David
Lotto, PhD, a psychologist/psycho-analyst in Pittsfield
Massachusetts and a Psychohistory Forum researcher,
frequently writes for these pages and the Journal of
Psychohistory. He may be contacted at
dlotto@
nycap.rr.com.
In 1979
in my second year of psychoanalytic training at the
Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy, I was introduced to working with dreams
in a class led by Monte Ullman. There were about a dozen
of us in the twelve-week-long class. Each class
consisted of one of us presenting a recent dream which
we then spent the next hour and a half working with
using Monte’s experiential model of group dreamwork. He
was a true master at getting people to feel comfortable
and competent in presenting their own dreams and working
with the dreams of others.
In addition to
getting to know my classmates and becoming known to them
in a new and much more intimate way, which considerably
enhanced my learning over the following years, Monte
showed us the richness and complexity of dreams. He
taught us that essential skill of being able to open
yourself to what the dream images say, the additional
things the dreamer may tell us, and our own
associations, feelings, and reactions.
Of the
thirty-six courses I took at the institute, Monte’s was
the one which I remember the most. By the end of the
course I felt that I had been fully launched on the
process of becoming a psychoanalyst—having been
initiated into the quintessential art of
psychoanalysis—working with dreams.
A number of
years later I was involved in organizing a conference on
dreams in the Berkshires in which he was the keynote
speaker and led the large group of participants in an
Ullman dream group experience. He did a wonderful job
and was highly appreciated by the participants. Monte
left the world a richer place. He will be missed.
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