What's in a Dream?
Written: Feb 29 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The storytelling is personal
Cons: Nothing but storytelling is offered
The Bottom Line: This is a mediocre book because it doesn't offer any analysis on dreams in general.
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| Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Ruth Frances Hoskins Ph.D. - Dream Moments: The Vo... |
Everybody dreams during the night. Those few dreams that we remember are often unusual in their contents, and some are full of imagery, color, symbolism, and other things that may not seem so obvious at first. One woman who is in touch with her dreams also happens to work as a stress management consultant and makes a living speaking to Fortune 500 companies about the means to achieve relaxation. Her name is Ruth Frances Hoskins and in this book, Dream Moments: The Voice in Your Dreams, Prophecy and Intuition, Hoskins spends a little time sharing her dreams and demonstrating how they foretold important events in her life.
Basic Contents of This Book:
This 160- page book includes an acknowledgment section, introduction, and 29 short chapters. Starting with “The Voice in My Dream” and ending with a chapter titled “Dream Moments”, the author explains the vivid images she has seen in many of her dreams and the important verbal and physical symbolism that is so common in her dreams and in those of most people.
Not all of the dreams discussed in this book are the types that occur at night. Some are so- called “waking dreams” (similar to daydreaming) and the book distinguishes between the two types of dreams as the author shares her stories. The author continues to describe different dreams she has had and how they helped to foretell an actual event in the near future.
Final Thoughts:
“Dream Moments” is an unusual book and it’s not the type of reading material in which I normally indulge. I prefer certain genres of books and those that deal with psychology, philosophy, and other like subjects generally do not catch my interest. I don’t usually give an uninteresting book a chance because, given the limited time available in a day, I have to budget my time wisely and that means sticking with books that fall into one of my favorite categories.
I didn’t seek out “Dream Moments”, it found me and I decided that, since it was a short book, I would add it to my stack and give it a chance. I didn’t know what to expect with this book, but I was pretty sure it was going to be a book about dream interpretation and what certain symbols in dreams usually signify. It turned out quite different. Dream Moments is really nothing more than a book of storytelling, with author Ruth Frances Hoskins telling the reader about specific dreams she has had, followed by a real- life event that took place shortly after the dream and that contained some of the symbols, numbers, etc., that she had just dreamed about a night or two before.
I don’t know much about dream interpretation, but I do know that some of the symbols in our dreams do, indeed, represent something that is on our mind or that is currently causing anxiety. Dream Moments, however, takes this interpretation a little further. To the author, a dream is a collage of images and symbols and, if you look around in the day or two following a dream, you will likely witness something that took place in the dream. Perhaps you dreamed about the number four. If so, the author believes there is a good chance that something related to the number four is about to take place in your life. It won’t necessarily be an Earth shattering event, but something that relates to the number four is about to take place.
I can respect the author’s feelings on dream prophecy and I like her ability to tell her stories in such personal, vivid ways. But I have certain problems with the book’s insistence that all dreams (or a large percentage) foreshadow events that are about to take place. The reason I feel this way is because many of the dream examples given contain symbols, scenes, verbal cues, etc., that are so broad- based, they could easily be linked to many different life events. For example, there is one chapter that talks about the author’s decision to get a new dog. She starts by describing a dream in which she needed to pick one cat from a litter of three that she owned. A few days later, after the dream, when it came time to actually go and pick up her dog, she was given first choice among a litter of three puppies. Most people would brush this off as a coincidence, but Hoskins seems to feel that the event was already known to happen and the situation with the three cats in her dream was her spiritual and intuitional side coming through, letting her know what was going to happen very shortly. It’s fine that the author wants to believe this, but think of how many times a specific number comes up during a normal day? A dream and event like this do not convince me that the former was a foretelling of the latter.
Hoskins has very vivid dreams, and she describes them as such throughout the book. Her dreams seem to be very colorful and loaded with symbols. I don’t know about anyone else, but my dreams are pretty ordinary. They don’t have any bright colors, moving images, or symbolic features. They seem to be nothing more than a continuation of my thought processes during the day. But Hoskins has very lively dreams, and it makes you start to wonder how her life is so different from the average person that her subconscious lets her dreams run wild in this manner.
Dream Moments is well- written, but it is also a little frustrating in the end because there is no analysis, no intellectual discussion, or anything else remotely engaging to the reader. I was hoping for some general dream interpretation, perhaps a breakdown of a dream into its component parts, or something else that I could learn from. But there is nothing in Dream Moments like this. It is nothing more than a women telling us about her dreams and then showing how they often foretell events in the near future.
Overall, Dream Moments is one of those books I come across from time to time that I cannot decide how to rate. It’s not a throwaway by any means, because the dreams and the events that follow each are sometimes inspiring and interesting to read. But there is no analysis or any other intellectual discussion of dreams. The author just continues telling stories from the beginning of the book to the end. As a consequence, I feel this is a 2.5 star book all the way, and I will round to 3 stars and give a small recommendation. Dream Moments is certainly a readable book, and some readers will enjoy the personal touch that Hoskins adds to each piece. But the lack of anything intellectually stimulating makes this a book an average one at best.
Recommended:
Yes
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