Page 42 - Jan/Feb 2017 FTM

PERSPECTIVES
Dreams and Family Life What It Means for Family Therapy
Edward Bruce Bynum, PhD
Most of us would not be surprised to learn that family-related feelings and familial consciousness are two of the deepest and most powerful currents running through the ocean of our lives. Those who work in the field of family therapy take this dimension of psychological life into account in our practice. We see daily how the influence of familial patterns is extraordinarily powerful in its depth and intensity.
As clinicians, and as family members ourselves, we realize that because it is this powerful, we often dream about our family members. It is common and normal to have dreams in which family members are prominently involved. The vast majority of these dreams are the usual dreams in which a parent, sibling or other significant other, living or dead, is doing something that we generally recognize as their normal behavior. However, sometimes they are doing something unusual or even paradoxical in our dreams.
40 FAMILY THERAPY MAGAZINE