Naropa University Oakland

Master of Liberal Arts Program in Creation Spirituality

 

DREAMS AND ARCHETYPES OF AUTHENTIC GENDER

 

 

CSP 742                                                                                         Number of Credit Units: 1

 

Instructor: Jeremy Taylor                                                                            Phone: 415/454.2793

 

                                                                                         Email address: 

 

Class Schedule:

Fall 2003, Wednesdays, 6-8:30pm

Sept 17, 24, Oct 1, 8, 15, Nov 5, 12, 19, Dec 3 & 10

No classes Oct 22, 29, Nov 26

 

Course Description:

All dreams, even nightmares come in the service of health and wholeness and our dreams regularly challenge our unexamined assumptions about ourselves and our world.  Often there is a great disparity between our consciously professed ideals and our actual behavior.  We may repeatedly and unwittingly damage or destroy the very people or institutions we wish to nurture and support.  A conscious exploration of these shadowy energies in our lives can go a long way toward reversing this distressing repetitive drama.

 

Authentic gender awareness promotes and nurtures erotic/relational knowledge of the world and requires acknowledgement of the “other” as one intimately connected with the deepest self.

 

 

Course Objectives:

Even our most complex, difficult, and "taboo" problems are regularly addressed in creative, amusing and ultimately positive and productive ways in our dreams. We will explore our "hidden dimensions" and how this inner knowledge makes possible an understanding of the relationship between using dreams for personal growth and for the resolution of our many social problems.

 

Course Requirements:

 

1.       Attendance  50%

2.       Participation in class 50%

 

List recommended readings:

Taylor, Jeremy: The Living Labyrinth, New Jersey:Paulist Press, 1998

Taylor, Jeremy: Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill, New York, Warner, 1992

Taylor, Jeremy: Dream Work, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1983

Handout: The Basic Dream Work Tool Kit

Garfield, Patricia: Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams,  Ballantine, NY, 1988

Signel, Karen: Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Women’s Dreams, Bantam Books, NY, 1990.

Hopke, Robert: Men’s Dreams, Men’s Healing, Shambala, Boston, 1990

 

 

 

Outline:

(subject to the instructor's changes)

 

Weeks One - Four

Introduction to the roles of the unconscious and of the conscious mind

Laboratory evidence for dream recall

Historical perspective on dream exploration

Exploring the nature of “authentic gender”

Exploration of “types” of dreams (nightmares, recurrent, lucid, etc)

Exploration of basic guidelines for group dream work

Group dream work

 

Weeks Five-Ten

Explanation of archetypes

Exploration of basic archetypes

Discussion of Freud and Jung's theories

Universal language of dreams and symbols

Dreams and creation spirituality

Group dream work and group process