Crenshaw's Books & Decks

If you have never read a book about nightmares and want to start with one that is written in lay language, simple to understand, enjoyable to read, and with a good selection of nightmares, this is your book.

The first part of the book, Groundwork, the conclusion chapter, and some of the bulleted items of advice presented at the end of each chapter are the most useful items of advice you'll find in the book. The Further Reading selection and some of the information collected from secondary sources referred to throughout the book is excellent; the footnotes are really professional, and linked back and forth, nothing I take for granted.

The collection of dreams used throughout the book is really good and show well how trauma appears in dreams and how dreamwork can heal the psyche and the soul wounds. The book is organized around different specific traumatic experiences that generate bad dreams or nightmares. Thus, we find examples of:

REALLY USEFUL TIPS
One of the main takes of the book for the lay reader is how beneficial dreamwork is for people who suffer from nightmares and bad dreams, and how transformational it can be.

Some of the things I found more useful and practical are the following:
> The seven-step model to start working with a dream: 1. Ask the dreamer to tell the dream and sketch it. 2. Notice the setting. 3. Identify what the ‘I-figure’ of the dream is feeling and doing. 4. Ask how this fits with the dreamer’s life context at the time. 5. Get the dreamer's associations with dream elements. 6. Does the dream story need a better ending? 7. Consider possible meanings. To which an eight can be added: choose a nightmare and imagine a new ending for it.

> What to do if a child shows trauma reactions: 1. Calm the child down and reassure them of your protection. 2. Encourage the child to tell you the nightmare in detail and to draw it. Don't minimize the feelings involved. Help them to create a different ending that  supports the child's self-esteem. 3. Take seriously repeating nightmares in which the child’s body is invaded and listen to the child without making any suggestion. If the child’s behavior is seriously disturbed, consult a child psychotherapist.

> The five stages of healing process that appear in series of nightmares: 1. Self-protection. 2. Acknowledgement. 3. Effects. 4. Growth and understanding. 5. Renegotiation.

> The method to work with our shadow in dreamwork.

> The 'Martian Interview', which is a kind of gestalt technique.

CORE MESSAGES OF THE BOOK

Bowater has great experience working with traumatic dreams and nightmares; however, her voice  is muffled by herself and she appears more like a dream compiler than an independent strong voice. It is a pity because she could have provided us with more practical tools to explore nightmares and rely more on her own experiential work as dream-worker. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting information used in the book comes not from direct experience but from secondary sources.

The chapter on psychic dreams barely has any nightmare in it except for those associated to the past-life section. 

Some of the items of advice Bowater gives are too generic or too common sense to be of help or something you expect to find in a book written by an experienced dream practitioner. Some of the self-help items mentioned at the end of each chapter can be easily found on the web.

I would have loved a bit of more detail about how to work with dreams, more specifically directed to people starting as dream practitioners, and a bit of more personal reflections derived from Bowater's own experience and less references to other people's work.

Eben Alexander's book Proof of Heaven, which Bowater mentions in her book, has been highly criticized as untruthful or scientifically questionable, and labelled a con by many people.

I had read many books on dreamwork before I came to read this book, enticed by a talk given by Bosnak himself.

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. 

Pinkola Estes is not only a reputed Jungian psychologist but also a natural storyteller. She is able to link and connect naturally dream themes, concrete dreams from real people, world legends, fairy tales and myths, and look at dreams as part of a whole, as a world of magic that is interrelated to other worlds of magic. She has a very mellow soothing voice, perfect for a therapist, but her whispering is not only a sweet song to your ears, but also a deep poetic and humorous exploration of our dream world. I loved some of the stories she tells, and the fact that her analysis of the motifs is really rich, deep and colorful, multifaceted, and not the usual monolithic this theme means this, and that theme means that. These themes have been discussed in many dream dictionaries and dreamwork books, but I found that Pinkola Estes's discussion about them brings many more things to the table than other analysts.  
 The themes or motifs that Pinkola Estes discusses in this book are the following: 1/Animal dreams. 2/ Flying dreams. 3/ Precognitive dreams. 4/ Snake dreams. 5/ Paralysis dreams. 6/ Incommunication dreams. 7/ Dreams of blood. 8/ Disaster dreams. 9/ End of the world dreams. 10/ Dreams about giving birth. 11/ Dreams about finding a baby. 12/ Dreams about finding of losing a treasure. 13/ Teeth dreams. 14/ Toilet dreams. 15/ Dark force dreams with a  nasty man or woman. 16/ Dreams about having an orgasm, having sex or making love. 17/ and dreams of nakedness.

