Robert A. JohnsonInner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth

Learn about yourself, and you’ll learn about others

It seems that after this book this author has written much on the subject of Jungian work but the majority appears to be a survey of ideas, unlike this book which is the heart of actually doing Jungian work. Since I'm becoming a clinical social worker I tend to read many books such as this one to know how the actually meat of many forms of therapy and inner work are carried out. Much out there is pure junk that loses my interest very quickly. This book is a joy to read through and the examples are very relevant. The author does not go off on tangents about personal anecdotes, something that tends to bore me with many authors.I have had an interest in Jungian work but have found it very abstract and not as down to earth as many other forms of therapy or psychological work. This book takes you directly to the core of the two most important ways of Jungian work: dream work and active imagination. There are several other methods used in analytic work but these are the most fundamental. The four steps are accessible and simple to carry out.As I have an interest in having at least a foot in Jungian ideas as a therapist this book will be invaluable for both my inner work and those of my future clients.The only problem I find is that the Jungian school needs more of a place for body and emotive work to ground the abstract in direct present experience using methods such as: Gestalt methods, Gendlin's Focusing Technique, meditation and so on. Otherwise this is by far the most practical work by a Jungian that I have come across.

Having been fascinated with Brain Science podcast, in particular notions of impulse control: that make humans go farther than apes and afford keys to gain empathy so important for caring for aged so they don't withdraw because they are losing impulse control, I had been reading another difficult book.What a relief to finish and at last get to this.The introduction immediately engaged me with examples of people seeing behaviors coming out of themselves that surprised them as if there were another person inside taking over.As I understand, we have a number of different repressed personalities that can break out which we surpress and disown most of the time. Active imagination has us have conversation with them so both of us change. This can release enormous psychological energy to us. Jung had these conversations to become a spirit guide.Claude Steiner wrote of loss of impulse control as a stage toward empathy, a necessary stage, for men, as I recall, but can't document. Empathy for the shadow unleashes powerful spiritual forces, the watcher, a nonjudgemental entity that leaves one unattached ie. not identifying with harmful behaviors so one can heal from them without psychically dying. Carl Rogers, "On Becoming a Person", said such a capacity to listen and understand evidenced a person as irreversibly healed.Empathy for oneself parallels empathy for others, so these powerful spiritual forces are for "the good".Empathy doesn't mean homogenization: one understands without becoming though both get changed in active imagination. How this works, I'm going to try to find out in Johnson explaining how active imagination dialogs insure Jung's goal of individuation.

In Inner Work, Johnson provides a thorough and easy to follow guide on how to engage with your unconscious. Though one can find a lot in Jung on symbolic interpretation, he was somewhat cagey about detailing exactly how to go about active imagination. He gives the right amount of context, in what is essentially a practical manual, without bogging the reader down in theory that can be consulted elsewhere if necessary.If there is one criticism I have of the book it is that he chose to highlight dream interpretation instead of active imagination. Jung maintained that active imagination, though decidedly more difficult, was far more powerful and rewarding than its passive cousin. Further, that dreams were regularly warning signals that something in the psyche was already out of balance. The need for the unconscious to communicate through dreams subsides when conscious fantasies are taken more seriously. Johnson could have made a more spirited case for shifting one's attention to preventative, active aspects of maintaining balance.

I've read a few books and listened to some CDs on dream interpretation, but Johnson's Inner Work is the first one to give me real confidence that I can do this myself. The process he outlines does take time -- it isn't a "go with your gut" quick fix -- but it leads to some intense, evocative results. The 4-step process is deceptively simple: Step 1 - Identify key images and your associations to those images; Step 2 - Ask yourself where these images/associations show up in your life; Step 3 - Interpret the dream, and; Step 4 - Complete a ritual around the dream that makes it more concrete in your life. I was amazed at the many associations that came to me with each image as I completed step 1, some of them were relevant and some not, but ALL of them made me think. Step 2, I admit is the most difficult for me, and step 4 probably the most meaningful. Again, this is not for the lazy or faint of heart. You don't just dive into interpretation, and it takes some effort to make the associations Johnson asks us to make in order to arrive at a reasonable interpretation. But it sure is worth it! I've made some interpretations that have just astonished me and moved me. Beyond the mechanics of dream interpretation, the book is incredibly well written. Johnson is a thoughtful, engaging writer who puts words together in a way that we not only understand but enjoy reading.