Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth

A noted author and Jungian analyst teaches how to use dreams and inner exercises to achieve personal wholeness and a more satisfying life.

He also warned against passive daydreaming concerning any real person for they will feel something over the collective unconscious. Compared inner work to marching around the walls of Jericho -- conquering a psychic center might take years of persistent work.

All in all: simple and concise. I recommend it.


excellent for dream work   June 13, 2004
 4 out of 7 found this review helpful

though i wouldn't follow the author's exact attributions to symbols in dreams (use your personal ones - what do they mean to you?), the book is still excellent for interpretation and analysis. keep reading it, especially the most important parts, as you are likely to forget. i recommend first reading Owning Your Own Shadow as a primer, also by Robert A. Johnson.


The Wisdom Inside   July 13, 2003
 24 out of 25 found this review helpful

This wonderful book is clear and practical, and really goes to the point. It instructs you and helps you at two levels: first it explains how our dreams and imagination function as a link between our conscious and unconscious lives; then it goes on to instruct the reader on how to learn from this link and how to build a fruitful and lifelong dialogue between these two spheres of being. In order to achieve the latter, the author shows us, with clear examples, the way to understand our dreams and to use our imagination and so find the wisdom that we all have inside. Although this all sounds like any other self-help book, here the author never means to sound witty, empty or artificially triumphant. He promises nothing and makes sure we understand that what he is telling us is nothing new: many cultures use these same methods for the psychological, spiritual well-being of people. But we happen to be living in a time and culture that have lost the sense of inner life.Reading this book is like listening to the words of a loving teacher, who knows things because "he has been there before".Well-written and packed with no-nonsense spirituality, without losing touch with the world where we live or our common sense.