A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy (2nd Edition)

Grounded in research.

Expanded for real-world clinical work.

Trusted by therapists worldwide, this updated edition includes new insights on nightmares, detailed case examples, and practical tools to bring dreamwork into your practice with depth, sensitivity and confidence.

Praise for A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy: Demystifying Dreamwork, Second Edition

"Leslie Ellis is in my view the world’s best clinician and writer in the area of dream and nightmare treatment. She is scholarly and has an in-depth knowledge of brain-body interaction, but writes very accessibly, with great examples of how dreams -- even the most horrific -- can take a client to a better waking life."

Steve Biddulph, best-selling author of Wild Creature Mind, Fully Human and 6 other titles

Now Available: Second Edition

Buy Now: Use Code 25ESA2 for 20% off

Hear from Dr. Leslie Ellis

What's New in the Second Edition

Entirely new chapter on nightmares and trauma
Updated clinical examples and case studies
New frameworks for experiential dreamwork
Expanded research and reference materials
Practical, easy-to-implement session tools

About the Author

Dr. Leslie Ellis, PhD, RCC

Dr. Leslie Ellis is an author, educator and internationally recognized expert in experiential and somatic approaches to psychotherapy. In her 25+ years in clinical practice, she specialized in working with dreams, nightmares, and trauma. She now teaches clinicians around the world how to bring dreamwork into their practice.

She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a past president of The International Focusing Institute, and received the Ernest Hartmann Award for her research on nightmares and trauma. Dr. Ellis continues to write, teach, and speak globally about embodied experiential dreamwork practices, nightmare treatment, focusing, depth psychology and other topics related to the cultivation of inner life.

“A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy is the perfect resource for clinicians wishing to incorporate dreamwork into their psychotherapy practice. Leslie Ellis offers a scholarly yet entertaining summary of the major contemporary approaches to dreams and outlines the key effective elements across these approaches. She illustrates all this with engrossing clinical anecdotes that give readers a solid idea of how to begin this work.”

Deirdre Barret
Author The Committe of Sleep

Faculty Harvard University

President of International Association for the Study of Dream

“In this important update to Leslie Ellis' clinical dream book, she offers some new information near and dear to my heart. She includes a fascinating section on the relationship to nightmares and the autonomic nervous system, making this book a major contribution to cutting edge trauma treatment. She offers a clear map to working with nightmares in a way that respects the lineage of somatically-informed trauma therapy. A must read for clinicians who work with dreams and trauma.”

Jan Winhall
Author of Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model

“Throughout this clear-sighted and fascinating book, Dr. Leslie Ellis showcases the remarkable potential of dreamwork as a catalyst for healing. Ellis demonstrates how to integrate dreamwork into clinical practice in creative and scientifically grounded ways, guiding therapists through dream embodiment to the visual arts, and discussing everything from neuroscience to virtual reality. A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy illuminates the path for therapists to explore clients’ dreams with deep respect for the experiential wisdom embedded in every dream. A must-read for all therapists who hope to guide their clients towards even greater self-knowledge and transformation.”

Dr. Clare Johnson
Author of The Art of Lucid Dreaming and Elixir of Sleep

Founder of DeepLucidDreaming.com

What's Inside?

A quick look at what each chapter covers—practical tools, research insights, and clinical applications.

Chapter 1: Why Work with Dreams?
- Dreams offer unfiltered access to core emotional concerns, bypassing defenses and revealing deeper truths about a client’s life. This chapter outlines how dreamwork can help regulate emotions, provide diagnostic insights, accelerate transformation, and even facilitate trauma healing. It’s an invitation to make dreams a trusted tool in therapy.
Chapter 2 – Bringing Dreamwork Into Practice
- Dreamwork starts with helping clients remember and share their dreams. This chapter offers practical strategies for supporting dream recall, recording, and exploration, alongside insights into how working with your own dreams can strengthen clinical intuition. It also highlights the vital role of sleep—and the impacts of widespread sleep deprivation.
Chapter 3: A Universal Dreamwork Method
- Is there a single, effective way to work with any dream? Drawing from a qualitative study of clinical methods, this chapter presents common factors that underpin modern dreamwork: experiential exploration, metaphor inquiry, setting analysis, and growth-oriented insights. A practical foundation for therapists of any orientation.
Chapter 4: The Science of Dreaming
- Clinicians don't need to be neuroscientists, but understanding dream science can sharpen clinical work. This chapter covers the history and latest research into the functions of dreaming, offering a science-based appreciation of dreams as vital tools for emotional processing, memory consolidation, and psychological growth.
Chapter 5: Understanding Dreams as Metaphor
- Dreams aren't puzzles to decode—they are embodied metaphors that express emotional truth. This chapter explains how to shift away from literal interpretations and instead engage dreams as rich metaphorical communications. Clinical examples illustrate how this perspective can open surprising therapeutic insights.
Chapter 6: Different Kinds of Dreams
- From nightmares and anxiety dreams to uplifting spiritual dreams, the type of dream profoundly shapes the therapeutic approach. This chapter surveys major dream classification systems and shows how recognizing dream types can help clinicians choose the most effective way to engage the material.
Chapter 7: Navigating the Dream Divide
- Modern dreamwork reveals a split: should dreams be connected to waking life—or honored as experiences in themselves? This chapter explores the philosophical and clinical divide, using a detailed focusing-oriented dream session to demonstrate a dream-centered (rather than self-centered) approach.
Chapter 8: Finding the Life Force in Dreams
- Inspired by Eugene Gendlin’s focusing work, this chapter introduces the idea that every dream carries a hidden “help” or life-forward energy. Clinicians can learn to locate and amplify these forces, helping clients feel more resourced and resilient—even when facing trauma or emotional challenge.
Chapter 9: Dreams, Visual Art, and Technology
- Dreams speak in images more naturally than in words. This chapter explores how sketching, painting, or digitally representing dreams can unlock deeper insights. It also considers emerging tools like virtual reality and AI for working creatively with dream material.
Chapter 10: Embodied Dreamwork Journeys
- Through a personal narrative of immersive embodied dreamwork, this chapter contrasts different experiential methods—including Robert Bosnak’s embodied imagination and focusing-oriented dreamwork. It invites readers to experience dreams as living, unfolding processes rather than fixed symbols.
Chapter 11: Working with Nightmares
- Nightmares can be terrifying—but when approached with care, they become powerful catalysts for healing. This chapter outlines nightmare rescripting methods and presents a detailed case study working with refugee trauma, demonstrating how nightmares can be transformed safely in therapy.
Chapter 12: Nightmares and Health
- Beyond emotional distress, nightmares are linked to physical health risks and suicide vulnerability. This chapter makes the case for routinely asking clients about their dreams and interpreting nightmare patterns as potential clinical warning signs that require sensitive, timely intervention.
Chapter 13: The Nightmare Relief Protocol
- This chapter introduces a five-step embodied protocol that combines emotional regulation with dream rescripting. Using real-world clinical examples, it shows how to move clients from fear and dysregulation toward a place of integration, hope, and nervous system stability.
Chapter 14: Working with Dreams in Groups
- Group dreamwork brings new dimensions to the process: mutual projection, resonance, and shared insight. This chapter reviews multiple group approaches—from Montague Ullman’s to dreamweaving—and provides practical guidance for facilitating safe, impactful dream groups.
Chapter 15: Big Dreams
- Some dreams change everything. Known as “big dreams,” they carry spiritual or life-defining messages that often stay vivid for decades. This chapter offers an extended clinical example showing how to work with these profound experiences in a grounded, respectful way.
Chapter 16: Dreamwork as a Catalyst for Change
- Dreams aren’t just therapeutic—they are engines of transformation. Drawing on neuroscience and memory reconsolidation research, this chapter weaves a model showing how dreams can support deep, lasting change when integrated skillfully into therapy.

