Shattered Images, Broken Lives: Social Dreaming in Healing Ukraine’s Historical Trauma

Abstract

Dreams are the wellsprings for embracing aspects of the self and the community that have been split off, denied, and repressed. The intent of this research is to invite interested individuals to draw on the images that arise from shared dreams situated in the world of the post-Soviet Ukrainian psyche. When the figures and images of historical trauma are not given representation, they will walk among us as symptoms and nightmares. The literature review exhumes the forgotten images of woundedness which the Ukrainian people have endured during countless acts of genocide committed by imperial and soviet Russia. A personal dream of shattered Easter eggs set a path for engaging in depth research. That dream led the researcher to Chernobyl, and encouraged the development of an imaginal approach to research that embraced the writings of James Hillman. He outlines this approach as one of notitia, pathologizing, and seeing through. Hillman’s affirms depth psychology’s responsibility to behold and listen to symptoms rather than numb them. A social dreaming group was organized in Kyiv, Ukraine and consisted of ten participants who met weekly for five weeks. Three dreams were shared by different members of the group. The imagery of all three dreams were deemed as a preparation, a rehearsal, for the Revolution of Dignity which began two days after our last session. In this case images are the foundation for action; for tending soul in a wounded world.