Melissa asked:
I have been wanting to see what my dreams mean and I want to know what would be a good book to get
I have been wanting to see what my dreams mean and I want to know what would be a good book to get
2 Responses to “What is the best book I can get on dream analysis?”
Something to say?
“The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud
Left by gormenghast10014 on November 7th, 2009
Freud and Carl Jung (see Man and His Symbols) both had interesting theories about dreams, though you won’t find a dictionary-style image=meaning list there, just some examples and guidelines. It would be easier to read a book about Freud’s theories of dreams than his original text, by the way, as his work is a bit dense… your local library should be able to help you there. Freud was a bit more narrow (not more narrow-minded! just more focussed on specific issues — perhaps not covering all possible types of dreams) in his interpretations than Jung.
There are lots of dream dictionaries, but the interpretations are random, usually. I know someone who was commissioned to write one, and she made it all up. But you yourself can probably figure a lot out if you just think of the dream as a metaphor… and maybe you can find a good book that takes that approach: it might help if you look at a dream the way you’d look at a symbolic story. There’s a lot of word play in dreams too. If you write down your dreams and look at the text for a few days, you might suddenly understand them. Dreams can be prophetic, not magically, but in terms of letting you know where you’re headed if you continue on the road you’re on. I dreamed Sean Penn watched me as I won a pile of coins from a slot machine (I’ve never actually used a slot machine in my life). A few years later I sold a novel I was working on and made some money on it. Penn = pen. Freud would probably have had a more sexually-oriented interpretation, but I think in this case the dream was more general. So I think looking at your dream as a metaphor is probably the most helpful…
Left by larissa on November 10th, 2009