Inception - A New Way to Understand Dreaming?

Last night I had a dream that I went to the cinema for the first time in neary 12 months. I sat in a large, spacious auditorium, with a massive, crystal clear screen, state-of-the-art cine projectors and a sound system to make the road crew of U2 green with envy.

In this glorious movie-drome, I watched the latest Hollywood blockbuster Inception, one of the most visually dazzling movies of the 21st century, and I sat there awe-inspired and enraptured with the rest of the audience, from the opening credits to the final frame of the last reel.

Well, that was the dream. The reality was that I did go to the cinema to watch Inception last night, but it was shown in a tiny projection room probably best used for preview screens or art-house movies in foreign languages, on a screen that seemed barely bigger than my TV set at home, and through a lens that had a very large white mark, that covered about 1/3rd of the centre of the screen. The picture jumped around the screen, there was constant scratch line running down the right hand side of the image, and the sound was so thin that a rustle of a sweet paper 5 rows ahead of me almost drowned out the dialogue. The audience (not more than 15 people) got so bored with the show that at least 2 of them got out their iPods and started chatting online.

Now to the movie itself. It may have been visually stunning - and I have to admit that I was impressed with some of what I saw on the screen - although I would have been more impressed if I could see it properly. But I was not impressed with the Hollywood mumbo-jumbo that passed for dream psychology. OK, it was only a movie but instead of wallowing in Christopher Nolan's latest blockbuster, I found myself getting more and more irritated by what I saw as 2010's biggest load of cinematic codswallop, so far. We'll all have our opinions on the movie, and they may differ widely - and that's fair enough.

And, the interpretation of dreams in counselling and their significance for the client is also an area of wide debate amongst counsellors and psychotherapists. Some say that dreams are important areas for discussion and should be actively addressed - the client should be asked to write down a dream, if they remember it and encouraged to discuss it in the session. Others say that dreams should only be discussed if the client specifically wants to discuss them, and others say they have no place at all in the counselling room.

Some say that the dreams themselves have very specific meanings, and others say that the dream needs to be interpreted only by the client - and what makes sense to them is the real interpretation. The viewpoints will, of course, vary depending on the models of therapy being used by the therapist.

To get you started on reading about dream interpretation, I have added 2 more PDF's to the Therapy Resources page. One is the full text of Sigmund Freud's classic (1910) book "The Interpretation of Dreams" and the other is a chapter on Gestalt dream interpretation from a much more recent book (2006) by Fredick L Coolidge "Dream Interpretation as a Psychotherapeutic Technique". I hope you find them interesting. Whether they make any more sense than the screenplay of "Inception" is something you may prefer to decide for yourself.

As for the movies - I complained about my experience and got complimentary tickets for another film. I think I'll try Fritz Lang's black and white silent movie classic: Metropolis (1927). At least I won't have to worry about the dialogue not making any sense.

Flying Solo - Not to be Advised for Pilots or Counsellors

According to yesterday's The Independent newspaper, Ryanair's Chief Executive Michael O'Leary has said he will be writing to the aviation authorities to ask permission to use only one pilot per aircraft on short-haul flights.

Mr O'Leary's logic is that the additional co-pilot is superfluous in modern jets - and it will save his airline money to eject them. He went so far as to say that the second pilot was only there to "make sure the other fella didn't fall asleep and knock over the controls". Mr Leary backed up his argument by saying that trains only had a single driver, at times, and this could cause a crash if the driver had a heart attack.

He went on to say that in 25 years, wtih over 10 million flights, Ryanair had only one recorded incident of a pilot having a heart attack - and he managed to land the plane safely.

It got me thinking about counselling practice and the need for a "co-pilot" in the form of a clinical supervisor. Maybe it is just a waste of experienced and qualified personnel - not to mention the supervisee's hard-earned cash - to fly the "plane" - being the client in metaphorical terms.

After all, not many client's really "crash" that badly, do they? And when they do there's not really that much of a bang. I was once told that no one had ever been sued for counselling malpractice in Ireland - so let's face it, even if there is a crash the dust cloud will probably pass over our heads.

I hear of counsellors flying their own "planes" all of the time. I have even heard of counselling students who have never had the benefit of clinical supervision. So it must be OK to risk it alone in the therapeutic skies - mustn't it?

To Mr O'Leary: the day you stop putting co-pilots into your aircraft is the day I stop flying on your aircraft. It's unsafe, it's bad practice and two heads are far better than one. The passengers feel safer and the whole trip is likely to be smoother and less fraught with stress, anxiety and panic.

To all counsellors not using supervision - consider becoming cabin crew.

Getting Started in Clinical Supervision

Welcome to my new blog and clinical supervision resources website - The Counselling Supervisor.

I have been practicing, teaching, training and writing on the subjects of psychotherapy, counselling, clinical supervision and mental health for more years than I care to remember - and my career in mental health work began as a trainee (cadet) nurse in a large psychiatric hospital in Merseyside,in the UK way back in 1972, when I was a mere lad of 16.

In those days, clinical supervision was a thing of the future. Psychiatric nurses got on with the job to the best of their ability, they didn't have the time nor often the inclination to talk their work with patients over with an interested, yet objective third party - unless they could find a friendly colleague who had the time to chat. It was a haphazard and unstructured process that sometimes led to the novice nurse being given unhelpful and/or confusing guidance.

It was only when I began training in psychotherapy, much later in my mental health career, that I came across the concept of formalized and structured clinical supervision.

I am pleased to be in a position to be able to pass on some of my hard-won experiences as a therapist, a supervisee and a clinical supervisor.

So, welcome to "The Counselling Supervisor" and I hope that you will find the posts and resources on this website of value and of interest as you pursue your own professional journey.

If you have any comments or questions about counselling, psychotherapy or clinical supervision that you feel I can help with, don't hesitate to let me have them - I will be delighted to hear from you.

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