Table of Contents

1- Foundations

2- The Imagination: A No-Nonsense Look.

3-Dreams, Myths and Everyday Life

4-Nuts and Bolts of Understanding Dreams: Order out of Chaos.

5-Traumatic Dreams: Fighting Iron Forests of Dragons.

6-Lucid Dreams…And Soaring to Asgard.

7-From Suffering to Integration: The Storyteller’s Map.

8-The King of Annwn

9-Conclusion

About the Author

Erik D. Goodwyn is an assistant professor and director of psychotherapy training at the University of Louisville, USA. He has published on the dreams of soldiers in combat zones, on archetype theory and cognitive anthropology and folklore studies, on the psychology of rituals around the world, on combining depth psychology with symbolic anthropology, and the application of ritual theory to grief and mourning in clinical practice. His previous books include Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy: A Ritual Approach, The Neurobiology of the Gods and, with Susan Greenwood, Magical Consciousness: An Anthropological and Neurobiological Approach (all Routledge).

Reviews

"Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images is a significant contribution to understanding and befriending dreams, those nightly visitors which inform and connect us to the greater realms of nature and the cosmos. Dr. Goodwyn has a gift for integrating a vast range of research and boiling it all down to digestible and useful concepts - the best dreamwork manual since Robert A. Johnson’s Inner Work."
- Jerry M. Ruhl, Ph.D., psychologist, teacher, and co-author of Living Your Unlived Life and Balancing Heaven and Earth."Drawing on a wide range of dream theorists and researchers, the author explores dream interpretation (Jungian concepts, etc.) in light of anthropology, folklore, mythology, neuroscience, dynamic systems theory, and other disciplines. Created as a practical guide for working with dreams, the book will appeal particularly to Jungian therapists as well as to a broader audience.This contemporary and creative text brings a renewed interest to the exploration of dreams."
-J. Bailey, Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, CHOICE

"Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images is a significant contribution to understanding and befriending dreams, those nightly visitors which inform and connect us to the greater realms of nature and the cosmos. Dr. Goodwyn has a gift for integrating a vast range of research and boiling it all down to digestible and useful concepts - the best dreamwork manual since Robert A. Johnson’s Inner Work." - Jerry M. Ruhl, Ph.D., psychologist, teacher, and co-author of Living Your Unlived Life and Balancing Heaven and Earth.