The most important things that you'll learn from this work (beyond the interpretations and meanings that Pinkola Estes attaches to the discussed motifs) are the following: 1/ Your dreams are yours, and must be interpreted and be related to who you are, your life, circumstances, psyche and soul, and no cookie-cutter of an interpretation will fit two different people. Symbols are universal, but also fit into the psyche of different people in different ways because they are infused in the individual psyche they sit on. 2/ You cannot disregard or ignore the instinctive feeling you get when you have a dream about what or whom the dream relates to. In the past, I have found to be true for me.  3/ Dreams are not only individual, but relate to  themes, symbols ad stories contained in old legends and myths and they are part of an interrelated magic world that is also very real,  a world pregnant with meaning, a whispering voice that comes from your own unconscious. When your dream relates to a specific theme and that theme makes sense to you, you will get an aha moment, like two piece of a magneto getting together when put together. 4/ Finally, as the title of the book hints, dreams are like riddles, pun confusing intricate queries that are embedded with a message from your psyche to you.

The main downsides of the book are three. Firstly, Pinkola Estes' tone is a bit flat and lacks coloratura, so I found difficult to keep engaged and focused for long periods of time. Secondly, these lectures should be about themes in women's dreams, but many of the themes discussed here are not specific to women, but general dream themes that everybody has; it is not always clear in which way the discussion differs if they are dreamed by men or women and, besides, sometimes the author clearly states that the theme is universal. Thirdly, the author has a tendency to talk assuming that things in our heads are as clear regarding the connection between motifs, myths, legends and specific dreams as are in hers. Finally, the question arises, if dreams are individual and particular to each person, and myths and legends are Universal, how exactly universal themes relate differently to different individuals?

This is a very enjoyable audiobook, quick to listen to, and one of those books that you want to listen to more than once. 

Dreaming Metaphysical is a book for you if you are a serious dream worker, especially if you are into archetypal dreamwork because Bregman is the founder of this field. If you are not interested in dream work but in Metaphysics, the book will give you food for thought as well because it departs from philosophical principles that might be new to you.

I've listened to Dream Gates in Audible format as the book is not available in Kindle format and I rarely buy hard copy books or CD books.

A good simplified version of Moss' Conscious Dreaming,  this book focuses on dreamwork, synchronicity (or mindful coincidence) and Active Imagination (Visualization).

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!

This review is for the audible version of the book.

This is one of the best books on dreamwork I have ever read, and I have read a few. The book is not only informative but also well structured, well written, and very didactic and engaging. This book is based on Jungian Psychology and, therefore, it does discuss a a few things about the matter, but does not enter in the different schools of dream interpretation. If you are into Jungian psychoanalysis this book is for you.

If you are into dream interpretation and want to start with simple steps to decode your dreams, this is your book. It offers sound advice on who to interpret your dreams, which elements you should pay attention to, how to pose questions to your dreams, techniques to remember your dreams or make questions to your unconscious, and even advice on how to organize a dream workshop group.

The book is written in a very simple language, very entertaining, easy to read and understand, and truly helpful to explain your dreams to yourself or to your friends and family. It contains many examples of dreams and how to apply the techniques the author explains.

Some of the advice and steps give for dream interpretation are:

1/ Record your dreams using the present tense and simple language, mentioning your feelings in the dream.

2/ Underline or note action metaphors, exaggerated feelings and symbols.

3/ Generate a description asking what does this remind you in your waking life.

The five step method consists of:

1/ Check your first impression of the dream

2/ Note the action metaphors the dream has.

3/ Notice your feelings during the dream

4/ Notice the symbols, including characters and setting

5/ Look for the gift within the dream

The major flaws of the book are the chapter on symbols, which is quite simple and schematic, and leaves the reader wanting for more in a subject that needs of more depth and length, and the chapter on how to make a dream journal, which contains very obvious information.

Great for beginners.