Book description to come.

This two-volume set examines dreams and dreaming from a variety of angles—biological, psychological, and sociocultural—in order to provide readers with a holistic introduction to this fascinating subject. Whether good or bad and whether we remember them or not, each night every one of us dreams. But what biological or psychological function do dreams serve? What do these vivid images and strange storylines mean? How have psychologists, religions, and society at large interpreted dreams, and how can a closer examination of our dreams provide useful insights? Dreams: Understanding Biology, Psychology, and Culture presents a holistic view of dreams and the dreaming experience that answers these and many other questions. Divided thematically, this two-volume book examines the complex and often misunderstood subject of dreaming through a variety of lenses. This collection is written by a large and diverse team of experts and edited by leading members of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) but remains an approachable and accessible introduction to this captivating topic for all readers.

Analyzing a Long Dream Series provides an extraordinary insight into the richness and variability of dreams, considering over 12,000 dreams that have been recorded for more than 30 years. Internationally recognized dream scientist Michael Schredl opens up his own personal dream series, offering a unique window into the interplay between waking life and dreaming. The book considers a huge range of dream topics, including family, friends, schoolmates, colleagues, erotic dreams, alongside the appearance of everyday objects. It also discusses rarer themes such as pain perception, temperature perception, and typical dreams about toilets, exams, and teeth. As the author is both the dreamer and the researcher, questions like why we dream about topics we have never experienced in waking life – for example, about the pain of being shot in the stomach – can be addressed, shedding light on the creative nature of dreams. The in-depth analyses provided in this book attempt to answer the field's most profound questions: why do we dream every night, and why do we dream in such creative ways about the issues that are important to us in waking life? The dreams analyzed question existing dream theories such as simulation theories, and the author proposes a function of recalled dreams for creative problem solving and provides ideas for future research. This fascinating book is an essential read for all dream researchers and students of the psychology of dreams.

Everyone has the innate ability to understand their dreams. We dream to gain the insight and awareness needed to work through issues, fears, challenges and personal demons, to understand our destiny, and to receive daily guidance in fulfilling our unique roles in life. This book gives readers the tools to begin journalling dreams, becoming aware of common symbols, understanding the meaning of dreams, and knowing intuitively whether this meaning is correct. Dreamwork Uncovered shows us that dreams can create inner harmony, peace and joy.

While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, Gananath Obeyesekere believes an even richer knowledge is possible through a bold confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, he fearlessly pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding. Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term "dream-ego" through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry.