Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Do you offer online therapy or telephone appointments?
Q. Are your fees covered by OHIP, health insurance or employee benefit plans?
Q. What if I don’t remember my dreams?
Q. What do recurring dreams mean?
Q. My dreams are sometimes frightening or disturbing. Is this a bad sign?
Q. I’ve tried to understand my dreams, but they’re weird and confusing. What is the point of looking at them in therapy?
Q. Can you recommend some books to read if I want to learn more about Jungian psychology and working with dreams?
Q. What happens in therapy with a Jungian Analyst?
Q. How often should I go to a Jungian Analyst?
Q. What is the difference between a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a Jungian Analyst?
Q. Is there a symbol dictionary you recommend to help me understand my dreams?
Q. Do you offer online therapy or telephone appointments?
A. Yes. These are excellent alternative to face-to-face therapy if you are not in Toronto or prefer remote therapy. Please contact me to set-up a video or telephone therapy appointment.
Q. Are your fees covered by OHIP, health insurance or employee benefit plans?
A. In Ontario, therapy with psychiatrists is covered by OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan). Some private health insurance and employee benefit plans pay for the services of registered psychologists or therapists with ‘MSW’ (Masters of Social Work) or ‘RSW’ (Registered Social Worker) certifications.
The services of Jungian Analysts in Ontario are not covered by OHIP. However, Jungian Analysts in Ontario are regulated by the provincial governing body that regulates psychotherapy in the province, called the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO).
As Stacey is a Registered Psychotherapist and CRPO member, her fees or portions of her fees are covered by some private health insurance or employee benefit plans.
Provincial individual and group health benefits plans are gradually adding the services of Registered Psychotherapists (RP’s), where formerly they may have only covered Psychologists. For the most up-to-date information about whether RP visits are covered on your plan, call your benefits provider directly, as your coverage may have changed to include RPs in the last year.
Q. What if I don’t remember my dreams?
A. The Unconscious, the creator of your dreams, is a responsive, dynamic part of you. What happens most often is that, before seeing a Jungian therapist, you may remember one dream a year, maybe even less. But once you begin working with a Jungian therapist, your Unconscious realizes that you are listening – you’re paying attention to what it has to say. Inevitably, it starts to offer up more dreams that you will remember.
Before your first session with a Jungian therapist, for instance after you book your first appointment, you may have a dream that you remember. Do write it down and bring it to your first session.
TIP: a good way to facilitate the process of remembering your dreams is to keep a notebook and pen by your bed. When you wake up remembering a dream, even if it is in the middle of the night, write it down right away. If you wait even an hour or go back to sleep, chances are you will forget the dream entirely or forget important details.
ALTERNATIVE TIP: record the dream as soon as it wakes you up onto a voice memo app on a smartphone, which you can then dictate to a written form when you wake up later.
Q. What do recurring dreams mean?
A. Without knowing the particulars of the dream and 
what was going on in your life just before each instance of the dream, it is impossible to know what your specific recurring dream means.
In general, there may be a situation in your waking life that you have faced repeatedly since when the recurring dream began. If you would like to explore your recurring dream, the best thing to do is, the next time you have that dream, write down as many details as you can about the dream. Then write a few paragraphs about what happened the day before you had the dream (i.e. if you had the dream on a Tuesday night, write what happened during the day on Tuesday). Keep that dream journal on hand, and the next time you have the recurring dream, do the same thing. Write down the dream (it may vary in specific details each time, and those details may be important) and write down what happened that day. If you choose to visit a Jungian therapist, you can bring those dreams to your sessions and work at understanding what your Unconscious is trying to tell you.
Q. My dreams are sometimes frightening or disturbing. Is this a bad sign?
A. Your Unconscious will sometimes use powerful images to get your attention. Frightening imagery in dreams may suggest that your unconscious urgently seeks a dialogue with you.
Q. I’ve tried to understand my dreams, but they’re weird and confusing. What is the point of looking at them in therapy?
A. Dreams communicate in a symbolic language. When you first begin working with them, they can seem foreign and inconsequential. But all it takes is some work unravelling the images one at a time, ideally with the guidance of a trained Jungian therapist, and then eventually you will have an A-Ha moment where you get a sense of the meaning of your dream’s message. It’s a pretty amazing moment…
The part of your psyche that creates dreams has a broader, wiser perspective on your life circumstances than your conscious mind does. It can anticipate how things might unfold in a given situation. For instance, you may dream that a new, prestigious job offer you’re excited about requires you to work in a garbage heap. Then you start the job, and you realize the whole job requires clean-up, and it’s not nearly as glamourous or prestigious as you thought.
