Dream Power » (1 FIRESIDE)

Cynthia Richmond is a journalist, board-certified behavioral therapist, author, educator, and speaker. Her column, "In Your Dreams," has been a regular fixture in the Los Angeles Times since 1997. She lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at www.dreampower.net.

Harness the Power of Your Dreams

Understanding our dreams can give us a huge advantage in all facets of life, including work, love, health, and spirituality. Providing practical, step-by-step techniques for gaining access to our dream lives, dream expert Cynthia Richmond charts the landscape of dreams and their rich, perplexing meanings. Analyzing more than 200 real-life dreams that fall into certain important categories — dreams of departed loved ones, schools and tests, flying, water, public nudity, and sex — Richmond reveals their common themes, symbols, and significance.

She also takes traditional dream interpretation an important step further, showing us how to transform our insights into life-changing opportunities. To understand our dreams fully, we must look deep into ourselves and ask: What do I want? What am I afraid of? What is my gift? What can I share with the world? The answers will come to us in our sleep, helping us to make powerful changes in our lives. As Richmond shows us with authority and inspiration, the path to a better life is only a dream away.

Publishers Weekly

Richmond's weekly dream-analysis column in the Los Angeles Times contains the disclaimer that it "should be read for entertainment purposes only." And so it is with her first book, a collection of sample dreams followed by possible meanings and questions to help dreamers analyze their own reveries. Richmond claims that dreams relieve stress; impart self-knowledge, inspiration and warnings; and solve problems. She even touches upon "astral projecting," in which the soul leaves the body during sleep to communicate with or visit "that which exists in spirit." But readers seeking an exhaustive examination of the age-old, worldwide tradition of dream analysis may be disappointed. Richmond invokes Freud, Jung and Joseph Campbell only once, and makes such questionable assertions as "studies show that as many as 12 to 15 percent of dreams may predict the future" without citing her sources. Instead, she offers prosaic advice for remembering dreams (e.g., write them down) and mostly superficial explanations for such common dream elements as water, vehicles and sex. Nonetheless, readers who enjoy checking their daily newspaper horoscopes may find this dream-analysis-lite equally entertaining. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.