Two Books on Dream Interpretation
Introduction
Freud famously said that the goal of psychoanalysis was the making of the unconscious conscious, and he went on further to state elsewhere that "dreams are the Royal Road to the Unconscious." Now, needless to say, we must remember that Freud did not suddenly discover the Unconscious. Rather the Unconscious was always known to be there through its manifestations mostly in evil doings and the consequences thereof. Over the centuries writers have struggled with representing the Unconscious realm from the era of the great Greek tragedians like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides right up through all the struggles of civilization with this topic in religion, art and literature. What Freud did was to throw the spotlight on it, to examine it, to bring it to the forefront of humankind's concerns, to describe it, to sketch out, in however tentative a way, its structure. In short, he popularised the Unconscious.
I intend to review the two books here: Teach Yourself to Dream and The Secret Language of Dreams by Dr David Fontana, a psychology lecturer at the University of Wales in Cardiff, the first one written and published in 1997 and the second in 1994 respectively. Both are published by Duncan Baird Publishers, London. What brought them to my mind once again was (i) my continued exploration of my own dream world, now a long journey stretching over nearly thirty years (ii) my working through dream material with a friend online. I am reviewing them in this order as I acquired the second book he wrote before getting his earlier one.
I have dated the purchase of my copy of this book as 30/05/2000, a little over 16 years ago. I have found this book most useful and have returned to it again and again. One of the problems in dream interpretation is the plethora of rather poorly researched and simplistic dictionaries of dreams which reduce symbols down in a one-to-one correspondence without letting them become more potent by allowing them to strike multi-layered resonances in the mind of the dreamer. They seek to tie down a dream rather than release the dream from its bonds in the unconscious. Also, most of those dream dictionaries or compendiums are just collections of information and simply do not allow the dreamer to work through his or her dream systematically by interrogating all the personal associations of the dreamer. In short, in dream interpretation, the dreamer knows best. Likewise, in therapy, the client knows best. The therapist or workshop leader is just a facilitator, someone who accompanies the dreamer or the client on the road to personal interpretation. Dr. Fontana's book avoids all these thorny problems outlined.
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| The two books I am reviewing here |
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| My psychology library |
1. Teach Yourself to Dream
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| My Copy of this book |
As a professional psychologist, Dr Fontana proceeds in a logical and systematic, but not overly scientific, fashion as this is a book written for the layperson, not the expert. His introduction to the physiology of sleeping and the importance of REM sleep for our mental well-being is singularly well presented. He further discusses insomnia and the impact on the brain of using sleeping pills. He also dedicates a whole page to recommendations for getting better sleep. He then discusses the messages and meanings that dreams present us with and how we might interpret or read them. He points out that such messages and meanings are typically expressed in symbols. Fontana significantly cautions us that we have to learn "to unlock this symbolic language" (p. 22) He goes on to stress that these symbols are very personal to the dreamer and are rooted in that person's experience. In other words: throw away, or at least give scant attention to the dream dictionaries that claim a one-to-one correspondence between symbol X and meaning Y. In short, the symbol must be personally meaningful to the dreamer. However, there are, of course, generic symbols such as birds which represent freedom, fire which stands for purification and water for life - potent symbols that occur in all literature of whatever kind or genre throughout the civilized world.
We must engage with each symbol one by one in the dream as each one is an aspect of the dreamer and we must question each one as to its meaning. This process is slow and gradual. Such self-discovery can be painful, but it will always be rewarding as the personal meaning of symbols sheds light onto our real and authentic identity.
What makes this a superior book is that Dr Fontana gives many practical examples of practices that can be used to help us access our dreams in the first place and then set about interpreting them. He sets us many practical exercises at judiciously chosen intervals throughout this very fine book. One interesting chapter in the book is the one named "The Art of Dream Control" where we attempt to influence our dreams by asking a question of the unconscious process of dreaming before we go to sleep. For example, if something is bothering us we might offer it up to the dream world by saying something like: "O great unconscious let my dreams tonight tackle this problem," and so forth. I hasten to add here that these words quoted are mine and this routine mine each night before I go to sleep. However, they are based on the inspiration of Fontana and Fr. Tom Hamill from Dundalk, Ireland. Dr. Fontana makes much, as do most authors, of the efficacy of working with dreams and creative work. Kafka used a lot of imagery and incidents from his dreams in his stories and novels. Robert Louis Stevenson, who penned the classic The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, maintained that much of the plot came to him in his dreams. Beethoven and Wagner, the great musical composers, also averred that they owed great debts of gratitude to their dream life. One thing that leapt out at me from this book was the importance of little rituals especially at night before we go to bed, say lighting a candle, a stick of incense and so on. Such rituals work to enhance and provoke our dreams. Over the past thirty years, rituals have been important in my own spiritual life.
Other topics Dr Fontana covers in this short but comprehensive book are the significance of various colours in our dreams and he insists that we become aware if such colours do occur; the occurrence of lucid dreams where we have a full and clear awareness of what is going on; sharpening our awareness; drawing and questioning the significance of symbols, all the while recognizing that such symbols resonate with multiple meanings; a clearly explained introduction to archetypes and how to identify our personal ones; an interesting account of what he terms our personal mythology; a powerful section on what he terms our "whole self" or Jung called our "individuated self"; a brief account of the process of how to neutralize nightmares; the significance of dream sex and the healing power of our dreams.
