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Person-Centered & Experiential

Psychotherapies
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Incongruence as a doorway to deeper

self-awareness using experiential
focusing-oriented dreamwork
a
Leslie Ellis
a
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Chicago, IL, USA
Published online: 18 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Leslie Ellis , Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies (2013):
Incongruence as a doorway to deeper self-awareness using experiential focusing-oriented
dreamwork, Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, DOI: 10.1080/14779757.2013.836130

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2013.836130

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 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2013.836130

Incongruence as a doorway to deeper self-awareness using experiential

focusing-oriented dreamwork
Leslie Ellis*

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Chicago, IL, USA

(Received 30 July 2012; final version received 13 June 2013)

According to Rogers, incongruence is a necessary condition of personality change.

Gendlin argued that this concept implies experiencing and works only if one views it
as a dynamic process. Incongruence, the discrepancy between the actual and desired
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view of oneself, is often dramatically depicted in dreams. Clinicians can benefit from
clear steps that show how to work with this phenomenon in practice. Gendlin’s
focusing-oriented dream work (FOD) methods offer clinicians a way to allow their
clients to experience directly what is disavowed. A bodily-felt experience of split-off
aspects of the self leads to their integration, and increases congruence within the client.
This article describes the method of FOD, including its common ground with both
Rogerian and Jungian theory. Clinical examples illustrate how experiential dream work
can be effective at resolving incongruence, particularly when the dreamer is invited to
explore their bodily-felt sense of the dream’s most difficult places. The examples show
how FOD can be particularly effective at enabling clients to discover, experience and
resolve incongruence.
Keywords: focusing-oriented therapy; dream work; incongruence; client-centered
therapy

Experienzielle focusing-orientierte Traumarbeit als Tür zu tieferer

Kongruenz
Laut Rogers ist Inkongruenz eine notwendige Bedingung für eine Veränderung der
Persönlichkeit. Gendlin legte dar, dass dieses Konzept das Erleben impliziert und
nur dann funktioniert, wenn man es als dynamischen Prozess sieht. Inkongruenz,
die Diskrepanz zwischen der aktuellen und der gewünschten Sicht auf sich selbst,
wird oft dramatisch in Träumen ausgedrückt. Kliniker können von klaren Schritten
profitieren, die zeigen, wie man in der Praxis mit diesem Phänomen arbeiten kann.
Gendlins experienzielle Focusing-orientierte Traumarbeit (FOD)-Methode bietet
Klinikern einen Weg, Klienten direkt erleben zu lassen, was sie verleugnen. Eine
körperlich erlebte Erfahrung abgespaltener Aspekte des Selbst führt zu deren
Integration und erhöht die Kongruenz des Klienten. Dieser Artikel beschreibt die
Methode des FOD sowie die gemeinsame Basis mit der Rogerianischen und der
Jungianischen Theorie. Klinische Beispiele illustrieren, wie experienzielle
Traumarbeit wirksam sein kann, um Inkongruenz aufzulösen, besonders wenn sie
ermutigt, den felt sense der schwierigsten Stellen des Traumes zu erleben. Die
Beispiele zeigen, dass FOD besonders wirksam für Klienten sein kann,
Inkongruenz zu entdecken, zu erleben und aufzulösen.

*Email: lae@telus.net

© 2013 World Association for Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counseling
 2 L. Ellis

Focusing experiencial orientado al trabajo con sueños como una puerta a

una congruencia mas profunda
Según Rogers, la incongruencia es una condición necesaria para el cambio de perso-
nalidad. Gendlin argumentó que este concepto implica experienciar y funciona sólo si
uno lo ve como un proceso dinámico. La incongruencia, la discrepancia entre la mirada
real y deseada de uno mismo, es frecuentemente representada dramáticamente en
sueños. Los terapeutas pueden beneficiarse de claros pasos que muestran cómo trabajar
con este fenómeno en la práctica. El método de trabajo con los sueños desde el
enfoque experiencial orientado al Focusing de Gendlin ofrece a los terapeutas una
forma de permitir a sus clientes a experienciar directamente lo que es rechazado.
Experienciar la sensación sentida de aspectos divididos del self conduce a su
integración y aumenta la congruencia dentro del consultante. Este artículo describe
el método FOD incluyendo su terreno común con la teoría tanto Rogeriana como
Jungiana. Ejemplos clínicos ilustran cómo el trabajo experiencial con los sueños puede
ser eficaz para resolver la incongruencia, particularmente cuando el soñador es invitado
a explorar su sensación sentida de las partes más difíciles del sueño. Los ejemplos
muestran que este método puede ser particularmente eficaz permitiendo a los con-
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sultantes descubrir, experienciar y resolver la incongruencia.