EXCERPTS

From a new chapter on nightmares and health

"In recent years, our understanding of nightmares has evolved significantly, uncovering many more reasons for clinicians to pay attention when their clients experience disturbing dreams. They are widely known to be a symptom of post-traumatic stress, and are also linked to all forms of psychopathology. What is emerging is that they adversely affect physiological health as well... The upshot is that nightmares are clearly linked with serious health considerations – they can be both symptom and cause, as well as an avenue for intervention for a range of mental and physical health issues, notably suicide and heart disease. Although this can seem alarming, I view nightmares as helpful warning signs and avenues for transformation."

From ordinary to sublime: kinds of dreams

Significant dreams … are often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be
the richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience.
- Carl Jung

"A critical factor in deciding the best way to work with someone’s dream is the type of dream they bring. You would work very differently with a harrowing nightmare than an uplifting spiritual dream. Throughout history, many systems have been developed to categorize dreams, many of which predate the clinical use of dreams. People have been paying attention to their dreams since ancient times... The debate about the nature of dreams continues into modern day. In surveying the various kinds of dreams, I have surmised that there are different dreams for different reasons across the night and across a lifetime."

Join Us for a Series of Free Online Talks

To celebrate the release of the second edition, we’re hosting a series of free online conversations exploring the new material in the book—from nightmares and the nervous system to working with trauma in dream therapy.

Click here to sign up for the free talks

June 13th — Nightmares, Trauma and Health
- 10:00 – 11:00 AM Pacific
- An astounding confluence of new evidence underscores the importance of asking about nightmares if you are a mental health professional. And if you are someone who suffers from frequent nightmares, this book (and talk) covers exactly what to watch for to determine if your dreams pose a threat to your health.
- Most of us know that nightmares are linked with trauma and are a cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress injury. What you may not know is that frequent nightmares also pose a threat to cardiovascular health, lead to much higher risk of suicide, and are associated with many other mental health diagnoses.
- In this 1-hour talk, you will learn about how nightmares are linked with mental and physical health concerns, what to watch for… and in a follow-up talk, we will discuss how to treat nightmares – both from a clinical and self-help perspective.
June 27 — Nightmare Relief: Steps to Effective Treatment
- 10:00 – 11:00 AM Pacific
- This talk will be a walk through the steps that reliably lead to relief from frequent nightmares. The steps are based on a combination of dream rescripting and somatic approaches to trauma treatment. Rescripting is an evidence-based practice that is quick, easy and can significantly reduce the frequency and distress of nightmares. And embodied experiential practices make the process gentle, safe and potentially more effective for those whose nightmares spring from traumatic experiences.
- In this talk, Dr. Ellis will guide you through the steps of Nightmare Relief, offer some brief experiential practices to give you sense of the process, offer clinical examples of how this protocol works, answer questions and offer pathways to a deeper understanding of how to implement nightmare treatment.
July 11 — Embodied Experiential Approaches to Dream Therapy
- What sets our approach apart from many dream therapy methods is its deep experiential grounding, anchored by the profound embodied practice of Focusing. In this talk, Dr. Ellis will cover the basic philosophy and practices of Focusing-oriented dreamwork. Participants will be led on an (optional) experiential journey to try this way of re-engaging with the dream. We will also offer some transformative examples or a demonstration of embodied dreamwork in action.