Your unconscious may use a dream to send messages of warning, to highlight important information you are consciously blind to, and show you the objective truth of your life circumstances. If you have run out of answers about what to do about a challenging situation, your dreams can light the way.
Of course, sometimes treasures are found in a trash heap.
Q. Can you recommend some books to read if I want to learn more about Jungian psychology and working with dreams?
A. There are a few books I recommend to get started. The first is Memories, Dreams, Reflections, by Carl Jung. It is his autobiography, and also provides a user-friendly introduction to some of his key ideas.
I also recommend Jung’s book Man and His Symbols.
One of my first books on Jungian psychology was an excellent collection of Jung’s writings called C. G. Jung: Psychological Reflections: An Anthology of his writings 1905 – 1961, edited by Jolande Jacobi.
Q. What happens in therapy with a Jungian Analyst?
A. Jungian analysis is a form of talk therapy. Therapy sessions with a Jungian therapist, also called a Jungian Analyst, are 1 hr, 1.5 hrs. or 2 hrs. long and clients generally choose to see their therapist once per week.
Clients generally bring in a recent dream they have had to their session with their Jungian Analyst. The client reads the dream aloud and then the analyst asks for personal associations with different elements in the dream. The analyst works with the client to connect the dream with what is currently going on in the client’s life to help to understand what the dream is commenting on and what its guidance might be.
If the client does not bring in a dream to a session, the client and therapist discuss what is going on in the person’s life and what their concerns or pressures are. They talk about whatever the client would like to discuss. If dreams have been brought into the therapy in the past, the therapist may relate themes from previous work with the unconscious into the current therapy session.
To get the most out of Jungian analysis, clients often choose to journal about their dream before a session with their Jungian Analyst. Whether a dream is discussed in the session, clients may want to journal after the therapy session. This reflective process helps to nurture the growing relationship between the client’s conscious self and unconscious and facilitate a sense of wholeness and connectedness with the deeper parts of themselves.
Q. How often should I go to a Jungian Analyst? 
A. Each person has an optimum regularity of working with a Jungian Analyst. Think of it like gardening. Your plants do best with regular watering of a certain frequency and each plant is different. Most people find that coming once a week is best. Some people prefer to put more energy into working with their inner world and come twice a week. If people choose to come every two weeks or less, the inner garden receives less water. But of course, the frequency of appointments is a balance between desire and energy to investigate your dreams, available time and cost of sessions. Contact Stacey to inquire about her session fee.
Q. What is the difference between a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a Jungian Analyst?
A. Psychiatrists are medical doctors (M.D.’s) who have completed specialized training in psychiatry. They are specially trained to work with very serious psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Psychiatrists and M.D.’s are the only practitioners who are permitted to prescribe medicine.
Psychologists are registered practitioners who have completed a PhD in psychology and completed clinical training.
Jungian Analysts, as they are formally called, are therapists who are specially trained in depth psychology, and specifically in working with clients’ dreams. They assist clients in cultivating a restorative relationship with their authentic self. They have extensive clinical training as well as many years of study of material relating to the understanding of dreams.
Dream work facilitates integration between the conscious self and the unconscious and nurtures a sense of depth, meaning and purpose in one’s life. Jungian Analysts obtain very rigorous training with a school recognized by the International Association of Analytic Psychology (IAAP). Stacey completed training with an IAAP accredited school, the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts (OAJA). She is now a member of both organizations.. Stacey has been in private practice since 2009.
Q. Is there a symbol dictionary you recommend to help me understand my dreams?
A. Your dreams use images with personal significance to you, which makes a dream dictionary a dubious tool. For instance, one person dreaming of riding a bike might have personal associations that a bike is a wonderful, liberating mode of transport that allows them to go where they want without following the predetermined routes of public transport. Whereas another person might consider riding a bike as coming down too far in the world compared to driving a car. Or they might dislike it as a much slower means of getting around. Because of those very different personal associations, it would be difficult to make sense of the meaning of riding a bike in your dream by looking it up in a symbol dictionary.
In the first instance, riding a bike could reflect taking an individual path in a situation rather than following a conventional mode, which might be figured by a streetcar or train, both of which follow pre-determined tracks. In the second instance, riding a bike could suggest a need to find a more humble and simple way of reaching a place in life, or the need to get to a goal in a slower way. Personal associations introduce subtlety and variations which can make dream interpretation by means of a dictionary a limiting, misleading exercise.
HOWEVER, there is a terrific dictionary of symbols that IS my favourite. It is Elsevier’s Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery, by Ad de Vries and Arthur de Vries. It provides a very helpful range of meanings of different symbols that can appear in dreams, usually providing historical and cultural references.