Le travail avec les rêves, Orientation Focusing Expérientiel, en tant que

portail à une congruence approfondie
Selon Rogers, l’incongruence est une condition nécessaire au changement de la
personnalité. Gendlin argumente que ce concept implique l’expériencing et qu’il
n’est valable que s’il est conçu comme un processus dynamique. L’incongruence, le
désaccord entre l’image réelle et l’image désirée de soi, est souvent représentée de
manière dramatique dans les rêves. Les cliniciens peuvent tirer bénéfice d’étapes
claires qui décrivent la manière de travailler avec ce phénomène dans leur pratique.
Les méthodes du travail expérientiel de l’orientation focusing sur les rêves (OFR) de
Gendlin, propose aux cliniciens une manière de permettre à leurs clients de faire
directement l’expérience de ce qui est nié. Le fait de faire l’expérience du sens corporel
des aspects clivés du self permet leur intégration, et augmente la congruence interne du
client. Cet article décrit la méthode de l’OFR, y compris ce qu’elle partage avec la
théorie à la fois de Rogers et de Jung. Des exemples cliniques illustrent la manière dont
le travail avec le rêve peut être efficace pour résoudre l’incongruence, particulièrement
quand le rêveur est invité à explorer son sens corporel en lien avec les endroits les plus
difficile. Les exemples démontrent que l’OFR peut être particulièrement efficace pour
permettre aux clients de faire la découverte d’expérience et de résoudre l’incongruence.

より深い一致への門戸としての体験的フォーカシング指向夢ワーク
Rogersによると、不一致は人格変化に必要な条件である。Gendlinは、この概
念は、ダイナミックなプロセスとしてみる場合のみ、体験する事や作用を意
味している概念として主張した。不一致（自分の実際と望ましい見方との間
の相違）は、夢においてしばしば劇的に叙述される。臨床医は実践におい
て、この現象をどのように取り扱うかを示す明確なステップから利益をえ
る。Gendlinの体験的フォーカシング指向夢ワーク(FOD)メソッドは、否定さ
れる事をクライアントに直接経験させるための方法を臨床医に提供する。自
己の身体的フェルト体験のスプリットオフの側面は、統合を導き、クライア
ントの一致を促進する。本論文は、FOD（ロジャーズ理論とユング理論の両方
に基盤を置く）のメソッドを記載する。臨床例は、特に夢の最も難所の身体
的フィルとセンスを調査ように導かれたとき、どのように体験的夢ワークが
不一致を解決する事に有効であることを示す。例は、FODがクライアント が
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 3

不一致 を発見し、経験し、解決する のを可能にする ことで 特に 効果的で あ

ることをしめしている。

Introduction
For Rogers (1957), incongruence is a necessary condition of personality change because
without it, he said there would be no motivation to engage in psychotherapy because there
is no gap between desired and actual conditions. Rogers (1957, p. 97) described incon-
gruence as “a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self
picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience”. He stated that integration
of this discrepancy is a key function of congruencing.
Many others have identified the phenomenon of “incongruence,” although they have
called it by different names. Jung (1948a) was one of the first major theorists to deeply
explore this terrain; he called the disavowed material the “shadow” and split-off aspects of
the personality “complexes.” He devised a method he called “active imagination” (Jung,
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1935) to help clients become aware of and integrate their complexes into a more balanced
whole. This method could be seen as the first experiential, client-driven psychotherapy,
inviting deep inner exploration of dreams and fantasy material. In his essay on the
relationship between ego and unconscious, Jung said of the unconscious processes
brought up through active imagination, “We can try our hand at interpreting these
fantasies if we like… but it is of vital importance that [the client] experience them to
the full” [emphasis added] (Jung, 1928, p. 213).
Experiencing is one of the key aspects of Gendlin’s (1996) method of psychotherapy,
an ingredient Gendlin (1959) felt was implied but not stated in Rogers’ description of
incongruence. This paper will explore the common ground in the different but not
incompatible theoretical approaches of Rogers, Gendlin and Jung with respect to the
notion of incongruence and how to work with it in pyschotherapy. The method of
focusing-oriented dream work (FOD) will be briefly explained, and several clinical
examples will be used to show how this method can be a particularly effective way for
therapists to help a client identify, experience and resolve incongruence.
Jungian theory informs Gendlin’s dream work method as well as the notion of
incongruence. Dreams often contain representations of disavowed “shadow” aspects of
the self which Jung (1948b) suggests are attempts from the unconscious to compensate for
a conscious position that is out of balance with the totality of the person. This sounds very
like the Rogerian notion that incongruence results from a disavowal of aspects of the
person that do not match their ideal self-concept. Jung, however, did not develop a
systematic method for working with dreams that clinicians could easily follow. This
author suggests that the clear, simple instructions Gendlin provides for FOD are compa-
tible with both Jung’s and Rogers’ theories, and provide a practical method for assisting
clients to move toward greater congruence.
Focusing-oriented therapy is a gentle way to promote acceptance within the client of
all aspects of their dreams (and themselves). FOD effectively brings the idealized self-
concept and actual behavior together to form something new. (This bringing together of
opposites to form a third thing that transcends both is similar to Jung’s idea of the
transcendent function, which is discussed later.) When clients experientially integrate
aspects of the dream that at first feel foreign to them, they must change in some way,
either by revising idealized expectations of themselves, or by seeing their “distortions in
symbolization” (Rogers, 1957) clearly enough that there is inherent movement forward.
 4 L. Ellis

