This workshop addresses understanding the dream and the dreaming process -- as a process which is ongoing, waking or sleeping, and involving the unconscious regions of the mind, in which recent or intense sensory and emotional experiences are integrated into potential meaning for the individual. In addition, it is intriguing to consider the dream as information carrier and problem solver. From Maxine's perspective there are many ways to view the dream and dreaming just as there are many ways to view the unconscious regions.  Maxine offers her current view, evolved over several decades, and is open to considering others' views in these discussions.  One approach not considered in these workshops is the neurobiological approach to the dream; not because it is not valuable, but just in order to focus to some extent the area of discourse.

In RL Maxine Walden is a physician and a psychoanalyst, studying the psyche for nearly 4 decades. She has been training students in the field for over 20 years, both within the university setting and among several psychoanalytic institutes in North American and Britain. At the heart of her interest as a psychoanalyst is the Unconscious, that vast area out of awareness which may be considered an ‘inner cosmos’ so influential in all areas of life and from which our dreams and our dreads arise. Her writings include a number of psychoanalytic topics, such as dreams and dreaming, the psychic forces for and against knowing and growth, the importance of emotional experience, and most recently that what we term as ‘evil' derives from our everyday humanity. After years of studying the classical writings in the field she has come to feel that one’s own unique self-reflective clinical experience is the best teacher in studying the psychic realms. She speaks from her own experience, suggesting that the dream can be not only the organizer of experience, and problem solver but also a messenger between the unconscious and conscious realms.