Crossing the Distance

Can mapping dreams using reflective writing techniques facilitate the integration of the self?

Abstract

This paper is an account of a self-heuristic enquiry into the experience of using artwork and reflective creative writing to map fragments of my dreams over a ten-week period in early 2020. During this time, I generated a series of dream maps and associated reflective creative writing, from which emerged themes of orientation, perspective, journey, beasts, and body. As a cross-art exercise in transforming ephemeral dream fragments into concrete maps, poems, dialogues, and other written forms, it was an extended journaling of personal metaphor that was both playful and deeply informative. I argue that the novel techniques I used in this project contributed to integration of my self and could similarly benefit others. My intention for this paper is to share personal discoveries I made through the work, and to offer practical guidance—in the form of a nine-step procedure—to other practitioners who would like to try this approach.