Customer Reviews

Dreams: A Reader on Religious, Cultural and Psychological Dimensions of Dreaming

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This is an excellent book to get a feel for the scope of dream work and the various schools of thought. It is like a great cross section of the field with lots of stimulating ideas from many points of view.

Kelly Bulkeley is a dream scholar who has compiled a volume with no obvious bias. It collects the best of what is out there and presents it in an easy to digest format.

If you are new to dream studies, I also recommend An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming by Kelly Bulkeley. This is a good summary resource for the work of Freud, Jung and others over the past 100 years.

(Right up front, I should say I am one of the authors of this book. So, I won't discuss my article.) But the rest of the book presents such a vast range of information -- the biology of dreaming, the role of dreams in different cultures (such as India, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Islam, Native American, New Guinea, Brazil...), in different cultural traditions, modern dream work from the familiar Jungian and Freudian analytical practices to less familiar non-western approaches, and a wide variety of current methods of working with dreams--that if you have no other on dreams on your bookshelf, I would highly recommend this one. And even if you have many others, this one will really open your eyes to the multi-dimensional view of dreams around the world and through time.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of this collection is that the various authors do not all agree with each other, nor does the editor attempt to create an artificial cohesion. Different points of view are allowed to coexist and to challenge each other. The final chapter is my favourite: 'Dialogue with a Skeptic' which features Frederick Crews and Kelly Bulkely. It allows the reader to vicariously participate in a debate between two scholars-a logical and well-structured debate, but one that is presented with elegance. It takes alot of nerve to do that!

The book as a whole is well-written, and can easily be read by anybody interested in the subject. Just pick it up, let the pages open at random, and read whichever chapter you have picked!