Obviously, perhaps, this is a kind of tag-along page. I did want to tell you, however, that my most favorite book on dreams is one on content analysis of dreams:  The Individual and His Dreams, by Calvin Hall and Vernon Nordby, c.1972. I do wish they’d bring out a newer edition because the type is so small, but I was able to get 3 copies from Amazon. The appeal of this book is that the authors have studied  over 50,000 dreams and analyzed them for content. “To analyze means  to break down a verbal report into its constituent elements and count the number of times that each element occurs.”  (For instance, success and failure, good fortune and misfortune,  aggressive vs. friendly interactons between the sexes,  animals,  the sex of stranger dream figures, body parts, the importance of  dream series and much much more, thus enabling one to compare his/her own dreams with a sampling of the population of dreamers.)

How to Remember Your Dreams

1. Accept and value each dream, no matter how foolish or fragmentary it may seem.
2. Before retiring, plan to remember whatever dreams come to you,. Place a pad and pencil within easy reach of your sleeping spot.
3. If you have trouble recalling  your dreams, plan a time when you can spontaneouslyawaken and be unhurried.
4. When you waken, lie still and allow the dream images to flow back into your mind. If no images come, free associate or allow image to come. Be aware of thoughts upon awakening.
5. When dream recall is complete in one body position, move gently into other sleeping positions to see if that triggers additional recxall. Record your dreams immediately6, whenever they come to you.
6. Regardless of the method used to collect your dreams–by writing or taping–make the first record with your  eyes closed.
7. Make your records in the order that you recall your dreams. Exception: Make note of unique verbal  expressions, poems, names, unusual phrases first, regardless of order,
8. Select titles for your dream stores to help recall them later and toidentify their unique aspects.
9. Share your dreams with a friend or others.
10. Reading earlier dreams you have recorded is another excellent dream stimulator.  (Adapted from Patricia Garfield’s Creative Dreaming.

Possible Functions of Dreams

1. Wish fulfillment (dreaming of food when you’re on a diet).
2. Subliminal message (finding missing wallet under car seat when was in a hurry).
3. Portrayal of inner conflict (Can’t unlock door to girlfriend’s house)
4. Anniversary reminder (dream of a death a year later)
5. Prospective (likely results of proceeding on path of action)-Probable future results
6. Picture-Thinking (ideas, problem-solving in symbolic form)
7. Traumatic replay of horrific events-not yet fully understood
8. Compensatory (what is needed for wholeness; another side of personality)
9. Reflects ego state (roof falling in)
10. Making dreamer aware of emotions not fully experienced
11. Vehicle for unexplainable phenomenon

  Part One

According to Henri Bergson, “Stored memories aspire to the light, but do not even try to rise to it…they know that I, as a living and acting being, have something else to do…but suppose that I am asleep. Then these memories…have raised the trap door which has kept them beneath the floor of consciousness, arise from the depths; they rise, they move, they perform in the night of unconsciousness a great danse macabre. They rush together to the door which has been left ajar.”

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