Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (Spring 2026)

25 hours online over 10 evenings

6.00 to 8.30 pm on Mondays:

2 Feb, 16 Feb, 2 Mar, 16 Mar, 30 Mar, 13 Apr, 27 Apr, 11 May, 18 May, 1 Jun

Waking Dreams

This popular online course is an opportunity to gain confidence in the principles and skills needed to release imaginative potential – not just as ‘pictures inside the mind’ but also in the activity of images within normal everyday life, work and relationships.

Allan is a psychotherapist with a long-term research interest in image-based approaches to healing, creativity and transformation – which came to fruition in his 2021 book, ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy & Everyday Life’

The course is a chance to share on-going developments in Allan’s work, watch him do live demonstrations with participants, and get his support during practicums to hone your imaginative perception and sensitivity.

Spread across ten evening sessions fortnightly the format gives the time needed to digest and integrate the material into your life and work.

If you are interested in discovering a richer, story-filled and enchanted existence – or a therapist wanting to help others do so – then this might be the course you have been waiting for.

No expert understanding is required – as the material is grounded in examples and exercises that include and also go beyond a conventional therapeutic context.

Reviews for Allan’s book ‘Waking Dreams’

“This book strives to recover an amazing skill that not only wanes in adulthood, but has also become lost in practice.” (New Psychotherapist)

“As well as being a guide to image-based client work the author invites us to join him on a journey that could lead to a different way of thinking and being.” (Therapy Today)

“A direct and inspiring immersion in the practice of working with imagination…effectively challenges the assumption that imagination is merely ‘inner’.” (Robert M. Ellis, author ‘Red Book, Middle Way’)

Read the introduction and first chapter of ‘Waking Dreams’ here

What you’ll discover in this course:

Waking dream practice (also known as ‘active imagination’ and ‘guided imagery’) takes advantage of the creative and therapeutic imagination found in-between waking and dreaming – as sometimes happens spontaneously upon gradually waking from sleep when a dream continues to feel present alongside an awareness of lying-in bed.

The course develops the imaginal perception to better notice, and the skills needed to consciously explore, this waking dream experience – drawing upon significant developments in waking dream practice. In particular:

How the generic principles and skills of all image-based transformation and healing are revealed by attending not just to what we imagine, but also to the process of how we imagine in a waking dream.

How the creative activity of images in experiential psychotherapy work, the arts and normal everyday life can be approached as an ‘eyes-wide-open’ waking dream

Course aims and learning outcomes

• Have a broad understanding of imagination as present in all perceptions, actions and relationships.
• Have an appreciation of imagining as a healing and creative therapy in its own right.
• Have familiarity with a practical step-by-step ‘eyes-closed’ waking dream method.
• Be able to participate in everyday relationships with people and places, creative projects and generic therapeutic work as an ‘eyes-wide-open’ waking dream.
• Have a theoretical basis that validates the complexity of imaginative life.

Who is it for?

- Psychotherapists, Counsellors and Coaches

- Art, Drama and Family Constellations therapists

- Eco-therapists and anyone interested in an image-centric approach to ecopsychology

- Artistic creators (writers, storytellers, painters, directors, etc.)

- Artistic consumers (novel readers, movie watchers, art gallery goers, etc.)

- Leaders of change

The course is intended for therapists and also interested non-therapists - with examples and exercises that include and also go beyond a conventional therapeutic context. No expert understanding is required.

If you have any accessibility needs or special requirements that you need assistance with, please email Kajal at events@ptrust.org.uk.

What to expect

The online format using Zoom will be a mix of theoretical presentation, case studies, group discussion, practical demonstrations and small-group practicums to cultivate waking dream skills.

You will learn the theoretical basis of waking dream practice alongside a practical step-by-step method.

There will also be suggestions and e-mail support for an off-line project exploring your life, work and environment as a waking dream – which will build upon and also feed back into the online class learning.

The slideshow presentation used in each session will be distributed afterwards by e-mail. The evening sessions will be fortnightly and run between 6pm and 8.30pm GMT. A completion certificate will be used at the end of the course.

