Fans pick 100 books like Dr. Ann Faraday's Dream Power

I love Carl Jung’s ability to see into the nature of consciousness and make the connection between the experience of being a being on Earth and the true nature of our being. He is one of the first scientists to describe the near-death experience and to see it as another trick of the dualistic world.

Jung explains how, during his heart attack, he died and was transported above the earth to a doorway guarded by a cosmically dangerous spike. Jung’s observations as a scientist and doctor about what makes us tick are a foundation for people realizing their true nature through people like David Bingham today.

Once again, Ann Faraday offers practical and easy-to-use dream interpretation advice with a total absence of 'woo-woo.' It consistently reminds dreamers of the importance of personalising their dream interpretation rather than seeking out generic meanings in book form or online. 

Above all, this book truly demystifies dream work and empowers dreamers to believe that they don't need to consult a dream therapist, psychiatrist, or analyst to understand their dreams. They can use simple tools and techniques to understand the meaning of their night vision, their inner therapist, for themselves. 

I am including this book for its fascinating presentation of dreamwork, a timeless state where past, present, and future meet, offering you glimpses into your future every single night in your night vision. Written by journalist and science fiction writer Eric Wargo, reading it will most certainly stretch your mind and inspire your dream work. 

In centuries past, dreams were regarded as oracles predicting future outcomes, but that approach fell out of favour with the Freud and Jung revolution firmly placing dream decoding as a psychological personal awareness and growth tool.

Wargo does not discourage dreamers from working with their dreams as self-help tools, but he does present a powerful case for all dreams being potentially precognitive, offering an insight into potential futures.

Lucid dreaming is the holy grail of dreamwork. It is the art of becoming conscious within your dreams. Charlie Morley is one of the world's leading experts in lucid dreaming and has trained with both Eastern and Western experts in this surreal art. 

This book is the perfect introductory guide and explains in an easy-to-read style how lucid dreaming can be a gateway into your subconscious, and learning how to use this virtual reality dream state can help you live a more fulfilling life, understand toxic behaviour, heal anxiety, overcome fear, and explore infinite creativity. 

This book, written by an actual dream researcher, presents a smart and easy-to-read introduction to the psychology of dreams. Covering topics like the history of dreaming, how dreams are scientifically studied, how to work with dreams for personal insight, the possible functions of dreams, lucid dreaming, nightmares, and what the future of dream research may hold, Malinowski does a commendable job of introducing the reader to a wealth of information about dreams. Complete with personal examples, eye-opening insights, and a thoughtful discussion of ethical questions surrounding emerging dream-related technologies, this delightful book is sure to please those looking for an engaging introduction to dreams.

I picked Dream Work because it is “one-stop shopping” meaning it is a comprehensive and thorough review of many different approaches to dream interpretation. I particularly like the quick tips he offers if you don’t want to delve into theory. For example, he recommends you create a title for a dream which is effective in increasing your insight quickly. He also has guidance for working with fragments of dreams and offers a powerful case study of how one small dream fragment of remembering “pastel” colors opened up a new career direction for a dreamer. While many dreamers find dream fragments to be frustrating he shows how these can be condensed and edited “telegrams.” Other quick tips he offers are asking questions about a dream such as “What might happen if I did this in the real world?”

This book introduces the reader to Marc Bregman - a postman turned dream interpreter whose approach breaks through intellectual interpretations of dreams to the emotional experience of your predicament in life. Dreams show you the path out of your predicament – usually through connecting with what used to be called “your inner child” but here is redefined as being childlike in your sense of adventure and mystery in life. 

The method shown in this book goes far beyond dream interpretation to using a dream to heal your life, your relationships, your career confusions, and more. The images in the dream are medicine and can be recalled to offer healing in your waking life. Full disclosure – Marc Bregman was my dream therapist for several years, I found him through this book.

This book establishes that throughout history and cultures, dreams have been seen as essential tools in healing mental, physical, and social problems. While many dreams may be “housekeeping” or processing the day’s events, the author persuades that dreams come for a purpose. The author provides in-depth case studies of dreams that transform the lives of dreamers. Dreams offer direction toward finding your own path against collective expectations. One of the case studies in the book shows how dreams guide a 20-year-old college student to make decisions his parents didn’t approve of. Another is a case study of a woman whose dreams guide her to go back to get a college degree late in life.

I included this book because the most important part of dream interpretation is recording your dreams. This journal has space for your to write a title for the dream as recommended in the previous book Dream Work. In addition to writing out the dream, there are boxes to check off the category of dream – from a nightmare to mundane - and a checklist to note the prevailing emotion. There is space to draw images from the dream and a section to reflect and try an interpretation. You can use any of these features and the journal, by offering space and checkboxes, deepens engagement with the dream, and may offer directions you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself.

Have you ever wondered what happens to our mind as we fall asleep? Or whether we can experience things in dreams that we never experienced in waking life? Jean Marie Léon d’Hervey de Saint-Denys tackled these and other questions like them in his remarkable 1867 book, Dreams and How to Guide Them. Saint-Denys used his finely-honed skills as a lucid dreamer (knowing that you are dreaming while still in the dream) to investigate dreams from within, exploring their images, memory sources, and inner logic as they unfolded before (or, rather, behind) his eyes. More amazing still, some 150 years later, many of his Saint-Denys’s ideas can still be found in modern clinical and scientific theories of dreams.