From the wings of night: dream work with people who have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

Nurses who work with seriously ill and dying patients are engaged in helping them live fully until they die. Most theories of death and dying deal with conscious activities only. Yet many people find relief form the fear and loneliness of life-threatening illness if given the opportunity to express their totality, meaning their unconscious as well as conscious processes. Working with the mind may not be enough. Attending to the unconscious through dream work can allow inner healing to occur, which can support that person as he or she moves into the unknown. The article describes the AIDS Dreamwork Project, the goals of which are to understand patients better and to help them better understand themselves, to help them live and die more consciously, and to discern patterns in their dreams that may be unique to people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Six themes have been identified in the dreams collected so far: wake-up dreams; reassurance dreams; dreams of opposition, separation, or coming together; transition dreams; transformation dreams; and spiritual or archetypal dreams.