Rogers’ “incongruence” and Gendlin’s “experiencing”

Incongruence is the only one of Rogers’ (1957, p. 95) six “necessary and sufficient
conditions of therapeutic personality change” that rests wholly with the client. In his
summary of the conditions, Rogers (1957, p. 96) stated that client incongruence is
characterized by the client “being vulnerable or anxious”. This is misleading without
Rogers’ full explanation. “Vulnerability” refers specifically to the possibility that the
client could experience something that suddenly reveals their incongruence, bringing
them face to face with a disavowed aspect of themselves. “Anxiety” is specifically the
unease clients feel when they are dimly aware that their actual experience and self-concept
do not match. Rogers provides the example of a mother who gets sick whenever her only
son talks of leaving home. She cannot consciously conceive of herself as a bad or
controlling mother, but illness is consistent with her concept of herself so the symbolic
representation of her desire to keep her son at home is distorted and becomes illness.
Gendlin (1959, p. 4) suggested a revision of Rogers’ (1957) concept of congruence in terms
of experiencing because the theory “is formulated in static terms while it implies a dynamic
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process. I call this dynamic process ‘experiencing’”. Gendlin (1959, p. 18) offers several
objections to Rogers’ conceptualization of the “optimally adjusted” or “congruent” person as
one who is aware of the contents of all the experiences of his/her organism. According to
Gendlin, such a person would be “impulse-ridden and dangerous” unless one considers that:

(1) One moment’s subjective experiencing implicitly contains very many (“all”) past
experiences. It functions to interpret the present. (2) As part of one process, all experiences
are integrated with and modified by all others. Thus “congruent” awareness is not aware-
ness of some one feeling such as hatred, or some one impulse, such as to kill. It is an
awareness of a subjective referent (or feeling) which is the modified integration of all
experience. The optimally adjusted individual experiences his hatred together with his love
(Gendlin, 1959, p. 20).

In other words, the congruent person is integrated, or in Jungian terms, has resolved the
tension of the opposites. Gendlin (1959) suggested that many of the then-current objections to
Rogerian theory arose because the concept of congruence was defined without the implied
function of experiencing. Rogers suggested that congruence was the ability to explicitly
symbolize all experience. Gendlin countered that “all experiences cannot be explicitly
symbolized in awareness simultaneously… congruence implies an implicit awareness in
which very many experiences function in any one moment” (Gendlin, 1959, p. 16). Based
on his theories of experiencing (Gendlin, 1962) and process (Gendlin, 1997), Gendlin (1978/
2007, 1996) developed his own therapeutic method, focusing-oriented psychotherapy.
Focusing also emerged from a comprehensive series of studies over 15 years analyzing
thousands of recorded sessions. Gendlin and colleagues found that the key to successful
therapy (using several outcome measures) was not the modality or the therapist variables, but
“what the successful patients do inside themselves” (Gendlin, 1978/2007, p. 4).
From 1958 to 1963, Rogers and Gendlin undertook a massive five-year collaborative
study known as the “Wisconsin project’. The participants were schizophrenic. The
researchers wanted to show, among other things, that their method could be universally
applied. Rogers and Truax (1967), who had hoped to show that his therapist conditions of
empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard were key elements to therapeutic
success, was disappointed with the results (Purton, 2004). In fact, the studies showed that
it was a client variable, the level of experiencing they began with, that was the key active
ingredient. It was clear that Rogers’ theory needed revision in light of these findings. But
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 5

from there, he changed his focus to applying his basic ideas to group therapy (Purton,
2004). Gendlin (1978/2007), however, saw this client variable as an opportunity. It was
his curiosity about whether and how such a skill could be taught that eventually led him to
develop the basic steps of focusing. This paper examines one small aspect of Gendlin’s
method: how to work with incongruence in the client using FOD.

