Our Dreaming Mind

Inspirational imagery revealed in dreams to Muhammad, Gandhi, Descartes, Wagner, Handel, Coleridge, Yeats, Orson Welles, Elias Howe and many others has wrought significant changes in politics, science, art, music, film, literature and religion. Yet dreams have been devalued in Western culture, and one reason for this, suggests Van de Castle, is that Freud's forging of strong links among dreams, neuroses and sex has thwarted a wider exploration of the full meaning of dreams. Former director of the University of Virginia Medical School's Sleep and Dream Laboratory, the author explores the dream theories of Freud, Jung, Montague Ullman, Fritz Perls and others. He surveys the importance of dream imagery in ancient and non-Western cultures and crams in a wealth of information on children's dreams, recurrent dreams, nightmares, gender differences in dreaming and much else. This immensely readable resource is a monumental history of dreams and a practical stimulus for those who want to remember and work with their dreams. Illustrated. (Aug.)