Wisdom of the Heart: Working With Women's Dreams

Rating:
Summary: Empowerment for women & the Feminine through womens' dreams.
Review: I loved this book. It calls women back to owning their power, to being their own authority, and to living their life on their terms. It calls women to trust themselves and their feelings. It validates womens' feelings and truths. This is the only dream book I've read that puts importance on the dreamer's feelings about the dream and the dream symbols, not just symbol interpretation (of which the author has an excellent knowledge). It has many examples of womens' dreams that the author walks through which helps one learn the art of dream interpretation. Many of the womens' dreams spoke to me personally. I found the archetypal symbols in the dreams powerful and exciting and they bring to light the connection of all women. The Feminine has been ignored and distorted and devalued for so long - so much of it has been buried and forgotten, but clearly never gone as evidenced in these dreams. Bringing the truth of women and the Feminine back into the light is best accomplished through the sources who know best - women. Our dreams are an excellent guide in this.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Balance of Intellectual and Intuitive Wisdom
Review: This book was not what I expected, and I'm glad. I was looking for something simple to help me figure out a dream I had, and I was prepared to put up with some flakiness. In this book, I found neither simplicity nor flakiness. In addition, although the author has a sound intellectual background as a psychologist and Jungian analyst, she applies her knowledge in a way that honors the dark, wordless voice of intuition at the same time.

I am a beginning student of clinical psychology and find that often psychological theories can be used like statistics--you can twist them to say whatever you want or intellectually hone in on one aspect of yourself or others in order to avoid another (at least I do this when looking at myself). This book awakened me to that tendency and allowed me to look gently but honestly at my own shadow and hidden strengths.

Finally, I greatly appreciated the way Dr. Signell validates "women's" ways of understanding without devaluing men or portraying women as their victims. Using dreams as a starting point, she shows how both women and men project onto each other and have unacknowledged expectations of each other. For example, while modern women have made great strides in being independent and working towards gender equality, many of us still contain rather large seeds of the puella eterna, the eternal girl who expects deference and chivalry from men. We may long for the chivalry, but if we get it we rebel, feeling we are being treated as a child or a helpless kitten and then have endless discussions with friends about how hopeless men are. Dr. Signell helps women find "the rat" in our own psyches in a way that is not judgemental or blaming. She suggests that women can improve their relationships by understanding and accepting themselves, but she does this without the usual insinuation that women can singlehandedly make a relationship work.

At times I found my dreams and the material in this book to be inspirational and at times sobering. I recommend reading and dreaming slowly so you can let the inspiration grow and integrate the sobering stuff gently, without being overwhelmed and and running away.

Thank you Dr. Signell. I hope you write another one soon!

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Balance of Intellectual and Intuitive Wisdom
Review: This book was not what I expected, and I'm glad. I was looking for something simple to help me figure out a dream I had, and I was prepared to put up with some flakiness. In this book, I found neither simplicity nor flakiness. In addition, although the author has a sound intellectual background as a psychologist and Jungian analyst, she applies her knowledge in a way that honors the dark, wordless voice of intuition at the same time.

I am a beginning student of clinical psychology and find that often psychological theories can be used like statistics--you can twist them to say whatever you want or intellectually hone in on one aspect of yourself or others in order to avoid another (at least I do this when looking at myself). This book awakened me to that tendency and allowed me to look gently but honestly at my own shadow and hidden strengths.

Finally, I greatly appreciated the way Dr. Signell validates "women's" ways of understanding without devaluing men or portraying women as their victims. Using dreams as a starting point, she shows how both women and men project onto each other and have unacknowledged expectations of each other. For example, while modern women have made great strides in being independent and working towards gender equality, many of us still contain rather large seeds of the puella eterna, the eternal girl who expects deference and chivalry from men. We may long for the chivalry, but if we get it we rebel, feeling we are being treated as a child or a helpless kitten and then have endless discussions with friends about how hopeless men are. Dr. Signell helps women find "the rat" in our own psyches in a way that is not judgemental or blaming. She suggests that women can improve their relationships by understanding and accepting themselves, but she does this without the usual insinuation that women can singlehandedly make a relationship work.

At times I found my dreams and the material in this book to be inspirational and at times sobering. I recommend reading and dreaming slowly so you can let the inspiration grow and integrate the sobering stuff gently, without being overwhelmed and and running away.

Thank you Dr. Signell. I hope you write another one soon!