"For the past month I've had the strangest dreams [...] It's like I'm telling myself things I don't want to hear when I'm awake." Prof. Isaac Burg, a character in Bergman's film Tutti Bar.

"For years I have been keeping a dream diary. I cannot pinpoint the purpose of this demanding work that I have undertaken, but over the years the notebooks have become a biography of my dream life." Agi Mishal

Udi Bonstein's book is an integrative guide that leads step by step in practicing and developing the ability to be 'full dreamers': improving the ability to observe dreams, experiencing lucid dreaming (a dream during which one knows that one is dreaming) and using it as a therapeutic tool (increases insight, helps solve problems and conflicts, accelerates creative processes, and helps deal with nightmares).

In the first chapters, Bonstein examines the theoretical underpinnings of dreams and dreaming from several perspectives, sometimes competing but often complementary. He goes on to describe and empirically test the idea that the ability to dream fully and meaningfully is based on such qualities as mentalization, or our theory of mind, the ability to become absorbed in experience, and the ability to be in a hypnotic state. The third part of the book is devoted to applied aspects in therapeutic work.

As part of "Reading Here and Now," Aner Guvrin and Sharon Ziv Beiman will talk with Udi Bonstein about his new approach, the perception of dreams from different perspectives, as well as the meaning of the first dreams in therapy, patients' dreams about therapists, working with dreams in group therapy, and the issue of repressed traumatic memory that arises following a dream.

Dr. Udi Bonstein is a senior clinical psychologist and expert medical psychologist and a creative musician. He is licensed to hypnotize, research and teach hypnosis, and directs the "Hedadiot" Institute, which is a recognized institute for hypnosis studies. In addition to his work in a private clinic, he serves as the chief psychologist at the Galilee University Medical Center. He is engaged in treatment, diagnosis and guidance of professionals and successfully combines his clinical work, research and creativity. His previous books "The Inner Eye" (2011) and "Hypnosis - The Mind's Way of Creating the Body" (2014, winner of the Bahat Prize) were published by the University of Haifa Press and Yedioth Books-Hemed Books.