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In her
new book, dream teacher Bonnie Buckner explores the dreaming
world using her own experiences as a starting point and as
examples. We learn of her family, her mentor, her nightly
dreams, and her romantic relationships. In fact, most of the
book - divided into two parts, Experiencing Dreaming and Learning
the Dream Language - is very much a personal project in which
the author shares her opinions on dream sources, dream meanings,
and dream language. She shares many of her own dreams in great
detail, but does not offer the over-used and often inaccurate
list of dream symbols typically found in books on this subject.
After becoming well-acquainted with the author's personal
history in Part 1 (her father first got her started with dream
interpretation), she moves into the much smaller Part 2, which
is devoted to explaining the difference between closed (resolved)
and open (unresolved) dreams. She also describes types of
dreams, dividing them into seven types: nightmare, repetitive,
busy, clear, great, light, and union.
The final pages of the book offer suggestions for leading
dream groups, notes, and acknowledgements. Throughout the
book, Buckner provides helpful "lessons" in boldface
type presented as sidebars to the main text. These lessons
condense important material into easily remembered and understood
nuggets of information.
Readers seeking a purely objective work from a third-person
perspective should look elsewhere as Bucker's own history,
experiences, and opinions fill every page. There's plenty
of helpful information here for novice dream interpreters,
but readers will have to sift through the abundance of personal
material filling the pages as well.
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