The best books on dreams for writers who want to boost their creativity

This is one of only a few books I’ve found that looks directly at the way writers can use dream awareness in their creative practice. It’s a collection of interviews with twenty-six well-known authors compiled by dream researcher and radio-show host Naomi Epel, in which they talk about specific dreams that have inspired them and their thoughts about dreaming in general. I bought a copy to dip into on the train to London for a meeting but found it so fascinating, I abandoned my plan to do some sightseeing afterward, and made instead for the nearest bench and takeaway coffee, to spend the afternoon reading.

This ground-breaking book, written in the 1970’s, is still essential reading for anyone wishing to explore dreams as a creative resource rather than interpret them in the traditional Western psychological way. I started recalling and recording dreams in therapy nearly fifty years ago and had reached the conclusion that trying to interpret them was confusing and potentially misleading. Then I chanced on this collection of studies of different dream traditions from other parts of the world. It changed everything. If you think of dreams in a purely psychological way, this book could give you whole new perspectives. 

This book, like the previous one, is written by an anthropologist, and it describes the author’s experiences of learning dreaming techniques from a Toltec sorcerer. In that tradition, there are seven Gates of Dreaming, obstacles to be overcome if you want to achieve greater dream awareness and control, and the book looks at four of them. It’s thought-provoking but easy reading because it takes the form of a story, rather than a series of essays, and I enjoyed trying some of the ideas in my own dream practice.

James Hillman is the kind of writer you sometimes have to stop, think and re-read, to work your way into what he is trying to say, but it repays the effort because what he says is always interesting. This book, about fantasy and imagination, explores the idea that we are more than our personal story, more than ego and self. For me as a writer, it changed the way I see the creative process, with imagination not being something we need to spark and drive, but a space we already inhabit. Imagination is our essence; we are the dream.

A fascinating memoir by the famous Swiss psychologist who began his career under the guidance of Sigmund Freud but went on to develop completely different ideas about psychology, including synchronicity and "active imagination," which inform some of the imagework techniques I use in workshops to help writers break through blocks. I have been a member of Lapidus, the international writing therapy organisation, for many years, and I’ve always been interested in the healing power of imagination. Jung believed in the power of art and imagery to help people move through difficulties and find resolutions, and we see how he used it here, in this very personal record of his inner life.