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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much good advice on remembering and interpreting your dreams, February 17, 2006
This review is from: The Beginner's Guide to Dream Interpretation (Audio CD)
I tend to dream a lot, but apparently we all do . . . according to
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an author and Jungian psychoanalyst,
we dream from five to seven times each night . . . the problem
is how to remember such activity.
Estes, in THE BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO DREAM INTERPRETATION
(an excellent CD program which she wrote and read), says you
need to put a pencil or pen near your bed . . . before you go to
sleep, ask your Dreammaker for help in remembering
your dream . . . then as soon as you get up, write down
anything that you can remember . . . or as an alternative:
read what you remember into a recording device
There's much good advice here . . . for instance, if you've ever
been bothered by a dream, make it a point to tell it aloud
to another person . . . you can also make a picture of it, yet
if you do, you still need to discuss the picture with another
person.
As to actually interpreting dreams, Estes advises to list
all the nouns that are part of them . . . and next make
associations for each of these nouns.
Lastly, she explores the themes of several dreams . . . one
that I even have every so often was there--my not graduating
from college . . . apparently, when that happens, I should
anticipate what might happen in my life.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Good, September 6, 2007
This review is from: The Beginner's Guide to Dream Interpretation (Audio CD)
This is great instruction on interpreting your own dreams. Instead of giving you a list of this symbol means that. She explains a process for figuring out what each element of a given dream means to you personally. And then retelling the dream with those meanings substituted. "I stepped into a brightly lit open field..." might become "I stepped into brightly lit freedom..." I applied this to a dream that did not seem very significant. It was about characters from a TV show having a conversation. I figured I had the dream because I'd watched the show before bed that night. I did what she said to do, replacing personal associations for the elements of the dream. I realized that the dream actually spoke to a relationship I was in and emotions I was feeling concerning it.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Yet On Dreams, December 29, 2008
This review is from: The Beginner's Guide to Dream Interpretation (Audio CD)
I realize many of us would listen to Dr. Estes read the telephone book, as she has a wonderfully friendly, soothing voice. The fact that she always has something intriguing to say makes her work all that much better.
This audiobook is about ninety minutes long, and the focus is on subjectivity. Dictionaries of dream analyses can't work, because ten people dreaming the same dream would make ten different associations to it. Dr. Estes is very careful in emphasizing that, above all, we have to place our own subjective interpretations on everything we dream. After forty-some years of reading dream dictionaries with no success, I was glad to hear this.
Although Dr. Estes is a Jungian and does not believe, for example, that a snake represents a phallic symbol, she does give thirteen universal archetypes and their "typical" meanings. I had a problem with this section. For instance, she tells us that one common dream concerns hair loss, which is universally interpreted as losing one's power or strength. The only example she gives is the biblical one of Sampson losing his physical strength when his hair is cut. I had a dream of losing hair decades ago when my angry mother threatened to cut my long auburn curls, and I don't think it had anything to do with strength, as short hair was in style and I'd looked fine with short hair before. I was afraid of my mother, and to me, that was obvious. Also, not everyone believes in the Judeo-Christian bible, so assuming hair loss equals strength loss just doesn't seem like a universal connection.
I had another problem with the audiobook. Dr. Estes tells us to write down the nouns (people, places, and things) in our dreams. Many of my dreams involve emotions; sometimes there aren't even nouns involved. I've spoken to other people who experience nausea dreams or jasmine-scented dreams, and none of us know how to interpret them.
The problems I've listed are small in comparison with the impact this dream interpretation guide had on graphic, semi-lucid, recurring dreams I'd been experiencing. Using what Dr. Suzette Hadin Elgin calls a "thought map," I used what nouns I could remember and interpreted these dreams with the help of Dr. Estes's information. That was about a week ago, and those graphic nightmares have stopped.
If you're tired of reading that a dark shadow indicates impending death, and that rosebuds mean you're about to "bloom" a new idea, give Dr. Estes a try. She provides the sanest information on dreams I've come across in my almost sixty years.
Thank you, Dr. Estes, for another excellent bit of insight.
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