Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming: Exploring Interior Landscape Through Practical Dreamwork

People in every culture of the world--while dreaming--are convinced that they are awake and surrounded by an absolutely real world.  Renowned Jungian analyst Robert Bosnak has also found that different characters in dreams have distinct inner lives and emotional attitudes that can be entered.  But to learn and experience the deep-felt impact of these separate perspectives we must abandon preconceived interpretations of our dream imagery, and instead become investigators of our dream territory--the landscapes of our soul.

Why--and in what ways--do dreams have the power to heal or transform us? Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming  relates Bosnak's journey to the Australian outback to probe the nature of dreaming with an Aboriginal spirit doctor.  From their conversations and through many absorbing case studies, we learn practical tools and processes to explore the depth of our inner lives, often with profound and startling results.  For example, a pregnant woman becomes aware of a hitherto unconscious pain in her body by entering
deeply--and with many resisitances--into a dream of a balloon torn to shreds, thus gaining a valuable insight into her emotional and medical condition.  A man dreaming of the Addams family participates in a macabre dream experiment with poison and can finally weep about his lover's imminent death from AIDS.

In the tradition of C. G. Jung, James Hillman, and Joseph Campbell, Bosnak meditates on the metaphoric, therapeutic, and philosophical implications of dreamwork.  This thoughtful and inspiring guide draws on Bosnak's experience as a therapist a traveler, and a dreamer, and is an invitation to look more closely at the meaning of this fundamental and common aspect of human existence -- and to contemplate the astonishing creative capacities of the soul.

Robert Bosnak currently trains analysts at the C. G. Jung Institute in Boston.