Dr Fontana ends this insightful and comprehensive book with his own short "A-Z of Dream Symbols" but needless to say avoids a one-to-one correspondence or rigid association of any one symbol with its referent. He uses phrases like "is associated with," "we may find," "could mean," "variously represents," "the dream may be emphasizing," "X may stand for," and so on. All narrow rigidity and hard denotation are avoided in this selective dictionary which runs from p. 146 to p.153. Finally, the quality of the paper used and of the illustrations given is second to none, a factor which makes this book a most attractive purchase. In short, one can only say that the production quality of this book mirrors fittingly its superior content.
The Secret Language of Dreams
It will not surprise any reader that this is an earlier book written by Dr Fontana as it is a little more discursive and theoretical, and consequently a little less practical, though certainly not impractical. However, it is a well-researched study on the background of dreams and the Unconscious and it makes for a fitting companion read to our first reviewed book. What made this book an exceptionally interesting and instructive one for this reader is that the author draws upon his own extensive experience as a psychologist and also from the case notes he took over the years from his dream workshops. Dr Fontana manages deftly and effectively to help us open ourselves up to self-discovery, self-enrichment and inner healing by helping us in the task of interpreting our own dreams. This book is richly and potently illustrated, as rightly it should be quite simply because we all dream in images or pictures. The book, therefore, contains a "unique visual compendium" of common dream symbols to spark our interest, and imagination, and ultimately access and interpret our dream experience. The frontispiece of this book contains a lovely quotation worth reproducing here in full for its wisdom:
We must engage with each symbol one by one in the dream as each one is an aspect of the dreamer and we must question each one as to its meaning. This process is slow and gradual. Such self-discovery can be painful, but it will always be rewarding as the personal meaning of symbols sheds light onto our real and authentic identity.
What makes this a superior book is that Dr Fontana gives many practical examples of practices that can be used to help us access our dreams in the first place and then set about interpreting them. He sets us many practical exercises at judiciously chosen intervals throughout this very fine book. One interesting chapter in the book is the one named "The Art of Dream Control" where we attempt to influence our dreams by asking a question of the unconscious process of dreaming before we go to sleep. For example, if something is bothering us we might offer it up to the dream world by saying something like: "O great unconscious let my dreams tonight tackle this problem," and so forth. I hasten to add here that these words quoted are mine and this routine mine each night before I go to sleep. However, they are based on the inspiration of Fontana and Fr. Tom Hamill from Dundalk, Ireland. Dr. Fontana makes much, as do most authors, of the efficacy of working with dreams and creative work. Kafka used a lot of imagery and incidents from his dreams in his stories and novels. Robert Louis Stevenson, who penned the classic The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, maintained that much of the plot came to him in his dreams. Beethoven and Wagner, the great musical composers, also averred that they owed great debts of gratitude to their dream life. One thing that leapt out at me from this book was the importance of little rituals especially at night before we go to bed, say lighting a candle, a stick of incense and so on. Such rituals work to enhance and provoke our dreams. Over the past thirty years, rituals have been important in my own spiritual life.
Other topics Dr Fontana covers in this short but comprehensive book are the significance of various colours in our dreams and he insists that we become aware if such colours do occur; the occurrence of lucid dreams where we have a full and clear awareness of what is going on; sharpening our awareness; drawing and questioning the significance of symbols, all the while recognizing that such symbols resonate with multiple meanings; a clearly explained introduction to archetypes and how to identify our personal ones; an interesting account of what he terms our personal mythology; a powerful section on what he terms our "whole self" or Jung called our "individuated self"; a brief account of the process of how to neutralize nightmares; the significance of dream sex and the healing power of our dreams.
Dr Fontana ends this insightful and comprehensive book with his own short "A-Z of Dream Symbols" but needless to say avoids a one-to-one correspondence or rigid association of any one symbol with its referent. He uses phrases like "is associated with," "we may find," "could mean," "variously represents," "the dream may be emphasizing," "X may stand for," and so on. All narrow rigidity and hard denotation are avoided in this selective dictionary which runs from p. 146 to p.153. Finally, the quality of the paper used and of the illustrations given is second to none, a factor which makes this book a most attractive purchase. In short, one can only say that the production quality of this book mirrors fittingly its superior content.
The Secret Language of Dreams
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| My copy of this book |
Dreams are a conversation with oneself, a dialogue of symbols and images that takes place between the unconscious and the conscious levels of the mind.Topics covered in this book include the following: the history of dreams and dreaming; precognition and ESP; levels of meaning; a really good introduction to archetypes that clearly explains Jung's ideas; dream logic and dream scenery; themes like change, direction, identity, success, failure, relationships and sexuality, and loss and bereavement; Religion and Spirituality; symbols; states of being like flying, floating, falling, climbing etc; and describes the various environments created in dreams. Now the foregoing is just a tour of the topics in this book. There are also more topics than these covered, but like all things about the unconscious they are all somehow interconnected and interwoven. However, it is the artistic layout of the book that inspired me to buy it. The illustrations and artwork are all done by the artist Peter Malone whose personal site can be accessed here: Peter Malone Artist. If I get some money together I will buy some of his stuff sometime. The subtitle to this powerful book runs "A Visual Key to Dreams and Their Meanings" and that is precisely what this book gives the reader and to read it is to open the door to the wonderful mystery of our inner lives and to the beauty of our Real Selves.
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