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Statistics on the use of dreams by analysts and patients are not easy to come by. Few analysts would admit to their own kind of oneirophobia, but one has the hunch that there is a fair amount of apprehension among those of us who purport to be knowledgeable about dream dynamics. It isn't that the dream has ceased to be recognized as the royal road to the unconscious, it's just that it takes too much of the analytic hour to get into a dream's nuances. Many analysts would say that in the overall economy of the analytic hour the dream isn't worth the effort. Ullman and Limmer challenge that assumption. They see the dream as immensely rewarding. Their book is a compilation of ways of expanding the experience of the dream for all, dreamer, professional psychotherapist, and others interested in oneiric phenomena.
The editors of this volume have gathered together a cadre of 12 writers on group dream work and related fields, including some interesting applications in psychology and psychiatry. Ullman and Limmer have also themselves contributed noteworthy chapters to the book. Ullman offers thoughts on “The Experiential Dream Group” and a final evocative chapter on “Dreams and Society.” Limmer, also a psychoanalyst, writes on “Dream Work and the Psychosomatic Process,” an intimate and personal account of the use of dreams in her healing process during and after two life-threatening illnesses. Ullman's chapters are refined and rehoned statements of his earlier work depicting the beginnings of experiential dream groups ( Working with Dreams, with , 1979). He has extended beyond his vigilance theory of dreaming “founded on familiar observable structures and processes in the nervous system.” The vigilance theory as he describes it is seen to be consistent both with present knowledge about the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system and with the widespread perception that dreaming occurs in order that the dreamer may be alert to sources of tension and conflict in