The Variety of Dream Experience
Expanding Our Ways of Working with Dreams, Second Edition
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Explores the contributions dreams can make to our private and public lives, and outlines methods for safe and effective dream work.
Description
The versatility of dreams—their intrinsic creativity and their healing potential—extends beyond their clinical usefulness. This versatility comes to life in the way this book's contributors have succeeded in extending dream work into the public domain—the home, the church, and the educational arena. The various perspectives include literature, creative writing, cultural anthropology, the priesthood, political science, computer science, history, psychosomatic medicine, and individual and group psychotherapy. Taken together they illustrate the far-reaching value of understanding our dreams and how much they can tell us about ourselves.
In this second edition of The Variety of Dream Experience, chapters have been updated and significant changes have been made in the way the group process is structured, making it easier to master and more effective in its application. Three new chapters have been added: one that discusses the importance of dream work in the training of pastoral counselors, another on how the experiential dream group process can be integrated into group psychotherapy, and a third on how the principles and rationale of the dream group process can be of help in individual therapy. Two other chapters have been substantially expanded: one on the role social forces play in the shaping of the dream, and the other on a very moving account of the role a dream played in working through an abusive relationship.
Montague Ullman, M. D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University. He is the author of Appreciating Dreams and is the coauthor of Waking with Dreams (with Nan Zimmerman) and Dream Telepathy (with Stanley Krippner and Alan Vaughan). In addition, he is the coeditor of Handbook of States of Consciousness (with Benjamin Wolman). Claire Limmer is a psychoanalyst in private practice.
Reviews
Praise for the first edition:
"This is a volume of enormous interest that calls attention to the stirring of an interesting group, the so-called dream work movement. Appropriately, the work also calls attention to the signal contributions, theoretical and practical, that Montague Ullman has made to this humanistic endeavor. "—Milton Kramer, M. D., Academy Forum
"Many edited collections are not always readable; this one is. For anyone intrigued by dreams, The Variety of Dream Experience is a good investment of the reader's time. Ullman and Limmer have expanded our ways of looking at and working with dreams. The experiential dream group is no longer an experiment. This book demonstrates that it is well established as a useful process in 'appreciating' the dream. "—John P. Briggs, M. D., Journal of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis
"[T]his book has something for everyone interested in dreams, and especially dream groups. "—Carol Warner, ASD Newsletter
"[A]n interesting collection of articles on recent experiments with the employment of group analysis of dreams in diverse, in some cases unlikely, fields of endeavor. "— Kirkus