Cloth Dreams – A memoir…of sorts

“Cloth Dreams” narrates the beginning of the author’s journey to confront and uncover her own shadow, Drawing from her extensive experience as a psychotherapist who has absorbed the life narratives of many others. This time, she turns her focus inward, channeling her artistic talents to portray her personal encounters.

Her early childhood from a poor, single parent family and as a first generation Australian, begins the journey.

Through its peculiar twists, poignant troughs and pinnacles of fulfilment and triumph the author takes the reader on a journey that is sometimes surreal in its illusion but strikingly real in its content.

The author makes no apologies for her irreverent use of Carl Jung’s shadow and Freud’s hallmark psychoanalytic personality indicators – the Id, super ego and ego – to portray her experience of life.

She removes any doubt about how the villains and heroes of her irrational universe impact on the story she tells through the lens of creative non fiction. Weaving complex psychodynamic theories through the narrative prose she might leave lovers of psychology and counselling educated, enlightened and reflecting on their own life and with a curious interest in, and understanding of the lives of the people with whom they work.

The concepts of Freud’s unconscious and Jung’s archetypal symbology enlighten and inform the reader about ideas that came before the postmodern wave of socially constructed identity and life. And yet at the same time Cloth Dreams manages to portray a life dominated by post-modern constructs of identity formation that emphasise narrative and the storied nature of human conduct.

If there is one thing that the reader gains from immersing themselves in this story it is the authors commitment and belief that love…and art… can change lives.