Alice Anne Parker - Understand Your Dreams: 2500 Basic Dream Images and How to Interpret Them

DREAMS

H J KRAMER

NEW WORLD LIBRARY
NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

Copyright 1991, 1995, 2001 by Alice Anne Parker

An H J Kramer Book

published in a joint venture with

New World Library

Editing: Katharine Farnam Conolly

Cover Art: Seventh Wave by Hal Kramer

Cover Design: Mary Ann Casler

Typesetting: Tona Pearce Myers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parker, Alice Anne, 1939

Understand your dreams / Alice Anne Parker.Rev. and expanded.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-915811-95-2 (alk. paper)

1. Dream interpretation. I. Title.

BF1091.P24 2001

154.6'3dc21 2001002702

First Printing, September 2001

ISBN 0-915811-95-2

Manufactured in Canada on acid-free paper

Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

With heartfelt thanks to:
Dr. Thomas Maughan
Jane Roberts
Eya Yellin
Alvan Perry Parker

S everal years ago, my friend Bosco dBruzzi suggested that I write a book on dream images. Like most serious dream workers, I had a powerful aversion to the idea of a dream dictionary, even though I owned a collection of fascinating versions of nineteenth-century bestsellers, including What Your Dream Meant by Martini the Palmist.

Then one day as I was leafing through Heal Your Body, Louise Hays invaluable handbook on the metaphysical sources for physical problems, I realized that a comparable book on dream images would be an effective tool for anyone interested in dreams. My friend Sara Halprin suggested that I offer associations for the images rather than meanings, and the book was on its way.

I particularly want to thank Louise Hay for inspiring the design of this book, and for her visionary, yet matter-of-fact, guidance.

I am also indebted to Gabrielle Lusser Rico and Tony Buzan, who independently developed similar techniques of clustering, or arranging information in a pattern of circles, as I have done with dreams. Rico developed this process of nonlinear brainstorming as a means of stimulating creativity and coherence in student writers in the United States. At the same time, in England, Tony Buzan used a process he called mapping as a way of accessing both sides of the brain while organizing a mass of information. I have long used Tonys mapping technique, as described in his book Use Both Sides of Your Brain, to play with ideas and organize workshop material, but it wasnt until I read Ricos Writing the Natural Way that I saw how useful the clustering process could be for recording dreams.

Each of us is honored by constant friends who support and encourage us through the disappointments that lead to our success. I am privileged to include in this category Tam Mossman, whose expert advice has contributed enormously to my confidence and growth as a writer. My dear friend LaUna Huffines gracefully led me to the perfect publishers, Hal and Linda Kramer. My daughter, April Severson, my husband, Henry Holthaus, and my allies, Freude Bartlett and Mary Kathryn Cope, receive my heartfelt thanks for their years of relentless confidence in my work. This book owes a vast, if unspecifiable, debt to the friendship of Mel Lee, Lana Sawyer, Owen Sawyer, Barbara Such, Peter Bloch, Mary Platt, Kathy Vinton, Herb Long, Harold Cope, Terence Stamp, Sheila Rainer, Pamela Norris, Peggy Donavan, and Herb Goodman. I am also grateful to the members of my Honolulu workshop in Interactive Dreaming, who gave me such useful feedback while I was developing the image catalogue. Thanks to Sandra Brockman, Mary Kathryn Cope, Nancy Crane, Bosco dBruzzi, Carla Hayashi, Henry Holthaus, Jan Kaeo, Luana Kuhns, Patricia Martin, Garrett Miyake, Karen Miyake, Georgia Putnam, Jessica Putnam, Doris Rarick, Helen Schlapak, John Squires, and Margaret Stallings.

My thanks also go to all of those who have so generously shared their dreams in my workshops, on DreamLine, my radio show, and in the DreamLine newspaper column.

I must thank so many great dreamers I have worked with during the last five years since the second edition was published, or who have sent me dreams as research material, as their dreams have provided such rich images and stimulating themes. In particular thanks to my daughter, April Severson, a true genius of dreams since babyhood, to Linda Lum, Robin Farris, Sally Klemm, Katy Brook, Bosco dBruzzi, Glenn Murray, Athena Lou, Jack Barnett, Sheila Rainer, Xaxa Mason, Darnelle Ovitt, Lori Aquino, Peter Bloch, Sara Halprin, Cassandra Phillips, Carolyn Wolfe, Sarah Small, David Dalton, Lana Sawyer, Margaret Stallings, Marty Garner, Jon Christie, Desiree Madrid, Alba Martinez, and Roy Tjioe.

I owe special thanks to Mayla Blakely for her editing and comments on the new dream images, to Monique Muhlenkamp and Katie Farnam Conolly at New World Library for their attentive support; to my husband, Henry Holthaus, for his unstinting love and encouragement; and, once again, to Linda and Hal Kramer, the kind of publishers authors dream of.

Introduction to
the Third Edition

S everal months ago I read a review of Understand Your Dreams on one of the online bookstores. The woman writing the review praised my book, but said she found the Eight-Step Method too cumbersome to use all the time and wished there was an easier, faster way to get to the meaning of a dream. I agreed. I regularly use a much shorter version in my daily practice and when I teach dream workshops. Its a great tool when Im working with dreams as a guest on radio shows where a dream has to be quickly unfolded before listeners tune out. Youll find this shorter Three-Step Method in Part One. And a special thanks to the online reviewer for inspiring me to include the shorter method in this new edition.