Inner Work: A Four-Step Journey to Self-Transformation, Unearthing Subconscious Strengths, and Interpreting Dreams with Jungian Psychology

I found the book very helpful in explaining inner work in a way that made it easy to start practicing myself. It is also decently concise and focused. An easy recomendation for anyone looking to start dream work and or active imagination.

My favorite book on Dream working (and other types of inner work) - helps you learn your own personal dream language and symbols so you are not dependent on some a dictionary that someone else wrote. Totally Awesome

This book has been helpful for me to customise my own process of active imagination and dream work. It's written in a straightforward manner, pointing to relevant areas of Carl Jung's work so one can read up more. I was inspired to get Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Jung to dive deeper. That's a well written and digestible book too as it's done in an autobiographical form.

In Inner Work, Johnson provides a thorough and easy to follow guide on how to engage with your unconscious. Though one can find a lot in Jung on symbolic interpretation, he was somewhat cagey about detailing exactly how to go about active imagination. He gives the right amount of context, in what is essentially a practical manual, without bogging the reader down in theory that can be consulted elsewhere if necessary. If there is one criticism I have of the book it is that he chose to highlight dream interpretation instead of active imagination. Jung maintained that active imagination, though decidedly more difficult, was far more powerful and rewarding than its passive cousin. Further, that dreams were regularly warning signals that something in the psyche was already out of balance. The need for the unconscious to communicate through dreams subsides when conscious fantasies are taken more seriously. Johnson could have made a more spirited case for shifting one's attention to preventative, active aspects of maintaining balance.

Fantastic read!

The quality of the book is very good with only a few minor tears in the jacket cover. No markings or discolorations on the inner pages. The content of the book is amazing as well - highly recommended as an actual working field guide for dreamwork and active imagination. Very clear explanations and case study examples.

It seems that after this book this author has written much on the subject of Jungian work but the majority appears to be a survey of ideas, unlike this book which is the heart of actually doing Jungian work. Since I'm becoming a clinical social worker I tend to read many books such as this one to know how the actually meat of many forms of therapy and inner work are carried out. Much out there is pure junk that loses my interest very quickly. This book is a joy to read through and the examples are very relevant. The author does not go off on tangents about personal anecdotes, something that tends to bore me with many authors. I have had an interest in Jungian work but have found it very abstract and not as down to earth as many other forms of therapy or psychological work. This book takes you directly to the core of the two most important ways of Jungian work: dream work and active imagination. There are several other methods used in analytic work but these are the most fundamental. The four steps are accessible and simple to carry out. As I have an interest in having at least a foot in Jungian ideas as a therapist this book will be invaluable for both my inner work and those of my future clients. The only problem I find is that the Jungian school needs more of a place for body and emotive work to ground the abstract in direct present experience using methods such as: Gestalt methods, Gendlin's Focusing Technique, meditation and so on. Otherwise this is by far the most practical work by a Jungian that I have come across.

So close to a 4 star, but not quite ya know? Trying to encompass a world where all truths are possible, and also trying to give warnings about what is most likely NOT—just makes for conflicts when reading. If this is an intro to inner work I found that it wasn’t that easy of a read. Due to the way he spoke about indigenous tribes and beliefs, (barbaric etc) makes me question if he honestly did his own inner work. He knew they were necessary for Jung’s work but didn’t speak as if he was at the point where he could appreciate them with his whole heart. Something like that impacts your perceptions, and analysis so I find myself taking his words with even less than a grain of salt. A half of grain of salt. None the less, it exists and I am pleased that I read it. I did learn some, and I do think aided my understanding and my own inner exploration.

Gives lots of tools to work on yourself. His explanations cleared out a lot of my doubts about practicing active imagination.

A fascinating, beautifully simply and directly written book on how we can relate to our subconscious thought dreams, and active imagination.

Looking into "how to" do shadow work on oneself, i came across this book as a recommendation. This book turned out to be so much more than that. The techniques can be practically used by anyone trying to look within for answers. Be it to spiritual question or a practical day to day problem. I literally "devoured" a book after a long time. It was an eye opening experience. As an attempt to lucid dream, i started taking notes of my dreams since the last few days. The idea was to bring the dreams to a "conscious" level. The notes stayed there in the journal without me doing anything with them. While reading the book, i picked a particularly bizzare one and used the techniques to try to analyse it. Before i was finished however, i realised the not so bizzare ones had equally profound messages for me. I couldnt have imagined anything equally or more profound than my meditation practice in bringing me closer to conscoius awareness. This book changed that for me. Although my meditation practice has brought a sense of wholeness over the past few years, i realised it left some parts of my "being" undernourished. It gave me the insight into why after years of trying to calm my mind and having made significant progress, why sometimes parts of me come up which i can barely recognize about myself. I have not read any other book on dream analysis or active imagination before this one so I am not in a position to compare. However, after reading several books and spending plenty of time on self development, i feel this book will always be one of the few that hold a potential to bring an actual change in my life. I recommed it to anyone who seeks answers and realises that the only place where they can be sought is "inside" oneself.

This is the book I've been looking for all my life! I've always loved the idea of deciphering my dreams, but dream dictionaries and other dream manuals always fell short of the mark. Well, no longer! It takes some work, but if you're willing to put in the work, you'll suddenly realise that your dreams are a lot more relevant that you might give them credit for, and it's not the woo woo thing that everyone seems to agree on. Dreams offer us pure unconscious material filled with symbology, which this book helps us to not only decipher, but to integrate said material and resolve ongoing issues that may have plagued us for years. It feels like a light has been switched on, as I now have direct access to my own inner wisdom, in a way that is far more objective than I ever thought possible.

Excellent introductory book to (unsupervised) Jungian dream analysis and active imagination for beginners. The author gives an approachable overview of such necessary jungian terms as unconscious, archetypes, symbols, ego, consciousness and individuation and how their interplay in dream and active imagination images, when properly understood and directly related to our everyday life through ritual (the translating of spirit into matter or of intellectual understanding into physical reality), they contribute to a deepening and widening of our consciousness and goad us steadily on the journey to individuation. This does not claim to be the ultimate book on dream analysis because there simply cannot be such a book. When it comes to inner work one can only get so much from books the most valuable contribution being one's lifelong commitment to the painstaking journey itself. I heartily recommend this book