Monte Ullman as a Teacher of Dreams

In 1979 in my second year of psychoanalytic training at the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, I was introduced to working with dreams in a class led by Monte Ullman. There were about a dozen of us in the twelve-week-long class. Each class consisted of one of us presenting a recent dream which we then spent the next hour and a half working with using Monte’s experiential model of group dreamwork. He was a true master at getting people

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to feel comfortable and competent in presenting their own dreams and working with the dreams of others.

In addition to getting to know my classmates and becoming known to them in a new and much more intimate way, which considerably enhanced my learning over the following years, Monte showed us the richness and complexity of dreams. He taught us that essential skill of being able to open yourself to what the dream images say, the additional things the dreamer may tell us, and our own associations, feelings, and reactions.

Of the thirty-six courses I took at the institute, Monte’s was the one which I remember the most. By the end of the course I felt that I had been fully launched on the process of becoming a psychoanalyst—having been initiated into the quintessential art of psychoanalysis—working with dreams.

A number of years later I was involved in organizing a conference on dreams in the Berkshires in which he was the keynote speaker and led the large group of participants in an Ullman dream group experience. He did a wonderful job, which was highly appreciated by the participants. Monte left the world a richer place. He will be missed.

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