Dreaming Your Real Self: A Personal Approach to Dream Interpretation

In her book DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF Joan Mazza explores the meaning of dreams. Mazza is a psychologist and licensed mental health counselor with a practice involving work with ongoing dream groups. Mazza also leads dream seminars for mental health professionals. To me, Mazza seems like the Dr. Ruth of dreams-incredibly knowledgeable and pragmatic. Her focus seems to be the significance of dreams for individual dreamers, not the neurological underpinnings of synapses. (However, she briefly addresses some ideas on the why of dreams, such as "the meaningless random firing of neurons in the brain..." and "messages from God, guardian angels, the spirit world, the Higher Self, and the Shadow".) If you've been wondering what a particular dream could mean, this book should provide you with a good place to begin exploring the subject. Mazza has written a "user-friendly" text in which she discusses material she collected from various sources including her own ongoing dream groups. Her approach involves facilitating an interpretation, not providing it. She suggests each dreamer must act as his own interpreter and she provides some tools to do so. Her work has lead her to formulate some ideas about "Common Dreams and Themes" such as falling, running, being in public with no clothes on, etc. which she includes in a separate section. I have not experienced every one of the topics she discusses, but have had dreams about being paralyzed, falling, flying, traveling long distances, being terrified by an unknown presence, etc. I found the thematic section most useful as Mazza provides suggestions at the end of each segment in a "try this" paragraph. Although Mazza finds dreams often appear to have common elements just as often they do not. Even when the dream seems common, the individual dreamer will have his own interpretation. Each of us has unique dreams. As I read Mazza's book, I kept thinking of the narrator in "Rebecca" who opens with "Last night I dreamt again of Manderlay..." I myself had a recurring dream from childhood on, that only became clearer to me as an adult in my forties--and I am still exploring it. The dream may have been a childhood memory or it a memory from a past life. I told my mother every time I had the dream and she would say, oh maybe you are another Bridie Murphy (a reincarnate writer). Maybe, maybe not, but as a result of this and other dreams, exploring the meaning of dreams has become a lifelong habit. On more than one occasion discovering the meaning of a dream has proved incredibly illuminating. I will never forget a dream I had where I was "sitting on a fence" talking to my ex-boss. This dream helped me to understand my suppressed feelings about my boss. I was literally "on the fence" where he was concerned. Meaningless random firings of neurons indeed. Read Joan Mazza's book and get a handle on your own dream life.

I could tell at first glance that Joan Mazza's Dreaming Your Real Self was a credible book about this intriguing topic, that it wasn't one of those silly books that tries to tell you that this means that and no two ways about it. And the further I got into it, the more pleased I was. First of all, she lets readers know that she's only suggesting possible ways to think about their dreams. When it comes to dreams, clearly, what any dream therapist or author claims is only valuable if it helps you understand yourself in some way. Next, I like that her focus is on health and self-knowledge, not merely on diagnosing neuroses or worse. And then, her approach is such a joyful one: she helps us find out how our dreams are very likely making secret rebels of us all. Dreaming Your Real Self is practical too. For instance, I've been having this recurrent dream about babies (often rather prococious babies), and I checked her section on what this might mean. It began when my nest emptied, so I assumed I had it all figured out. Yet I got some surprising insights, especially that the symbols in the dream relate to what's happening to me NOW, even though my subconscious chose this particular type of dream several years ago. Now I've got something to reflect about and work with. Perhaps I'm actually dreaming of my own untapped potential? The works I haven't yet written that keep nagging at me to be born?She's got a great section on dreams and creativity too, and since the latter is my own area of expertise (I've written a bestselling book called WRITING IN FLOW), I read it extra carefully. Mazza is right on target here too, right down to her descriptions of creative flow, and thus proves herself to me as a trustworthy guide to the realm of dreams.

As the author of the Ghostwriter Mystery series, it's no mystery to me how Joan Mazza's Book on Dreams leaves its readers wide awake and clued in to a more meaningful life. Sleeping has never been such fun and so enlightening. Thanks Joan.

I could tell at first glance that Joan Mazza's Dreaming Your Real Self was a credible book about this intriguing topic, that it wasn't one of those silly books that tries to tell you that this means that and no two ways about it. And the further I got into it, the more pleased I was. First of all, she lets readers know that she's only suggesting possible ways to think about their dreams. When it comes to dreams, clearly, what any dream therapist or author claims is only valuable if it helps you understand yourself in some way. Next, I like that her focus is on health and self-knowledge, not merely on diagnosing neuroses or worse. And then, her approach is such a joyful one: she helps us find out how our dreams are very likely making secret rebels of us all. Dreaming Your Real Self is practical too. For instance, I've been having this recurrent dream about babies (often rather prococious babies), and I checked her section on what this might mean. It began when my nest emptied, so I assumed I had it all figured out. Yet I got some surprising insights, especially that the symbols in the dream relate to what's happening to me NOW, even though my subconscious chose this particular type of dream several years ago. Now I've got something to reflect about and work with. Perhaps I'm actually dreaming of my own untapped potential? The works I haven't yet written that keep nagging at me to be born?She's got a great section on dreams and creativity too, and since the latter is my own area of expertise (I've written a book called Writing in Flow), I read it extra carefully. Mazza is right on target here too, right down to her descriptions of creative flow, and thus proves herself to me as a trustworthy guide to the realm of dreams.

Believe it or not, this book does not contain a single list of dream symbols or subjects with universal meanings along side.Far from it.Anything but Freudian, Joan Mazza makes a convincing case for individual dream meanings. She gives practical advice not only on interpreting your own dreams but on how to improve dream recall.This book will convince you that dreams are not the random firings of neurons but instead are important messages from the subconscious to the conscious and that anyone can learn to learn from their dreams.