening to patients' stories as if they were dreams?

When patients don't dream

III. The proper attitude towards the dream

Crossing the river. The standpoint of soul

The three stances to "crossing the river" and the three forms of otherness

Psychotherapy-the making of psychology

The dream as corpse.

Not knowing as methodological starting point

The necessity of my going under

IV. The dream interpreter

Whom does the therapist address when working on dreams with a patient?

Who in the therapist interprets the dream?

My interpretation.

The Now of dream interpretation

V. Interpreting the actual text of dreams

"Object level", "subject level" and the objective psyche

Trap: Dream interpretation as the dream's translation into the terms of one's psychological theory

Getting started: Beginning with the subject. Circumambulating the dream

Turning to the "object": The dream as subject and self

Inner infinity and the wildness of the living image

Actually working with dreams

Discerning the proper horizon of and context for individual dream elements

Narcissistic blow: "It has a say now, not you!" Or: The patient as obstacle

The dream-I

The dream-I and the Other

1. Necessary distinctions and decisions.

2. The antagonists.

3. The soul's via negativa.

4. How to view the ego defenses in dreams.

5. Opposition as obvious conflict between Two and the dialectic of successful flight.

6. Opposition as the dream-I's malgré lui doing the other's bidding.

Information Classification: General

7. Opposition as antithetical meaning of one and the same.

8. Opposition as impugning the known truth.

Psychic and biological processes in dreams

Semantic content versus syntactic structure

VI. By way of one example: A dream and its psychological interpretation

VII. The dream and the patient

The therapy situation as impairment of dream interpretation.

Absolute-negative interiorization of the patient into the dream

"So the dream shows me that. And now?"

Terrible dream images, unbearable for the patient?

VIII. Miscellaneous questions

The types and topics of dreams

Does the dream have a message for us?

Archetypal dream motifs. Numinous, religious dreams?

Whose dream is it?

"Big" dreams

The dream series

Excursus: Can one learn to interpret dreams?

IX. The ulterior purpose of and assignment for dream interpretation: From Natura to Ars

X. Beyond working with dreams

Pushing off to the dimension of the soul's real life