Animal Dreams
Gifts of Body and Soul
Presented by
Paula Smith-Marder, PhD
Friday, 8:00 pm, November 5th, 2004
Adream of an animal promises the connection of body and psyche. While enhancing the dreamer’s relationship to sensuality and instinct, animal dreams often hint at the sacred. Jung suggests that these dreams invite us to engage in rituals of renewal that can reconnect us to our deepest spiritual roots. So much has been written about animal dreams. Yet, when we are visited at night by an animal, we often don’t know what to do with it. This presentation will suggest ways of understanding and relating to these dreams. It will also explore the instinctual and religious meanings in animal dreams: dreams that renounce and dreams that embrace, dreams of conflict and dreams of the sacred and terrifying. For in the animal is the god.
Paula Smith-Marder, PhDis a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst at the C.G.Jung Institute of Los Angeles where she is on faculty. She is also on faculty at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Bio-behavioral Sciences where she consults at the Women’s Life Center. She often lectures on women’s dreams during transition and on animal imagery. She has published inPsychological Perspectiveson the archetypes of the pig and the rat.