Jung and the “transcendent function”

Any discussion of the integration of unconscious contents must begin with Jung. He (and
Freud) was the first to deeply explore the idea of resolving incongruence (or making the
unconscious conscious) as a major goal of psychotherapy. Jung’s theory, although not
typically a part of person-centered philosophy, is included here because many of
Gendlin’s (1986, 1992) FOD methods are based on Jungian theory. Specifically, Jung’s
(1916) practice of active imagination was aimed at enabling one to come to terms with the
unconscious by experiencing and integrating the energy contained in what he called
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“complexes.”
In his review of complex theory, Jung (1948a, p. 96) described complexes as “feeling-
toned” clusters of life experiences with similar, usually negative, emotional contents. The
more developed the complex, the more autonomously it functions (Jacobi, 1959; Jung,
1948a). Jung (1948a, p. 96) said it was common knowledge that “people have complexes.
What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can
have us.” In other words, we can be driven by these unconscious constellations of life
experience without being aware of it, and do or say things that are not compatible with our
conscious values. Jung (1948a, p. 101) wrote that a complex is “incompatible with the
habitual attitude of ego consciousness”. This view echoes the Rogerian notion of incon-
gruence as arising from incompatible notions of one’s self-concept. Jung (1948a, p. 101)
also stated that the complex is “the architect of dreams and symptoms”. Thus, the dream is
an important avenue to access incongruences that are far from explicit awareness.
Jung’s complex theory evolved from his work with Freud on the use of hypnosis and
association to reveal unconscious contents. However Jung stopped using hypnosis after a
short period because he felt it was too directive and vulnerable to transference dynamics
(Cwik, 1982/1997). Instead, Jung began to actively engage in his inner fantasies, dream
images, and emotions. He encountered many inner figures, and was “deeply impressed by
their apparent autonomy” (Cwik, 1982/1997, p. 141). These complexes or sub-personal-
ities influenced him and his theories for the rest of his life. Specifically, the products of his
own active imagination became “the cornerstone for his understanding of the nature of the
unconscious” (Cwik, 1982/1997, p. 141).
Jung believed that most emotional dysfunction was due to a one-sided “over-valuing
of the conscious ego viewpoint. As a natural compensation to such a one-sided position,
an equally strong counter-position automatically forms in the unconscious” (Chodorow,
1997, p. 4). This is a complex, and through actively engaging with it, Jung thought one
invoked the transcendent function, “an inborn dynamic process that unites opposite
positions within the psyche” (Chodorow, 1997, p. 4). Within the psyche, the transcendent
function draws on the polarized energies “resulting in a new symbolic position which
contains both perspectives. ‘Either/or’ choices become ‘both/and’ but in a new and
unexpected way” (Chodorow, 1997, p. 4).
Delving more deeply into Jungian theory is beyond the scope of this paper. It is
important, however, to acknowledge Jung’s enormous contribution to theory and methods
of integrating the unconscious. He believed that much of what emerges from the implicit
 6 L. Ellis

realm is compensatory in some way (or complementary) to the consciously-held position.

Here I have used the terms “unconscious” and “implicit” interchangeably. However
Gendlin (2012b) prefers the term “implicit” because it brings the sense that something
is implied, not wholly unknown, that also carries a sense of forward motion.
Jung, Rogers and Gendlin all suggest, in different language, that the sense of incon-
gruence and the move toward congruence is a dynamic, ongoing process. The two poles are
a matched pair that work together. Jung describes the transcendent function as a resolution
of the inherent tension of opposites: “The confrontation of the two positions generates a
tension charged with energy and creates a living, third thing… a living birth that leads to a
new level of being, a new situation” (Jung, 1958, p. 90). Although Gendlin’s (2007)
language is very different, this same dynamic notion can be found in his philosophy of
the implicit and the notion that no lived situation just is, it always “is-and-implies” forward.

Focusing-oriented dream work (FOD)

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Since writing his book, Let your body interpret your dreams (Gendlin, 1986), Gendlin has
refined the practice of working with dreams. The method presented here will incorporate
Gendlin’s (1992, 2012a, 2012c) current thinking. Gendlin’s approach to dreams is body-
and person-centered and relatively simple to use, especially compared with the detailed
analytic approaches of Freud and Jung. Gendlin’s approach invites those working with
dreams to pose a series of questions for the dreamer to ask of their dreams while attending
to their body’s response or “felt sense.” The suggested questions are mainly drawn from
Jung and Freud (Gendlin, 2012c), but do not rely on any specific theory of dream
interpretation to work. In fact, Gendlin (1986) says it is not the therapist’s interpretation,
nor any theory that is important, but the dreamer’s “felt sense” (Gendlin, 1978/2007, p.
11; 1996, p. 19) that is critical to interpreting the dream. “The interpretation comes inside
the dreamer or not at all… only the dreamer’s body can interpret the dream” (Gendlin,
1996, pp. 24–25).
The focusing-oriented approach to working with dreams assumes it is the client’s
“self-organizing wisdom” (Bohart & Tallman, 2010) that facilitates change. However
Bohart and Tallman (2010, p. 92) suggest that experiential therapists, including focus-
ing-oriented therapists, “hold this assumption a little less radically than do classical
person-centered therapists. Although they do ‘process-guiding’, they still do not see
themselves as having the answers for clients.” In focusing-oriented therapy, there is the
assumption that the client is the best guide to his/her own process. However, it is not the
client’s conscious, cognitive and readily available thoughts that are the source of one’s
“self-organizing wisdom.” In fact, the client’s everyday consciousness may be incongru-
ent with what is held in a person’s implicit store of knowledge. Therefore, the process of
psychotherapy ideally brings about integration of the two by making the client aware of,
and more friendly towards, what is implicit.
The process instructions in focusing-oriented therapy (Gendlin, 1978/2007; 1996) are
aimed at guiding the client to find and engage with their felt sense, which is a doorway to
the implicit. Once the client has learned how to do that, the therapy process then becomes
more person-centered in the classic sense. However, the direction of the therapy now
comes from the bodily-felt sense, which has access to the implicit. According to Gendlin
(2012b), the felt sense brings more about the person and their situations than what is
available to everyday awareness. As Gendlin (2012c) states, “A whole field of information
is implicit in that nameless bodily quality. Very strikingly, what one answers from within
the body can be utterly different from what one said before.”
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 7

