Showing posts with label Dream Exploration: A New Approach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dream Exploration: A New Approach. Show all posts

Dream Exploration: A New Approach by Robert P. Gongloff (2006)

, 5 Oct 2014

Don't judge a book by its cover. This is a terrific book, very practical and very profound, on how to tackle the always fascinating task of finding the meaning of your dreams and doing something with the advice embedded in them. Although the author does not deny the importance of symbol interpretation, this book focuses on theme exploration.

The book is like a breath of fresh air for people with vivid dreams, like me, with many symbols in them. It can take you hours to go just through all of them, and there is no warranty that anything will click for you or that you will have an aha moment. Focusing on themes, instead, makes the task more manageable. Moreover, the system can be used to complement other approaches to dream interpretation. I love the fact that the author relies on this book not only on his own approach on dream interpretation, which is based in his long experience in dream interpretation and with dream groups, but also on the works of several dream experts that have different takings on the matter.

The system is easy to learn, memorize and put into practice, Follow the TTAQ technique = Title, Theme, Affect (emotions/feelings), Question (that the dream is asking you). The author tells you the how to find the theme of you dream, how to relate it to the 12-box related Theme Matrix, and to use it to dig in in the meaning of your dreams and the message they are sending to your conscious mind. The matrix is not only used to find your theme, but to help you to make questions about the theme, and how they relate to different stages in life. It takes a while to get used to get the theme of your dream right, but once you get there, the Matrix will be very helpful.

I also loved the part of honoring your dream using the matrix, as well as the appendix on the symbolism of number Twelve, which is fascinating

I've read the book in my Kindle, and the Matrix tables are impossible to read without a magnifying glass, which is a pain especially for people with poor sight, as the tables cannot be resized or the font increased. Therefore, they are useless. I have also Kindle in my PC, and I've tried to copy and paste the tables to print them and have them at hand, but Kindle doesn't allow you to do that. So this is a big bummer!

Re the downsides of the book, well, the cover is just dreadful, boring and doesn't make any favor to the book. Secondly, some of the progressive examples are too long, and I would shorten them, leaving just the headings of the previous parts and developing the part explained. I would try to fix the tables problem for Kindle, perhaps have them developed in plain text in another appendix.

This is the sort of book that you would want to have in hard copy, because it is quite cheap and also quite useful, and you will underline it and have it as a manual at hand. I have read a few books on dream Interpretation, and this is one of my favourite ones. That is a lot to say!