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This volume is an update of a work originally published in 1988 and edited by one of the founders of the experiential dream work movement, Montague Ullman, and his longtime colleague, Claire Limmer. It comes on the scene at a time when the interest in the biology of dreaming has captured the imagination of the public as well as clinicians, dream workers, and dream researchers. The Variety of Dream Experience reminds us that dreaming is a lived experience that connects our emotions to the current and past problematic areas of our lives; it is the bridge made by our creation of new and capturing metaphors that instantiate our concerns in these lively, largely visual metaphorical images. The desire to know the meaning of the lived experience is what stirs our interest in dreaming not what part of the upper central nervous is or is not involved in the process. Biologists are unable to go from the neural activity of a group of cells in the brain to the concomitant experience either when awake or when dreaming. The mind/brain barrier remains unbridged. Biology is unable to tell us what is occurring during the dream experience. Deriving the meaning of the dream or of any other human experience has not been and is unlikely to be in the domain of biology.
Eleven different authors have contributed 13 chapters to this volume. The first three chapters introduce the reader to Ullman's approach to experiential dream work, the continuing impact of having understood a particular dream experience (Nan Zimmerman), and the emotional support and high personal value that comes from participating in the sharing of dream experiences that occurs in an experiential dream group (Jenny Dodd).
The middle section of the book is devoted to a series of essays that illustrate how workers in various disciplines have incorporated dream work into their teaching and research. These include anthropology (Deborah Hillman), creative writing (Richard Jones), computer science (Edward Storm), political scienc