Gendlin’s (1986, 1992) approach to dreams involves the sensitive, selective use of 16
possible questions, each of which can lead to many more avenues of exploration. What is
important in this method, first and foremost, is not the specific questions one asks but how
one asks the questions. If the dreamer’s immediate answer to a question about their dream
is that they don’t know, Gendlin (2012c) suggests the therapist clarify by adding, “We
aren’t really asking you. The question is for you to take down and ask your body. Let the
feel of that place come again. Then wait and see what the question brings down there.”
The author has found that this process takes time, patience and an attitude that conveys
deep respect for the dreamer’s inner space.
Dream work should be enjoyable and exciting. “Be in relation to your dreams, not just
this one, and make it a good, loving relationship” (Gendlin, 1996, p. 28). Leijssen (2004)
said that in dream work, there are two “clients,” the actual client and the dream. “The
therapist helps the person (the first client) to take the position of an interested observer
and to listen to the dream (the second client) with an open and empathic attitude”
(Leijssen, 2004, p. 145). This is supported by research that suggests that clients with
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positive attitudes toward their dreams are more likely to benefit from working with them,
and from the therapy in general (Hill et al., 2001; Zack & Hill, 1998).
Gendlin’s (1986) 16 basic questions can be grouped into categories. There are ques-
tions that invite association, such as asking what comes in response to the dream, what
feeling, or what from the previous day feels related. The dramatic elements such as place,
plot and characters can offer a perspective that places the dream in the dreamer’s life.
Characters can be worked with as parts of the dreamer, or by inviting the dreamer into the
felt sense of being that dream character, or by dreaming the dream onward. Decoding
methods include exploring symbols, body analogies and places in the dream that are
counter to reality. Finally, dreams can be explored with respect to childhood, personal,
sexual or spiritual development (see Table 1).

Table 1. Gendlin’s Summary of Dream Questions

The Questions (Gendlin, 1986)

Associations, three ways

1. What comes to you?
2. Feeling?
3. Yesterday?
Three elements of any drama
4. Place?
5. Story?
6. Characters?
Work with characters, three ways
7. What part of you?
8. How would you be that person?
9. Can the dream continue?
Three decoding ways
10. Symbols?
11. Body analogy?
12. Counterfactual?
Four dimensions of development
13. Childhood?
14. Personal growth?
15. Sexuality?
16. Spirituality?
 8 L. Ellis

