The Dreamlife of Families

Book excerpt: How our unconscious minds connect with our families through dreams • Shows how the connected dreamlife of families reveals itself in nightmares and unusual dreams, during critical times such as pregnancy, conflicts, and medical emergencies, and in shared, telepathic, and precognitive dreams • Explains how dreamwork can help heal our psychospiritual selves and aid in both family and couples therapy • Examines ancient dream traditions from Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and the ancient Egyptian Mystery Schools Our dreams, the most intimate part of us, form the truest expressions of our feelings and emotional beliefs about the world. Our dreams also reflect the complex connections of our unconscious minds with those of our families and close friends, connecting us through our dreams to loved ones near and far, living and passed on. Integrating traditional dream analysis with family psychology, clinical science, and parapsychology, Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D., ABPP, details how our personal unconscious is interwoven into our larger family unconscious. He shows how these dreamlife connections and patterns are as old as humanity itself, exploring ancient dream traditions from around the world. He explains how the dreamlife of a family can be viewed as a shared field or hologram, where each family member is enfolded into the dreams of the other members. This shared reality reveals itself in family and personal illnesses, in nightmares and unusual dreams, and during critical times such as crisis, pregnancy, conflicts, and medical emergencies. It also reveals itself in cases of simultaneous shared dreams and telepathic and precognitive dreams, explaining why so many people have dreams in which a family member appears to say good-bye, waking the next day to discover the same loved one has passed away. Sharing clinical case studies from his Family Dream Research Project, the author shows how the intimate labyrinth of our dream lives is always flowing beneath the surface of our waking lives, shaping and influencing our relationships and our deep core experiences. He reveals how dreams can be healing factors as well as diagnostic signals, detailing how dreamwork can aid in both family and couples therapy. Showing how our family’s dreamlife connects us to our ancestors and weaves us into the messages we send to our children’s children, the author offers an opportunity to identify personal and family patterns, heal our psychospiritual selves, and grow our understanding of our own minds.