As an online event, a member of the team will be in touch with the Zoom link to log in closer to the workshop date.

**Please note some of our online events are not recorded due to audience participation**

Course sources

The course draws upon over fifteen years of research and teaching exploring the meeting place of transpersonal psychology, ecotherapy and Jungian image-based work. The genesis is a critical development of Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, especially in relation to: the post-Jungian psychotherapists James Hillman, Mary Watkins and Robert Bosnak; the ecopsychologists Theodor Roszak, Jerome Bernstein and Nick Totton; the work of David Abram; and the recent integration of psychotherapy with complexity theory and fractal geometry by Terry Marks-Tarlow and Robert M. Galatzer-Levy.

Course outline

The below modules are based upon the six skills-based chapters in the book, ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life by Allan Frater.

Read the introduction to ‘Waking Dreams’ here.

Module One: Entering

The course begins with a clarification of the quality of imaginal perception needed to enter a waking dream – both the ‘eyes-closed’ variety and the novel ‘eyes-wide-open’ application within generic psychotherapy and everyday life.

- The hypnagogic state in memory, present moment perceptions and future fantasies

- Fantasy versus imagining as a matter of degree

- Imagination as a synthesis of all the senses

- The three steps of entering

- Entry points: generic, bespoke and spontaneous

- Parallel imagery

Module Two: Exploring

Once established in a waking dream, this second module focuses upon the ‘what next’ question of how to interact with images.

- Habitual versus creative imagining

- The three steps of exploring

- “Novel Images” as triggers of creative possibility

- Exploring memories, future fantasies and transference dynamics (relationships)

- Pacing

Module Three: Dialoguing

How dialogue in a waking dream requires a subtle shift of attention from physical sounds to auditory images.

- Similarities and differences between imaginal dialogue and everyday speech

- Personification and animistic imagination

- The three steps of dialoguing

- The importance of everyday language and avoiding jargon

Module Four: Shapeshifting

How imagination allows for a shift of perspective beyond the limitations of habitual self-identity into the seeing, feeling and thinking of another waking dream character, person, object or place.

- The distinction between identity and experience

- The three steps of shapeshifting

- Shapeshifting and tree-hugging

- Shapeshifting and therapist countertransference

- Point-of-view (in Gestalt chair work and other image-based methods)

Module Five: Emerging

How the often irregular and unexpected nature of imaginative change in waking dreams can be understood and approached using ecological metaphors and the notion of emergence in complexity theory

- The limitations of a mechanical theory of imaginative change

- Images as ecosystems

- Living and dead metaphors

- Complexity theory in waking dreams

- Aspects of emergence: synthesis, unpredictability and small changes

Module Six: Patterning

How by considering a waking dream as a template for a repeating fractal pattern imaginative potential can not only be maintained but also further realised within the activity of images in everyday life.

- Fractal Imagination

- Fractal process versus mechanical content

- The three steps of patterning

- Fractal pattern and entry-points to waking dreams

Ticket price

At the Trust we appreciate that each person has their own unique situation – including financial. We invite you to select the price point that feels like it represents a fair contribution for attending this event.

The options are: £295; £310, £335, £360, £395

If you are a current Psychosynthesis Trust student and finances are a barrier to attending this workshop, please contact Kajal at events@ptrust.org.uk

Trainer

Allan Frater was brought up near Edinburgh and now lives in North London, exploring the parks and water ways with his dog Milly. He is a psychotherapist in private practice and author of ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life.’ Since 2011 he has taught at the Psychosynthesis Trust, on the Foundation and Counselling Diploma courses as well as CPD events related to his research interests in imagination, ecopsychology and transpersonal psychotherapy.

Qualifications:-Diploma in Supervision with Soul (2013)-MA Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy (2011)-PGDip Psychosynthesis Counselling (2007)-MBACP(Accred)-UKCP(reg)

Find out more: wildimagination.uk | @wakingdreams20

**Please note: Unfortunately, our insurance does not cover participants residing in Canada and the US. This means applications from these countries take part at their own risk. If you have any questions, please contact events@ptrust.org.uk**