Kelly Bulkeley

Dreams: A Reader on Religious, Cultural, and Psychological Dimensions of Dreaming.

Edited by Kelly Bulkeley

Palgrave, November 2001

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This book offers a one-volume compendium of the best contemporary scholarship on the study of dreams, bringing together leading researchers from religious studies, anthropology, and psychology.

Blurbs and Reviews

“A fascinating collection of readings—as rich and diverse as the realm of dreams itself. Bulkeley brings together scholars who explore the science and philosophy of dreams with sophistication, while remaining accessible to readers. A rich array of cultural approaches are represented, and differing western schools receive ample time for a stimulating debate.”

—Deirdre Barrett, Associate Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School

“The dream: hieroglyph, psychic map, cultural artifact, random neural discharge? A century after Freud’s contested odyssey into the interpretation of dreams, this rich volume opens multiple portals to the universal otherworld of dreaming and to some of the most important questions in dream research today …a unique new guide to an endless landscape.”

—Kimberley C. Patton, Associate Professor in the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion, Harvard Divinity School

“There is, arguably, no contemporary scholar writing in the field of the psychology of religion who to date has accomplished a more thorough and critical exploration of the cultural, historical, psychodynamic and religious meanings of the dreaming process than Kelly Bulkeley. This remarkable compilation of carefully chosen essays by leading scholars offers both the student and the professional a comprehensive survey of the best scholarship and the sharpest intellectual controversies that dreaming has provoked world wide and historically… This reader is an epic survey of art, religion, psychology, anthropology literature and diverse human cultures as seen thought the peculiar but illuminating lens of ‘The Dream.'”

—John McDargh, Associate Professor, Department of Theology, Boston College

“Whether you are a scientist or a humanist, a rationalist or a poet, Bulkeley’s collection on dreams will both fascinate and entertain you. Bulkeley knows how to get inside of dreams; he also knows how to take the outsider’s point of view. The individual and the collective, the scientific and the poetic, the past and the present are given their due in this wise selection of readings.”

—Don Browning, Alexander Campbell Professor of Ethics and the Social Sciences, University of Chicago

“I know of no other collection that draws together such a wide range of current approaches to dreams and provides such a comprehensive coverage of the present state of research across disciplines. Bulkeley has deftly assembled so many seminal and challenging essays on dreaming, all of which reflect the latest developments in their respective fields. A veritable feast of dream delights for both the novice, and the seasoned dream researcher.”

— Michele Stephen, Ph.D. Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
Introduction: Contemplating Freud’s Navel

Section I. Traditions

1. The Context of Buddhist Dream Experience and Practice. Serinity Young

2. Through the Looking Glass: Dreams in Ancient Egypt. Kasia Szpakowska

3. Dreams and Dream Interpreters in Mesopotamia and in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Scott Noegel

4. Dreams and Dreaming in Islam. Marcia Hermansen

5. Sending a Voice, Seeking a Place: Visionary Traditions among Native Women of the Plains. Lee Irwin

6. The Role of Dreams in Religious Enculturation among the Asabano of Papua New Guinea. Roger Ivar Lohmann

7. A Content Analysis of Mehinaku Dreams. Thomas Gregor

8. Making Dreams Into Music: Contemporary Songwriters Carry On an Age-Old Dreaming Tradition. Nancy Grace

Section II. Individuals

9. Kagwahiv Mourning: Dreams of a Bereaved Father. Waud Kracke

10. Reflecting on a Dream in Jungian Analytic Practice. Jane White-Lewis

11. Group Work with Dreams: The “Royal Road” to Meaning. Jeremy Taylor

12. Wish, Conflict, and Awareness: Freud and the Problem of the “Dream Book”. Bertram Cohler

13. Penelope as Dreamer: The Perils of Interpretation. Kelly Bulkeley
Section III. Methods

14. Western Dreams About Eastern Dreams. Wendy Doniger

15. The Dream of Scholarship: Some Notes on the Historian of Mysticism as a Dreaming Creative. Jeffrey Kripal

16. The New Anthropology of Dreaming. Barbara Tedlock

17. How Metaphor Structures Dreams: The Theory of Conceptual Metaphor Applied to Dream Analysis. George Lakoff

18. Dreams, Inner Resistance, and Self-Reflection. James DiCenso

19. Turning Away at the Navel of the Dream: Religion and the Body of the Mother at the Beginning and End of Interpretation. Diane Jonte-Pace

