At a Journal Workshop: Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability

Progoff, a psychotherapist and pioneer in the therapeutic use of journal writing, has conducted workshops on the Intensive Journal Process since 1966. His program offers more than a chronological diary; the Intensive Journal Process is a complex and systematic method for gaining self-insight by recording thoughts, dreams, and significant events, which are then used as focal points for meditation and written reflection in separate sections. This book, a condensed version of two previous works, At a Journal Workshop ( LJ 11/1/75) and The Practice of Process Meditation ( LJ 12/1/80), follows the sequence of an introductory workshop, with the reader as an active participant. The casual reader looking for a summary or overview of the process will find this approach disappointing, while those familiar with the previous works will find little new other than a rearrangement of text. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating guidebook for those seriously committed to exploring journal writing as a means of self-discovery. Recommended for academic and large public libraries that don't own copies of the earlier works.
- Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

What would you like your life to be?

Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal Process combines one of the oldest methods of self-exploration and expression--keeping a journal--with a structured format that enables you to get to know the inner core of your life on ever-deeper levels and gain a fuller perspective on where you are. The Intensive Journal Process also empowers you to take the action necessary to change the course of your life and unlock your hidden creative potential. This rich, insightful work is a treasure for all those involved in self-inquiry, artistic creation, and spiritual renewal.

Ira Progoff's purpose in creating the Intensive Journal workshops on which this book is based was to give others a language and a process for reflecting on and deepening the meaning of their lives. We have many tools handed to us in At a Journal Workshop-each with a specific shape and function, and each with a full set of instructions on its use. This is a strange, wonderful and complex approach for journey/journal-ing, using methods the author has taught and evolved over the last 40 years. Through multifaceted and interactive reflections on the events that make up our waking and dreaming lives, and on paths not taken, we are led to our deeper beings. Here is an ultimate workbook for teachers and students of the inner journey. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Linda Hewitt

Since the 1950s, Ira Progoff has been exploring psychological methods for creativity and spiritual experience with social applications. He is a leading authority on the psychology of C. G. Jung, humanistic and transpersonal psychology, as well as journal writing.The conceptual base of Ira Progoff's holistic depth psychology can be found in a trilogy of earlier books. The Death and Rebirth of Psychology (1956) crystallizes the cumulative results of the work of Freud, Adler, Jung, and Rank to build the foundation for a new psychology. Depth Psychology and Modern Man (1959) presents a holistic view of evolution as a foundation for nonanalytic method in depth psychology. The Symbolic and the Real (1963) discusses the significance of these concepts for modern society and demonstrates the personal use of twilight imagery.As Director of the Institute for Research in Depth Psychology at the Drew University Graduate School from 1959 to 1971, Dr. Progoff conducted research on life cycles and their relation to spiritual and creative experience. Drawing on the principles of these books and research at Drew University, he developed the Intensive Journal method in 1966 as a system of nonanalytic integrative techniques for drawing out and interrelating the contents of an individual life. He founded Dialogue House in 1966 as a means of organizing Intensive Journal workshops.Progoff passed away in 1998.

A major role of the exercises in Dialogue with Events is to enable us to experience the movement of life in so broad a vista that we are not enclosed by the emotions of the moment. We perceive the ambiguity that is inherent in events. They may have not one or two but several levels of meaning, and these disclose themselves not at the time of the happening but only at later points in the course of our experience. It becomes essential, then, that we keep ourselves free from fixed conclusions and have a means of holding ourselves open for the further recognitions of meaning that will come to us with the passage of time.

As it brings an inner self-guidance for life's problems, the Intensive Journal approach has also produced an interesting, if unexpected, extra. In the course of its work it deepens the level of experience, and this draws an individual into contact with the profound sources of inner wisdom. Many persons have found that as they involved themselves in the Intensive Journal process to resolve the immediate problems of personal life, they have inadvertently opened awarenesses that are transpersonal in scope. Without intending it, they find that they are drawn beyond themselves in wisdom to levels of experience that have the qualities of poetry and spirit.