Delaney describes the essence of her technique in this way: "This book also introduced my dream interviewing technique which enables individuals to interpret their own dreams. Using my technique, the interviewer (who can be the dreamer herself) poses as an alien from another planet who knows very little about life on earth and has no preconceptions about dreams and their meaning. By asking very basic questions, the interviewer has the dreamer describe each element of the dream (the people, the places, etc.) so that the dreamer herself will come to recognize the meanings they hold. All this is done without reference to any external traditional interpretations. Because the meanings of the symbols in our dreams are unique to each of us, only we can decode our own dreams. All we need are the skills to ask the right questions at the right time (p. xiii)."
The theory of dreaming that Delaney and her partner Dr. Loma Flowers developed includes these basic assumptions (pp. 5-7):
- We are the producers of our own dreams
- We are the writers of our own screenplays
- We are the directors of our dream shows
- We are the stars of our dream scenes
- Dreams not only have a meaning, they have a purpose and a message