20. Using Content Analysis to Study Dreams: Applications and Implications for the Humanities. G. William Domhoff

21. The New Neuropsychology of Sleep: Implications for Psychoanalysis. J. Allan Hobson

22. Consciousness in Dreaming: A Metacognitive Approach. Tracey L. Kahan

23. Dialogue with a Skeptic. Frederick Crews and Kelly Bulkeley

The Wilderness of Dreams: Exploring the Religious Meanings of Dreams in Modern Western Culture.
By Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.
SUNY, 1994
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Blurbs and Reviews

“This book is a must for those professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, clergy, etc.) who have an interest in the ‘wonderland’ of dreams… Surely, this excellent book will stimulate considerable discussion in a number of professions. I hope it will also stimulate considerable dialogue between psychology and religion, which are not really mutually exclusive (sorry, Sigmund!).”
—Daniel E. Williams, Contemporary Psychology

Table of Contents

Part 1. Introduction: First Steps
1. Dreams Through the History of
Religions
2. Exploring the Wilderness of Dreams

Part 2. Eight Paths into the Wilderness
of Dreams
3. Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud
4. Surrealism: Andre Breton
5. Analytical Psychology: C.G. Jung
6. Content Analysis: Calvin Hall
7. Neuroscience: J. Allan Hobson
8. Lucid Dreaming: Stephen LaBerge
9. Anthropology: Barbara Tedlock
10. Cognitive Psychology: Harry Hunt

Part 3. Dreams and Interpretation
11. The Crisis of Dream Interpretation: Gadamer to the
Rescue
12. A Hermeneutic Critique of Modern Dream
Interpretation Theories
13. The Interpretation of Dreams: Hermeneutic
Principles
14. Dora’s Dream: The Hermeneutic Principles in Action

Part 4. Dreams and Religious Meaning
15. The Concept of Root Metaphors
16. Flying with Great Eagles and Eating Short Bananas:
Examples of Root Metaphors in Dreams
17. Root Metaphors and the Eight Paths into the Dream
Wilderness
18. Towards Integration: Interpreting “Being Dissected
by the Evil Alien”

Part 5. Conclusion: Out of the Wilderness
19. Why All the Interest Now in the Religious Meaning
of Dreams?
20. The Future of the Wilderness of Dreams

Appendix 1. Other Paths into the Dream Wilderness
Appendix 2. Does God Speak in Dreams?

Among All These Dreamers: Essays on Dreaming and Modern Society.
(Edited anthology)
By Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.
SUNY, 1996

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Blurbs and Reviews

“[F]or American dreamers and scholars who still consider dreams and dream studies as primarily intrapsychic and psychological phenomena, this book is an extremely valuable attempt to reverse the trend and to move in the direction of social involvement and social responsibility.”
—Mary-Therese Dombeck, American Anthropologist

Table of Contents

Introduction
I. Dreams and Social Reform
1. Dreams and Social Responsibility: Teaching a Dream
Course in the Inner-City. Jane White-Lewis
2. The 55-Year Secret: Using Nightmares to Facilitate
Psychotherapy in a Case of Childhood Sexual Abuse.
Marion A. Cuddy and Kathryn E. Belicki
3. Seeking the Balance: Do Dreams Have a Role in
Natural Resource Management? Herbert W. Schroeder
II. Dreams and Dialogues with “Others”
5. Reflections on Dreamwork with Central Alberta Cree:
An Essay on an Unlikely Social Action Vehicle. Jayne
Gackenbach
6. Sex, Gender, and Dreams: From Polarity to Plurality.
Carol Schreier Rupprecht
III. Dreams, Spirituality, and Modernity
7. Traversing the Living Labyrinth: Dreams and
Dreamwork in the Psychospiritual Dilemma of the
Postmodern World. Jeremy Taylor
8. Invitation at the Threshold: Pre-Death Spiritual
Experiences. Patricia Bulkley
9. Western Dreams about Eastern Dreams. Wendy Doniger
IV. Dreams and Critical Reflections on “Our” Culture
10. Political Dreaming: Dreams of the 1992 Presidential
Election. Kelly Bulkeley
11. Healing Crimes: Dreaming Up the Solution to the
Criminal Justice Mess. Bette Ehlert
12. Let’s Stand Up, Regain Our Balance, and Look Around
at the World. Johanna King
13. Conclusion

Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion, and Psychology.
By Kelly Bulkeley, Ph. D.
SUNY, 1999

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This wide-ranging exploration of the spiritual and scientific dimensions of dreaming offers new connections between the ancient wisdom of the world’s religious traditions, which have always taught that dreams reveal divine truths, and the recent findings of modern psychological research. Drawing upon philosophy, anthropology, sociology, neurology, literature, and film criticism, this book offers a better understanding of the mysterious complexity and startling creative powers of human dreaming experience. For those interested in gaining new perspectives on dreaming, the powers of the imagination, and the newest frontiers in the dialogue between religion and science, Visions of the Night promises to be a welcome resource.

Blurbs and Reviews

“I am most intrigued by Bulkeley’s notion of dreams as root metaphors. Such a notion fits in well with an existential-phenomenological approach to dream interpretation, and also lends itself to understanding dreams in the context of spirituality. I think this text matches the quality of Bulkeley’s 1994 book (The Wilderness of Dreams), which I regard as a potential ‘classic’ in dream theory.”
—Hendrika Vande Kemp, Fuller Theological Seminary

“In Visions of the Night Kelly Bulkeley articulates a thesis which allows dreams to be accessible to the most reductive scientific analyses while concluding that they are both meaningful and religious. Punctuated by illustrations taken from a variety of cultural arenas, Bulkeley weaves a narrative that sifts through a panoply of psychological, sociological, and religious perspectives on dreams, engages cutting-edge debates, and speaks to the vicissitudes of individual and collective dreaming…. The virtue of this book lies not simply in its guiding thesis but in its scope. It provides a rich feast of perspectives on dreaming and an entry into pivotal controversies in the field.”
—William B. Parsons, The Journal of Religion

“This book, both a personal and scholarly journey, is well written, tightly argued, and evocative of the deeper regions of the human heart and mind. It covers a wide spectrum of disciplines, from the literary to the religious to the scholarly/historical, and has academic depth as well as an easy reading style. I very much respect Bulkeley’s scope of knowledge and breadth of integration.”
—Edward Bruce Bynum, author of Families and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Kelly Bulkeley offers us a series of essays on dreams and dreaming through a multiperspectival lens of several contemporary psychological and textual approaches used in religious studies….Self-contained chapters on dreams and conversion, neurophysiological models for understanding the religious meaning of dreams, dreams as play, and dreams and environmental ethics–to name just some of the thirteen topics addressed–awakened me to the many ways in which dreams deepen understanding of religion and connect us thoughtfully to issues of personal and political significance….Bulkeley is a prolific writer on dreams and religion from a psychological perspective. In this latest work beneath his erudite conversational informality lies not only a deep passtionate conviction about the contribution dreams make to human life and a human religion but a deep concern for a culture or a nation that has a perverted relationship to its dreams.”
— Chris Ross, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Varieties of Religious Dream
Experience
1. Root Metaphor Dreams
2. Dreaming and Conversion
3. Where Do Dreams Come From?
4. Sharing Dreams in Community Settings
5. Dreams and Environmental Ethics
6. Dreaming in a Totalitarian Society: A Winnicottian
Reading of Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of
Dreams
7. Dreaming is Play: A Response to Freud
8. Gods, REMS, and What Neurology Has to Say about the
Religious Meanings of Dreams
9. The Evil Dreams of Gilgamesh: Interpreting Dreams in
Mythological Texts
10.Wisdom’s Refuge in the Night: Dreams in The
Mahabharata, The Ramayana, and Richard III
11.Dreamily Deconstructing the Dream Factory: The
Wizard of Oz and A Nightmare on Elm Street
12.Dreams within Films, Films within Dreams
13.Dreaming in Russia, August 1991
14.Postscript on Dreams, Religion, and Psychological
Studies
Bibliographical Essays

Transforming Dreams Learning Spiritual Lessons from the Dreams You Never Forget.
By Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.
John Wiley & Sons, February 2000
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Nearly everyone experiences, at least once or twice in their lives, a dream of extraordinary power and intensity, a dream that strikes an emotional chord deep within them. From the dawn of history people have regarded such dreams as an important source of spiritual wisdom and insight. Modern psychology, too, has long recognized the importance of these “Big Dreams”– Carl Jung referred to them as “the richest jewels in the treasure-house of the soul.”

