Threads, Knots, Tapestries: How a Tribal Connection is Revealed through Dreams and Synchronicities

“Tess Castleman writes with enthusiasm and care about what Jung called the collective and personal unconscious, particularly its message delivered in dreams. Ms. Castleman gives a fine set of insights into group dream therapy as well as into the way symbolic language can help and inform an individual’s life.”– Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst and author of Women Who Run with the Wolves“’Truly, our lives are our best creative work.’ Tess Castleman’s Threads, Knots, Tapestries bears testimony to this simple and vital truth she has discovered. She is honest, forthright, uncompromising in her search for answers to the mysteries of the soul, and she makes no apologies: ’Sometimes I go home at the end of the day and cannot decide if I’m a prostitute, con artist or healer.’ Do we have a tribal unconscious? The author’s group dreamwork described in this book makes a good case for it. Her candid reflections, pokings and ponderings provide welcome stimulation.”– Robert Hinshaw, Ph.D., training analyst and faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich“Threads, Knots, Tapestries is itself a rich and colorful carpet of stories, myths, beliefs, and dreams that weaves the human experience into something much deeper, richer, and more connected than is obvious at the level of mind and consciousness.Castleman is a gifted and courageous pioneer in the field of Jungian Psychology, inter-twining the wisdom of dream and group work into a powerful healing experience. I loved the book.”– Alice Tawwater Frazier, LPC, LMFT, BCIAC, CGP, President Dallas Group PsychotherapyThreads, Knots, Tapestries reveals the way our dreaming expresses and reflects our deep interpersonal and environmental interconnectivity. . . . Drawing upon her decades of Jungian analytic practice, and many years of pioneering in dream groups, Castleman weaves a rich tapestry of dream threads which shows us how we are dreaming with and for each other. … a storyteller telling the stories of people, their dreams, the stories of shamans, the stories of individuals suffering from cancer, love entanglements, and most delightfully, stories which show how dreams are woven together with communal life.– from the Foreword, C. Michael Smith, Ph.D., author of Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue, and Psychotherapy and the Sacred. Adjunct professor of psychology and religion, The Chicago Theological Seminary

Tess Castleman, M.A., L.P.C., I.A.A.P. is a Zurich trained Diplomate Jungian Analyst. She is a training analyst for and president of the C.G. Jung Institute of Dallas where she teaches, lectures, holds seminars and conducts a private practice for both individuals and dream groups.