Applying Ullman’s Dream Methodology

Rare is the book that appeals both intellectually and emotionally to the reader, that generates reflection and excitement on successive pages. Most academic books (the kind I love to read and review) often stimulate the mind with new insights or approaches to a specific field, but they never emotionally grab the reader. Any thoughts or ideas applicable to the life or research of the reader are tangential to the book, and often one will become so lost in those thoughts that it will be several minutes before one realizes that he/she has read the last few pages uncomprehendingly. With Ullman and Limmer the “read” is different. The tone is conversational in many of the pieces; there is an almost total absence of jargon and a lucidity with which the process of dream work is explained. The book generates an intellectual interest in a useful technique for understanding dreams and the emotional response of considering participation in it. This is a revised, second edition of the 1987 book. The new edition includes some revised or expanded chapters, along with three new ones. Regrettably, a couple were dropped, about which I will write more below.