Transforming Dreams shows readers how to make sense of those special dreams that “by their very nature invite people to grow beyond themselves.” Drawing on Bulkeley’s own innovative research and an array of sources ranging from Eastern and Western mythologies and religions to state-of-the-art brain science and neurology, this book explores the roles that erotic dreams, nightmares, flying dreams, and dreams of dying have played in people’s lives throughout history. Transforming Dreams offers an original method of dream interpretation that integrates both spiritual and psychological approaches, helping people discover in their most memorable dreams a pathway to deepening their self-knowledge, broadening their emotional awareness, and liberating their imagination. Read an article about the book.

Blurbs and Reviews

“Kelly Bulkeley guides readers on an evocative journey through dreams that have transformed people’s lives. In clear, engaging language he shows how all dreamers can benefit from their nightly images and become receptive to their own ‘big dreams.’ Highly recommended.”
—Patricia Garfield, author of Creative Dreaming and The Dream Messenger

“An inspiring book that will transform how you understand your dreams. From Jacob’s and Achilles’ dreams to contemporary dreams, Kelly Bulkeley weaves ancient wisdom with unique and practical insights into life’s most memorable dreams and nightmares.”
—Alan Siegel, President, Association for the Study of Dreams

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One: Tales
1. Dreams of Reassurance
2. Dreams of Making Love
3. Nightmares
4. Dreams of Death
Part Two: Pathways
5. Reflecting on Your Dreams
6. Sharing Your Dreams
7. Following Your Dreams
8. Creating Your Dreams
Conclusion: We Are All Big Dreamers

Dreams of Healing: Transforming Nightmares into Visions of Hope
By Kelly Bulkeley
Paulist Press, 2003
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This book shows the value of dreams in helping people who have suffered a personal and/or community crisis to work through their losses and develop a new capacity for creative living. The focus is on the tremendous healing potential of dreaming in times of crisis—even the most terrifying post-traumatic nightmares are part of a healing process that ultimately leads to a deepening of spiritual wisdom and self-understanding. Dozens of examples are given of people who are trying to deal with a horrible collective disaster (like the terrorist attack of September 11) as well as people who have suffered personal catastrophes like sexual abuse, auto accidents, house fires, etc. The book’s goal is to provide readers with a basic set of skills to use in working with dreams and nightmares during times of crisis and disaster.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Post-Traumatic Stress and Nightmares
a. The PTSD Diagnosis
b. Nan’s Dream Series
c. The Therapeutic Value of Dreamsharing

2. Ripple Effects
a. Ground Zero Dreaming
b. Natural Disasters
c. Mourning

3. The Fear of New Dangers
a. More Terrorist Attacks?
b. Nan’s Fears
c. Safe Spaces

4. Flying and Falling
a. Crashing Planes
b. The Magic, and Peril, of Flying
c. Terrorists at Domenican College

5. Disease
a. Anthrax Anxiety
b. Dreaming and the Body
c. Personal Projections

6. Bad Guys
a. Unconscious Racial Profiling
b. Nan’s Dreams of Phil
c. I Am the Shadow

7. War and Protest
a. Crises of Conscience
b. On the Side of the Enemy
c. Family Battles

8. Anticipations
a. Did They See It Coming?
b. Possible Explanations
c. A Caregiving Response

9. Visions of Hope
a. Life Beyond September 11
b. Transformational Dream Analysis
c. A Conversation with Reverend Coughlin

Conclusion
a. The Practice of Dreamsharing
b. The Theory of Dreamsharing
c. Dreams of the Future

Notes
Bibliography
Index