100 books like The Dream Game

This is a mind, heart, and eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists and dream workers of his time, Carl Gustav Jung. In this book, he shares his lectures, conversations, and his own writings.  

Jung's psychological approach to dreams and the workings of the inner world are truly seminal and a must-read for any serious student of their own dreams. Jung not only changed the study of dreams, setting up the Jungian school of thought and Jungian dream analysis, but he forever changed the way dreams are studied and perceived.  

Of all the dream books I have read, this one is perhaps most in line with my own thinking about how to understand and work with your dreams for personal and spiritual growth. It was also one of the first books to really push dream decoding towards the mainstream, which has also been my passion.

Ann Faraday is a British psychologist who conducted an experimental study of dreams for her Ph.D. thesis. Each chapter is easy to read and process and explores the psychology of dreams and why they matter for self-awareness.

It also offers a realistic and easy-to-apply method for dream interpretation that has helped hundreds of thousands of dreamers all over the world fall in love with the personal growth potential of their own dreams.

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. 

As a visual artist, I adore symbols, it’s unbelievable how a symbol can evoke emotions through its associations and meanings. Each Tarot card has its own character and many symbols. These reveal more than their immediate meaning and they visualise human experiences, behavioural patterns and developmental patterns. These archetypal images, as Jung calls them, are stored in our collective unconscious and can be found all over the world in our fantasy, dreams, mythology, religion, literature, fairy tales and other forms of art.

In Tarot and other oracle systems, the concept of synchronicity would explain how they "work" as a kind of mirror of the psyche. The symbols and illustrations are thus the language with which the tarot can make the unconscious in our psyche conscious. They mirror what happens from the inside to the outside. So the cards would reflect your inner state at that time. 

In this book, CG… show more.

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, 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 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.

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.