Dreams and Emotional Adaptation

by Robert Langs
Type: Hardcover

"Robert Langs continues his innovative legacy by extending his communicative approach to psychotherapy into a communicative dream therapy. … Langs has not only found a skillful way of translating and understanding the latent content of dreams, he also has found a way of understanding the manifest content of dreams … His prescribed protocol of treatment affords unusual self-authorization for patients to continue treatment on their own. This is a highly worthwhile book for all mental health professionals.
–James S. Grotstein, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine
Training and Supervising Analyst, Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute

This book, sweeping in its scope, demonstrates that dreams are components of the deep unknowable unconscious mind that is essential to human survival. Langs argues that communication is the uniquely human aspect of dreams. His argument incorporates classical Freudian psychoanalysis and modern information theory, neuroscience, anthropology, immunology, and neo-Darwinism. A communicated dream requires a listener. When the listener is a therapist, who can interpret and validate the deeply unconscious meanings, the vastly adaptive unconscious mind becomes more efficient. Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams was the dream book of this century. If Langs is correct, the book may become the “dream book” of the next. –James O. Raney, M.D.
Clinical Faculty, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle.

In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Robert Langs invites you into his world. With this invitation comes a new understanding of dreams and the insights they hold. The book offers an innovative method of attending to dreams effectively in psychotherapy, no matter what the therapist’s professional orientation or to what extent dreamwork is used.

Dr. Langs has designed this book as a practical guide to how to work with both the surface and the depths of dreams. Multileveled and multidimensional, dreams are arguably among the most profound – and most complex – communications. This discussion goes a long way toward clarifying fundamental modes of listening to and formulating patients’ material, as well as demonstrating ways to intervene, both of which will facilitate the therapeutic work of psychodynamic and cognitive psychotherapists alike.

A prolific contributor to the mental health literature, Dr. Langs’ ongoing exploration of the human psyche has led to stunning revelations throughout the years. With Dreams and Emotional Adaptation, he has turned a corner in his own investigation into the meanings and impact of dreamwork — proving himself once again to be an insightful, wholly enthusiastic student and a generous, altogether compelling teacher.