Gendlin (1992, 2012a) has recently developed a more systematic approach to dream
work than is presented in his book. He now suggests that one begin with associations to
the dream, then explore the dream setting, then look for “help” in the dream and follow up
with a selective use of the questions. Examples of “help” include animals, children, or
anything unique, beautiful or positive in the dream. Gendlin (1992) suggests that con-
necting with the felt sense of the positive energy present in every dream enables the
dreamer to process the issue in a new way. Gendlin says getting “help” allows the dreamer
to open more easily to what the dream is offering. He believes that a dream always
contains something the dreamer does not already know, something that moves the dreamer
in a life-affirming direction.
In revising his ideas about dream work, Gendlin (1992) not only emphasized the
notion of finding “help” but also simplified the notion of “bias control.” He replaced what
he considered too complicated in his initial formulation with the simple suggestion that
one look for where there is any kind of disagreement between the dreamer and the dream.
When these differences are pursued in a bodily-felt way, they often lead to a step that is
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opposite to the dreamer’s usual attitude. “Bias control is to look for a step from the
direction I would normally avoid altogether. I would never say that this should always be
preferred to other alternative ways, only that one needs something like that, or people
never open to the ‘negative’ direction” (E. T. Gendlin, personal communication, March
18, 2012). And it is precisely the direction one tends to avoid that often leads to some-
thing new: growth, integration, congruence and expansion of what the dreamer might
consider possible for or about themselves. It does not mean we become our opposite, but
rather expand in some new way. Gendlin (1986, p. 61) said, “A new growth direction is
often the opposite of what we value most. This doesn’t mean we change our values to the
opposite, not at all. We merely expand them a little.”
Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit suggests that when we are following our dreams
and the felt sense they bring, the direction in which we are expanding is already within us.
We are getting to know ourselves better, particularly the unknown side of ourselves that
Jung (1948) would call the “shadow.” In our waking, “normal” state of consciousness, we
are privy only to a part of the belief system that drives us, the things we consciously tell
ourselves. However, the most powerful emotional beliefs, often formed before we had
words for them, also drive our moods and behaviors. Yet we are not aware of their
content, only of the often frustrating, mysterious outcomes that can include anxiety,
addiction and other problematic symptoms (Schore, 2003). How does one shed light on
implicit knowledge when its roots are both outside of our day-to-day awareness and so
much a part of oneself (or our clients) as to feel objectively real? To state the question in
Rogerian terms, how does one resolve the internal incongruence that is often dramatically
depicted in dreams? Gendlin suggests that the knowledge of how to integrate the incon-
gruent parts of ourselves is in our bodies and accessible to us if we attend to the felt sense
of the whole of it in a focusing-oriented way. The way forward may not be something we
can articulate at first, but it is implicit, meaning it is there already, all the time (Gendlin,
2012b).
It can be very difficult to step outside of one’s usual, conscious attitude. Dream work
can ease the client into an experience of the implicit by effectively sneaking past the
guardian at the gate so that the deeper truth emerges, often in unexpected ways (Ecker &
Hulley, 1996). Dreams can facilitate work with disturbing issues by providing what feels
like a safer distance from traumatic or dystonic material (Cohen, 1999). And once the
truth of the situation has been experienced in the body, it is unlikely that the dreamer can
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 9

shift back to their former attitude because something new has entered and been fully felt.
It would be like trying to forget something deeply meaningful that you already know.
Dream work is effective because “unconscious positions often appear in dreams in
personified or objectified form…. [and they] have an intrinsic desire or need to become
conscious” (Ecker & Hulley, 1996, p. 178). In dream work, these figures often operate
with what feels to be a high degree of autonomy because they have a “life” outside of the
conscious ego-directed world-view that we habitually hold. Dream work stretches the
dreamer. It invites one to experience what at first may seem to be a foreign aspect of
oneself, or, in Rogerian terms, an incongruence in need of integration.
Gendlin’s approach to the dream has the effect of moving the dreamer beyond habitual
patterns, but it also brings something new: a deliberate focus on the bodily-felt sense of
the dream. In focusing, the felt sense is the key to bringing about a shift. The theory
behind this approach suggests that dreams are a part of the body’s intrinsic forward-
moving process, comparable to Rogers’ (1959) “self-actualizing tendency”. According to
Gendlin (2012a), a dream is alive. It is a record from the night of some unfinished
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process. When one taps into this through focusing, there are very many possibilities
about where it can lead. However, one has missed the point unless the dream brings
something new, something that leads to increased congruence within the dreamer.

Clinical examples
The following are examples from the author’s clinical practice that use a focusing-oriented
approach to dream work, and result in reduction of incongruence in the client. All of the
following clients have generously agreed to the use of their dream material. Identifying
features have been altered, including first names. These case studies are presented in order
of increasing levels of incongruence between the dreamer and the dream material to give
clinicians a sense of how to work with increasingly dystonic material.

Claire’s dream: “missing the window”

“Claire” was in weekly therapy for almost two years. She was initially referred for PTSD
following an assault, and she also suffered from depression and volatile mood. All of her
symptoms, particularly the trauma symptoms, had improved markedly since the beginning
of focusing-oriented therapy. Claire had a dream that she was pregnant with John’s baby.
At one of the most poignant parts of the dream, she recalled that she was stroking John’s
hair, and lifted up her shirt to show him her growing belly, which he took gently in his
hands. She said, “The air was thick with love.” This enveloping sense of warmth and
love, as well as the infant in her belly, are both examples of “help” from the dream, so I
suggested that Claire bask in that good feeling as she proceeded with the dream work.
When asked for associations to the dream, Claire told me that John was a friend who lived
with a group of young men whom she felt were stuck in perpetual adolescence. She worried
about them “missing a window” in their life, not moving forward to the next stage of
development until it was too late. She also recalled how when she was visiting them recently,
one of the friends was playing with John’s hair. She noticed what a warm sense of family that
gave her, so different from her own family-of-origin experience. As Claire spoke about her
fear that John would not grow up “in time” I offered a focusing-oriented suggestion that she
immerse herself into the felt sense of that. After allowing time for her to experience this aspect
of the dream, I suggested she ask the felt sense how it might be related to her own life. There
was a long silence, and then a dawning of new awareness. This is characteristic of how
 10 L. Ellis

