Gudrun Opitz, PhD
Historical Roots and Group Exploration of the Royal Unknown: Working with Dreams in Psychoanalysis
September 20-21, 2025
Kinzie Hotel
20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago
& ZOOM
Dr. Gudrun Opitz is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in New York City. She provides individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and runs Dream Groups for clinicians and non-clinicians. She is on the Faculty and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute. Her teaching, presenting, and groups currently focus on dreamwork
Seminar Title: Historical Roots and Group Exploration of the Royal Unknown: Working with Dreams in Psychoanalysis
Seminar Description: This class will increase candidates’ appreciation of dreams by:
- Learning about inventions and artistic creations that originated from dreams,
- Learning about theoretical or clinical contributions in psychoanalysis, starting with Freud and going to contemporary methods, and
- Participating in a dream group with their peers. A few candidates will volunteer to present their own dream or the dreams of a patient, hear the group members' reactions to the manifest content, and see how this material relates to the treatment of the dreamer's life history. This group interaction will demonstrate how to create an atmosphere of safety and discovery when working with dreams.
Readings:
Freud, S. (1900). Chapter 2, The Method of Interpreting Dreams: An Analysis of a Specimen Dream. In: The Interpretation of Dreams. Standard Edition 4, 121-145.
Jung, C. G. (1969). On the Psychology of the Unconscious. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al.
(Eds.), The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 7 pt. 1 The Synthetic or Constructive Method. & The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. (2nd ed., pp. 80–113). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1943).
Fromm, E. (1951). Chapters 1 and 2. In: The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths. (Pages 3-23)
Tauber, E. & Green, M. (1959). Chapters 11 & 12: Some Observations on Dreams and Dream Analysis.
The Dream as A Message. In: Prelogical Experience. New York: Basic Books. (Pages 149-186).
Bonime, W. (1962). Introduction: A Dynamic Concept of the Dream in the Therapeutic Situation. In: The Clinical Use of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. (pages 1-29).
Greenson, R. (1970). The Exceptional Position of the Dream in Psychoanalytic Practice. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 39: 519-549.
Levenson, E. A. (1981). Facts or Fantasies: On the Nature of Psychoanalytic Data. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 17(4), 486–500.
Blechner, M.J. (1995). The Patient's Dreams and the Countertransference. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 5:1-25.
Blechner, M. (2001). Chapter 5, We Never Lie in Our Dreams & Chapter 6, Condensation and Interobjects. In: The Dream Frontier. New York: Routledge, p. 49-73.
Blechner, M. J. (2018). Psychological Defenses and Dreams. In: The Mindbrain and Dreams. New York: Routledge, p. 146-181.
Lippmann, P. (2000). Chapter 8, When the Analyst’s Neurotic Style Meets the Dream. In: Nocturnes: On Listening to Dreams, p. 99-115.