Content area
Full Text
EXTRAORDINARY DREAMS AND HOW TO WORK WITH THEM by Stanley Krippner, Fariba Bogzaran, and Andre Percia de Carvalho. Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 201. $20.95 (paperback). ISBN 0-7914-5258-1.
Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work With Them bridges the fields of dream studies and parapsychology in a scholarly forum while providing practical guidance for understanding and working with dreams. The material is accessible to general readers and to psychologists not familiar with dream research, and it contains enough documentation to be a useful resource for those wanting to pursue particular topics in more depth.
Stanley Krippner, professor of psychology at Saybrook Graduate School, is well-known to the parapsychology community and has had extensive experience in dream research, going back to the Maimonides dream telepathy studies in the 1960s. Fariba Bogzaran is the founding director of the Dream Studies program at John E Kennedy University. Andre Percia de Carvalho is a Brazilian clinical psychologist. Notably, this book is part of a series in Dream Studies published by SUNY Press, edited by Robert Van de Castle, who is also experienced in the parapsychology of dreams.
The authors begin by distinguishing extraordinary dreams from ordinary ones. Ordinary dreams usually reflect our recent daily experiences. Extraordinary dreams have a creative component: "They seem to help us prepare for the future, generate a new idea, or provide helpful insights to our waking life. They may provide the breakthrough that is needed in articulating a new personal myth, rather than reflecting myths that already exist. We have referred to these dreams as 'extraordinary' because they are strange and unusual, yet precious and beautiful" (p. 4).
The organization of the book is straightforward: "Each chapter focuses on one type of extraordinary dream. It provides a definition, a historical perspective, and a way in which dream practitioners can appreciate, understand, and/or work with the material...