forward movement happens in focusing-oriented therapy: it happens within the client and it
brings about a tangible “felt shift” (Gendlin, 1984) in the body.
When Claire first told the dream, John seemed very opposite for her. She felt more
emotionally mature than him, having left adolescent behaviors behind. But she was very
worried about him. This provided the link that brought the dream back to herself, giving
her an experience in her own body of “missing the window.” Focusing brought her the
experiential realization that this felt sense related to her and her own reluctance to move
on to the next stage of life – not from adolescence to adulthood, but from adulthood to a
committed relationship and possible parenthood. Merely asking her directly about how
she felt about having a baby did not evoke this inner conflict. In fact, in the beginning of
the session, she was clear that she had no desire to be a mother. But after she allowed her
body to interpret the dream, she said she knew that she would have to keep a more open
mind. Interestingly, it was not the dream experience of being pregnant and happy about it
that brought about the shift – it was her seemingly-unrelated worry about John that
provided the doorway in to a more internally-congruent feeling about possible partnership
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and parenthood. With remarkable economy, the dream also brought Claire in touch with
her desire for warm family life. This was something she did not experience with her
family of origin, and was possibly part of the reason for her historic reluctance to entertain
the idea of starting a family of her own.

Chris’ dream: forward motion from unlikely places

Chris’s dream illustrates how new information and increased congruence can come from the
most unlikely place in the dream. Chris came to therapy suffering from unbearable anxiety,
but this lifted after about 6 months of weekly sessions of FOD. Chris was a very motivated,
self-directed client, and an active participant in the process of moving forward, both within
and outside of our sessions. Chris dreamt he was walking on a beach, and there, sitting in a
circle, was his cousin, smoking a crack pipe. Chris’ conscious position about this was that
smoking crack was something he would never do, and he had a strong negative judgment
about his cousin. Chris was adept in imaginal work, so I asked him to embody his cousin, to
slip into the character smoking the pipe and feel into what that was like.
Jungian practitioner of embodied dream work Bosnak (1996, p. 53) would call this
making a “transit” into the dream object. This intervention is an example of Gendlin’s
(1986) question that suggests the dreamer be the dream character. It also illustrates
Gendlin’s (1986, p. 71) “bias control”, a deliberate move toward the opposite of one’s
usual attitude. For this client, the experience of slipping into the felt sense of the drug user
was foreign and unpleasant at first. But then he got a sense of the attraction to the pipe,
and could feel in his body the essence of addiction. He had the startling realization in that
moment that the felt sense of addiction was familiar, and that he was operating in an
addictive way with the women in his life. This led to feelings of shame and then to a deep
desire to change, a desire he followed through with, transforming many aspects of himself
in the process.

Tracy’s dream: integrating the inner critic

A final clinical example of how dream work can resolve deep inner incongruence involves
“Tracy,” a 29-year-old business professional who had been engaged in a struggle with
anxiety, depression and an eating disorder since her teens. This example is provided to
show how caution may be required in this work. It introduces how to work with the inner
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 11

critic (Gendlin, 1978/2007, p. 112), an internal, negative voice, often personified by

