From the author: Published in the collection: Space of art therapy: Sat. Sci. Art. / K. - 2011, Vipusk 1(3), pp. 124-132 At all times, dreams have been the most important part of human life, there have always been interpreters, dream books and interpretation traditions. In the simplest tribes, sages (elders, shamans, healers) listened carefully to all the stories about dreams. A system for decoding the text of a dream was passed down from generation to generation, and the experience of predecessors made it possible to build a very real survival practice: a strategy for treating the sufferer, tactics of war with enemies, and timing of planting. Particular attention was paid to the dreams of the leaders: their dreams, according to legend, could tell about the necessary actions for the whole community. For primitive man, dreams were a sacred part of human life and society, evidence of the manifestation of higher powers. At that time, there was a belief that the soul of a person comes out in a dream and travels through the invisible worlds and there acquires mystical experiences. In the east, the science of dreams has remained virtually unchanged over the past millennia. In India, working with dreams is an integral part of Vedic Astrology. In China, the oldest treatise by Emperor Huang Di, “The Dream Book of the Yellow Emperor,” who lived 4.5 thousand years ago, is still the basis for the interpretation of dreams. Tibetan traditions are equally long-standing and thorough [5]. The development of Western civilization has somewhat changed the position of dreams in people’s lives. Dreams were considered either a message from the gods (in ancient Egypt) or a devilish obsession (the Babylonians and Assyrians believed that bad dreams were sent by demons and spirits of the dead). In Egypt, dreams were believed to be able to cure illness, help one gain strength, and discover new abilities in oneself. In the cult of the goddess Isis, the practice of healing dreams in the temple was widespread. Other peoples used similar healing methods. All ancient rulers kept advisors with them who were supposed to reveal the hidden meaning of night visions. Stories related to dreams can be found in all the most ancient and sacred books of mankind (the Epic of Gilmash, the Bible, the Talmud, the Torah, the Koran). A widely quoted saying from the Torah is: “Our life is waking in a dream.” A quotation from the Talmud has also become a textbook: “A dream left without interpretation is like a letter that has not been read.” In the Holy Qur'an, sleep is mentioned in nine places. In the Bible, dreams also occupy a significant place in communication between man and God. The fate of Joseph, like the path of Christ, is guided at bifurcation points with the help of dreams. In the book “Job,” the purpose of dreams is clarified: “God speaks once and, if they do not notice, another time: in a dream, in a night vision, when sleep falls on people, while dozing on a bed. Then He opens a person’s ear and impresses His instruction in order to lead a person away from any undertaking and remove pride from him, in order to lead his soul from the abyss and his life from being struck by the sword” (Job 33:14). Ancient Greek philosophers opened the era rational study of dreams. Artemidorus (2nd century AD) in the dream book “Oneirocriticism”, systematized Greek, Egyptian, and Eastern interpretations of the symbolism of dreams. Plato believed that base desires are expressed in dreams (dialogue “On Love”). Aristotle, in his treatises “On Sleep” and “On Prophetic Dreams,” argued that dreams are the result of specific brain activity. Diogenes believed that dreams are generally meaningless and have no meaning. Lucretius Carus, in his poem “On the Nature of Things,” argued that dreams reproduce those ideas that were experienced by the dreamer while awake, reflecting everyday reality in a special manner [2]. During the Enlightenment and before 1900, dreams were considered a physiological manifestation of physicality, not worthy of scientific attention. Z. Freud in his work “The Interpretation of Dreams” refutes this point of view. “Dreaming is a full-fledged mental phenomenon. It is the fulfillment of desire. It can be included in the general chain of understandablemental phenomena of waking life. It was built with the help of extremely complex intellectual activity,” Freud wrote in his work [4, p. 150]. The fundamental work of this scientist turned the whole world of Victorian culture of that time upside down and was truly revolutionary for the consciousness of thousands of people. Dreams have received a reliable place in Western culture and space for research by adherents of psychoanalysis. Modern psychotherapy is a successor to the ancient culture of practical work with dreams, so the psychotherapist needs broad knowledge from the field of culture, symbolism, and history. Now there are a number of psychological concepts that organize the practice of sleep training (modern psychoanalysis, Gestalt, ontopsychology, etc.). However, for art therapeutic work, the conceptual platform proposed by C. G. Jung is most applicable. “The dream word is not limited to conceptual interpretations, because the dream word is not a concept. This is an image that came from the imagination, and the dictionary meaning, the denotation of a word is only a part, something that is well known,” believes the post-Jungian D. Hillman [6, p.9]. Thus, the study of dreams with the help of multimodal embodiment of mental images in art therapy contributes to the reunification of disparate parts of the experience. This is how the practice of therapeutic work with dreams in the modern world was actually founded. The next step in this direction was the work of K.G. Jung [8] and his followers, who made it possible to analyze the deep layers of sleep associated with timeless dream plots. So, what are the most important notes to use when a client reports a dream? K. G. Jung's model of the psyche [2, p. 78] (identifying the levels of the unconscious) allows the therapist to see a dream as a multi-layered text, all elements of which acquire a different sound in different planes. Thanks to such a broad vision, the therapist can lead the client to expand the channel of awareness of reality and integrate new meanings into the image of the Self. A dream is, first of all, diagnostic material. As you know, a person perceives reality (both internal and external) in a somewhat limited way, “not noticing” some processes and phenomena. Because of this distortion (its magnitude), he cannot adequately respond to his life situation, which gives rise to mental stress (less or greater). A dream, like a mirror, dispassionately reflects all the elements of reality. “Here we come across an important fact in the use of dream analysis: a dream depicts an internal situation, the reality of which consciousness does not recognize at all or reluctantly recognizes. ...That is, I see a diagnostically useful fact in a dream,” writes C. G. Jung on this occasion [7]. Presentation of a dream is one of the key points of work in therapy. As recent studies show, the exchange of information between people consists of only 15-20% of words, glances and gestures. The rest of the information flow interacts at the level of the unconscious, and it can be both healing and aggressive. Followers of great Teachers often point to a change in mental state in the field of direct contact with the latter. All this once again indicates the need for constant and deep work by the psychotherapist on his own problems, which guarantees the client the necessary level of safety from the “movie in the therapist’s head.” Naturally, we are not talking about the therapist becoming like an emotionless robot. The therapist’s task is to work through intense affects in one’s life that can “turn off” consciousness, while being in an active empathic process. C. G. Jung [7] comments on this position: “Since dreams provide information about the hidden inner life and reveal components of the personality that in daytime life mean only neurotic symptoms, the patient can be treated not only consciously, but also unconsciously.” The presence of dialogue at the level of the unconscious is manifested by the appearance in dreamsclient figure of the therapist: “The most current desires and conflicts of the past ultimately focus on the personality of the therapist” (Rout S. [3]). The conscious attitude of the therapist in psychotherapy and his hermeneutic skills are also important. “The danger with a one-sided understanding is precisely that the doctor makes a judgment about the meaning of a dream on the basis of a preconceived opinion that corresponds to a theory or even is essentially true. But it will not elicit the patient’s voluntary consent and is therefore practically incorrect; It is also incorrect because it anticipates and thereby paralyzes the patient’s development. The truth cannot be instilled in the patient, while we only address his head, he must reach this truth himself - then we will reach the heart, which affects deeper and has a stronger effect,” warns K. G. Jung [7]. The scientist suggests forgetting all theories and concepts and conducting search activities: listening, wondering, searching, finding. The basis of working with sleep is trust in the wisdom of the psyche as a whole, which presupposes a loyal attitude to the client’s possibilities for integrating new meanings. It is also necessary to take into account that sleep is always compensation. “In practical interpretation, we can always usefully ask the question: what conscious attitude is compensated for by this dream?” – K. G. Jung draws our attention [7]. In fact, we are talking about how a dream regulates the mental homeostasis of the individual. If the conscious attitude contains some elements of exaggeration or understatement (relationships, meaning, importance, tension), then the dream compensates for this feature with the opposite tendency. The psychotherapist also needs to understand the client’s conscious attitudes, the context of their formation: “Just as to interpret a dream it is necessary to have accurate knowledge of the corresponding attitude of consciousness, so in relation to the symbolism of a dream it is important to take into account philosophical, religious and moral beliefs. In practice, it is more useful to consider the symbolism of dreams not semiotically, i.e. as a sign or symptom of a permanent nature, but as a genuine symbol, i.e. expression of content not yet recognized by consciousness and conceptually formulated, correlating with a certain attitude of consciousness,” writes C. G. Jung [7]. In addition, a dream itself is a multidimensional phenomenon, in which there is an infinite number of meanings and meanings both for the dreamer himself and for other people. Each new contact with it, as with a work of art, reveals other facets and qualities previously hidden from us. Therefore, the same dream can appear in psychotherapeutic work many times. Both the client and the therapist can initiate a return to it. C. G. Jung, who masterfully worked with dreams, exclaims: “The nature of dreams in themselves is clear, they exactly correspond to the true state of affairs. Looking at such dreams in the subsequent stage of treatment or even years later, you often grab your head: how could you be so blind? [7]. If the therapist is effective in the psychotherapeutic process, then the client’s life, his well-being, and his dreams change: “Many people take therapeutic progress more seriously when they see changes in their dreams” (Rout S. [3]). Psychotherapeutic work with dreams must grow from the level of words into the practice of the client’s everyday life. “The ideas and images from our dreams must move into our emotions, into our muscle tissue, into the cells of our body. And this requires physical action. Any physical act is recorded at the deepest level of the soul,” writes R. Johnson [1, p. 102]. In art therapy, this postulate can be realized by choosing any form to embody the dream (drawing, singing, modeling, playing, etc.). At this stage of therapy, there is often a need for an individual ritual, a symbolic act that connects disparate parts of experience into the living fabric of life. The next step in working with dreams is to clarify exactly what changes the client is ready to make in his real life in connection with the new meanings revealed in the dream. Literature: Johnson R. Dreams and fantasies. Analysis and use / Robert