Blog

In this week’s Friday Afternoon Video, Chilean feminist therapist Carla Galaz Souza begins with the recognition that even though much of our lives are spent dreaming, many people do not take their dreams seriously. Inviting dreams to the conversation is a project based on responding to this by applying narrative ideas to dreams as a pathway to support the development of alternative stories with women and children from Chile facing hardship. In her therapeutic practice, dreams came to provide a way of connecting with complex ideas and experiences around fear, meaning and identity. The process of meaning-making of dreams also offered potent spaces of cultural connection, personal reflection, and strength beyond being internalised sensory experiences. Similarly, by drawing links between dreams and waking life, Carla’s narrative conversations focused on how dreams offer a way for recognising skills and knowledges that people already have for dealing with their predicaments.

Biography
Carla Galaz Souza is a feminist and narrative therapist from Abya Yala (South America) currently living on Kaurna Land (Adelaide, Australia). As a therapist, Carla has worked with women and children who have experienced violence and sexual abuse in central and southern Chile. She has also worked as an undergraduate teacher in psychology, social work, and health careers, and in projects aimed at psychosocial and educational teams. As a feminist activist, she has participated in the Feminist Autonomous Movement of Abya Yala and in collective projects, including an abortion hotline and a feminist free community online radio. She is interested in bringing feminist ideas to therapy and in translating narrative practices to the Latin American context through culturally appropriate methods. She can be contacted by email at carlagalazs@gmail.com