Title: Sex Dreams Author: Carol L. Cummings Publisher: Fair Winds Press Publish Date: 2003 Pages: 191 Genres:: Self-Help,Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

Rating:

Carol Cummings’ Sex Dreams is the textbook for the class you wish you’d taken as an elective at college. By learning to interpret sexual dream symbols (who knew a kiwi was a stand-in for a testicle?) and become conscious of being in a dream while in the dream state (“lucid dreaming),” Cummings asserts the motivated reader can identify and remove the barriers preventing her from experiencing the sex of her dreams, and that dreams are a continuously occurring opportunity for human beings to live fuller, happier and more pleasurable lives.

Plentiful, lusty case histories abound throughout the chapters as Cummings’ clients recount their REM-stage erotic encounters. She penetratingly and impressively decodes the stories their unconscious tell and drives home the point that dreams are messages from the “higher self” to take the necessary steps to change your life. Example: A single woman who dreams she opens the door to a gorgeous, powerful man who aggressively begins to make love to her is saying she is ready to let love into her life (symbolized by the opening of the door) but too shy to go after it more actively.

According to her dream symbol explanation guide, dreaming of a room within a house can often represent the uterus in a dream, and seeing a caulk gun while dreaming refers to ejaculation. (Sorry, can’t seal a wall with that.)

It takes a lot of work to plan to remember a dream as opposed to just having one you can recall upon waking. To paraphrase Dr. Freud, the royal road to the unconscious can be a royal pain. The author instructs all aspiring road warrior dreamers to keep a journal by their bed and to plan out loud what they want to dream and what questions they need the dream to answer. For lovers, Cummings gives project assignments where they can enhance their sex lives by “incubating” a dream while singles can attract the partners they want by understanding what their dreams are telling them. Dream incubation is a multi-step process: Write down and verbalize the question you want your dream to answer or explore, then put the request under your pillow right before you lay yourself down. Want to solve your problem? Go to sleep. The book brings up some interesting points, e.g. those you see in your dream may well be aspects of yourself projected onto another, but that other person may also in fact be someone else in a dream state that you’re bumping into while out of your physical body.

One thing Cummings does not address in her book is those who may be afraid to become lucid in their dreams despite the possible emotional/erotic payoff. I would have liked to hear more encouragement for the willing but fearful, but she may have rightfully concluded that increased sexual pleasure is its own incentive to triumph over fear and its own reward.

Overall, it's a self-help book you’ll love helping yourself to.