Description

The Dream’s Desire, Agency and Intention

A Six-Week On-Line Seminar

Beginning September 24, October 8, October 22, November 5, November 19, December 3, 2025

Every Two Weeks

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

Modern dream science, in attempting to solve the riddle and mystery of dreams, has advanced a variety of theories ranging from the notion that dreams are nothing but brain noise to claims that dreams are the night’s preparation for the next day’s activities and evolutionarily significant in preparing consciousness to deal with harm and threat. All of these efforts are focused on the dream’s value (or lack thereof) for conscious purposes, intentions, and agendas. This seminar will review these modern developments and offer a critique that focuses attention instead on the dream’s desire, agency, and intention. I’m looking for participants to be engaged interactively in activities that will illustrate the importance and value of psyche-centered writing. As an example, I will attempt to reconstruct my spontaneous talk I gave at the 1992 Arts Festival at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. The title of that talk was “The Cost of Poetry and the Price of Its Loss.” I will emphasize the value of poetry as a way of relating to dreams and other phenomena of psyche.

Russell Lockhart, Ph.D. was born and educated in Los Angeles and received his doctorate in human psychophysiology from the University of Southern California. He was trained as a Jungian Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute Los Angeles where he served as Director of Analyst Training. Since 1982 he has lived and practiced Jungian Analysis in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to such publications as Words as Eggs: Psyche in Language and Clinic, and Psyche Speaks: A Jungian Approach to Self and World, Dr. Lockhart is also a poet, publisher, artist, and novelist.

The Seattle Jung Society is honored to host an archive of his writings available to all members on our website, www.jungseattle.org.