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A Little Course in Dreams by Robert Bosnak (1998)
, 14 Nov 2018
This is a little wonder of a book, little as in introductory, not as in simple or irrelevant. The book has the right balance of depth and practicality, and it is a terrific initial guide for people wanting to become dream practitioners or for those who want to work with their own dreams on their own or in groups.
Bosnak gives simple but very effective exercises to favour dream recall in general, to recall specific dream objects and spaces, to create a memory storage room, explore the awakening space, and write/record your dreams. The case studies chosen to show his system or working with dreams are really wow -- interesting, intriguing and enlightening, so exemplary of what dreamwork is all about, the magic that brings to the awaken life, the psychological emotional and spiritual depths it takes you, and the juice you can get from even the most 'normal' dream. Some of the things Bosnak says about the nature and essence of dreams are really mind blowing, and one closes the book wanting to listen to him more, read him more, and wishing that the book had been less little and more more big.
Bosnak is a Jungian analyst so you can't get the Jungian out of him (nor would want to), as this is, precisely, what makes his approach to dreams so profound. Also, Bosnak is the father of Embodied Imagination, so he speaks of it as this was the daily bread on a tradie's table. He makes a terrific effort to put things in every-day language with minimum jargon and makes difficult concepts accessible to the general public.
On the down side, lay readers, those with no knowledge of Jungian stuff, or not familiar with his system, might find some things difficult to understand because some concepts are just sketched out and would need of more space to be properly explained. I found that this was the case with the chapter on psychological alchemy in dreams, which is very good, but too short for the average reader to understand the specific way that some of the associations related to the three main alchemical elements link; that was my case, at least.
I found the chapter on image amplification the weakest in the book, not well developed or round enough to be successfully used by a person with no previous experience in image amplification. Exercise 10 on exploring the world of imagery using the main three alchemical elements isn't clear enough to me, either.
Active imagination is something easy to grasp for people who are mostly visual, like me. However, many people aren't visual at all, are more audible or kinetic, so I wonder how do those people approach active imagination.
The book was written in the late 1980s, so unless you really nuts about audio-recorders, you can easily use your smartphone voice recorder easily or use one of the many applications that allow you to record, write and explore your dreams.
Overall a wonderful read, with a great insight, tools and tips to start dreamworking the wow way.
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A Little Course in Dreams,
Book Reviews,
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Dreams,
dreamwork,
Non Fiction,
Non-Fiction,
Robert Bosnak
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