Author Description

Dreams have been a source of delight and terror for as long as man has kept records of his thought. Whether they are the key to the unconscious, as Freud proposed, or a way of wiping clean the mental slate, as Dr. Francis Crick's recent theory suggests, they have filled the pages of numerous diaries and been an integral part of literary masterworks such as The Divine Comedy and Finnegan's Wake. In this rich anthology, Stephen Brook has collected hundreds of dreams recorded by authors, poets, psychologists, and common men since pre-Christian days. Ranging from Artemidorus's crude, 2nd-century analysis to Freud and Jung's dream psychology, and including works by Coleridge, Yeats, Tolstoy, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Heller, and many other authors, The Oxford Book of Dreams offers an intriguing and varied sampling of man's collective unconscious.