Frederick Perls
Frederick
Perls (1893-1970) iss the founder of Gestalt therapy. Gestalt
therapy seeks to fill your emotional voids so that you can then become a unified
whole. Perls believes that dreams contain the rejected, disowned parts of the
Self. Every character and every object in a dream represents an aspect of the
Self. You are the hurricane, you are the attacker, you are the broken down
car, you are the bridge, and you are the dusty book. Perls rejects
the notion that dreams are part of a universal symbolic
language. He believes that each dream is unique to the individual who
dreams it.
In order to discover what aspect of yourself is being disowned, Perls believes that it is important to retell your dream in the present tense and act it out accordingly. It is important to verbalize how each and every component in your dream felt, even inanimate objects. Reenact the dream and take on the role of the different characters and objects. Start a dialogue with the dream object and express how you felt toward each other. By taking on a different role within your dream and reenact it, you may then be able to acknowledge and realize feelings that you may have overlooked or buried. Your dream literally comes alive.