aspects of an authority or parental figure. The critic often makes an appearance when
clients turn their attention inward. It is the author’s experience that in clients with
depression, this inner critical voice can become so repetitive and intrusive that it is not
only a symptom but also can perpetuate and deepen the depression. This client had a
powerful inner critical voice that became even stronger during her depressive episodes.
In Tracy’s dream, she is living in a house on a hill with a group of friends, and she is
regularly possessed by great evil that attacks and wants to kill her friends. She is amazed
they still want her around. In her life, Tracy felt this way. This engaging woman felt she
always had to be laughing and friendly, and that to show the darker side of herself would
lead to rejection. She felt these same feelings growing up with an adopted sibling. She
was not adopted, and her parents worked too hard to ensure the adopted sibling felt
equally loved, many times making Tracy feel left out. However, rather than analyze that,
we used an experiential focusing approach.
After some initial steps into the dream, I invited Tracy to spend more time with the
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part of the dream that brought the most powerful felt sense. This was, of course, the evil
figure. Although this client was adept at body-oriented dream work, and could easily slip
into the essence of any dream character, I asked her not to embody the evil-spirited part
that wanted to kill her friends. Instead, I suggested she personify it outside of herself and
have a conversation with it. While doing this, she was overcome with terror, and we
needed to back away a little. This was strong feedback from the dream, so I encouraged
open curiosity as we cautiously moved forward into the dreaming experience. The “evil”
figure slowly transformed into a character that Tracy began to see as an adolescent girl,
very slight, very mean, “intent on bringing me down.” It was her inner critic and it was
powerful. It said Tracy needed her, and we discussed why that might be, shifting briefly
out of the process for a break from the intensity. Her fear softened, and the critic said she
was there to protect her.
By the end of the session Tracy said she did not want the critic gone, but to be a
support. She named her and touched into with what she liked about her edgy, tough, no-
nonsense approach to the world. Tracy admitted that she could actually use more of that
“tough-chick” energy as she was often “too nice” and too worried about what other people
might think. At this point, the inner critic had transformed to the point where it felt like an
ally, one that she could safely embody when she needed to stand up for herself. The
internal terror she started with was transformed completely.
This session presented a dream character that felt very “other” and terrifying, that of
being possessed by an evil force intent on killing. The dream work began to shift the
character into conscious awareness and into a personified object the client could then
begin to see as an aspect of herself. Tracy’s conscious position and the highly incongruent
character moved toward each other in this session. As the evil figure became more
approachable and Tracy’s comfort level increased, she was able to embody the critic,
immersing herself in that character. This was a lot to accomplish in a session, and not
every client could move so much so fast. In fact Gendlin (1978/2007, p. 113) suggests that
one not engage with the inner critic at all while focusing but to “push it out of the way
when it interrupts.” However, Diamond and Spark Jones (2004, p. 105), experts in the
process work approach to dreams, suggest that the critic can also bring useful information
and be an ally that “contains energy and power that is needed by the client.” In this
session, it seemed like a bad idea to invite the client to role-play the evil dream figure.
However, when it was engaged and transformed into a tough adolescent, the figure
embodied qualities that were helpful to Tracy.
 12 L. Ellis

Much has been written about the inner critic, or what Freud called the “superego” and
this suggests its universal nature. Gendlin (1996) offers a useful distinction about when to
engage with the critic and when to bypass it rather than engage in what could be an
unhelpful, or even wounding process for the client. He suggests we attend to the “manner
of experiencing” (Gendlin, 1996, p. 249) and determine whether it feels like it is coming
at the client or coming from the client. He discussed a similar difference with respect to
role-play of dream figures. “The dream figure is scary when it comes at the dreamer, but
the energy feels good when it moves out from the dreamer” (Gendlin, 1996, p. 250). This
is a useful distinction, and as the session above demonstrates, the direction of the energy
can shift, even within a single session.
In this session, the dream figure changed three times: first, it was an evil force that the
client felt inside herself in a dream, a force that wanted to kill her friends and took her
over against her will. Then, we externalized and personified it and it changed into a tough
adolescent girl who was mean and spiteful. Finally, it became an embodied inner protector
encouraging assertiveness in the client. These avenues into the dream are part of Jung’s
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process of active imagination, and they also flow naturally from some of the questions
Gendlin suggests one ask of a dream. Although the terminology differs in these
approaches, and the specific focus may be slightly different, in practice, the methods
may blend and look very similar. This suggests that therapeutic approaches to the dream
reviewed in this paper share common ground. All evoke experiencing as a way to shed
light on disavowed, or incongruent aspects of the personality. In focusing-oriented dream
work, this experiencing is explicitly felt in the body. This felt experiencing of the process
of integration is what Gendlin (1959) has suggested was implied, but not explicitly stated,
in Rogers’ notion of the therapeutic movement towards congruence.

Conclusion
In the three clinical examples presented, the dreams dramatically highlight incongruence in
the clients by referring to characters or experiences that at first seem very foreign and
adverse to their consciously-held view of themselves. And in all three cases, embodying the
felt sense of the most foreign aspect was the key to first experiencing the “other” and then to
realizing that this feeling was, in fact, a disavowed part of themselves. Once the dreamers
felt the “foreign” sense in their bodies, they could no longer keep their incongruent positions
separate and out of awareness. Instead they found themselves rearranging their inner sense
of themselves to accommodate something new. In each instance, this was not a case of
either/or but more of an both/and, an integration of opposing forces. Jung (1916) would call
this the “transcendent function”; Gendlin might call it a living forward of the unfinished
business of the dream; Rogers might say it is an integration leading toward congruence.
Although the language of the theories presented here for the concept and resolution of
“incongruence” differs, I hope to have shown that the basic idea is the same. An
experiential sense of the opposing sides is the key to bringing them closer together,
allowing for conscious integration of what has previously been disavowed, and allowing
something new to emerge. Dream work can facilitate this process in many ways, leading
to greater congruence within the dreamer, Rogers’ stated goal of any psychotherapeutic
process. These clinical examples illustrate that dream work can be particularly effective at
achieving this goal if it is focused on following the client’s bodily-felt sense of the dream
where it leads, even (especially) if it appears to be heading in the opposite of the desired
direction.
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 13

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