Synopses & Reviews
What is dreaming? Why are dreams so strange and why are they so hard to remember? In this fascinating book, Harvard researcher Allan Hobson offers an intriguing look at our nightly odyssey through the illusory world of dreams.
Hobson describes how the theory of dreaming has advanced dramatically over the past fifty years, sparked by the use of EEGs in the 1950s and by recent innovations in brain imaging. We have learned for instance that, in dreaming, some areas of the brain are very active--the visual and auditory
centers, for instance--while others are completely shut down, including the centers for self-awareness, logic, and memory. Thus we can have visually vivid dreams, but be utterly unaware that the sequence of events or locales may be bizarre and, quite often, impossible. And because the memory center
is inactive, we don't remember the dream at all, unless we wake up while it is in progress. Hobson also shows that modern research has disproved most of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (as one scientist put it, Freud was 50% right and 100% wrong), but we have gained new insight into the
nature of mental illness. The book also discusses dream disorders (nightmares, night terrors, sleep walking), the possible link between dreaming and the regulation of body temperature, the effects of sleep deprivation, and much more.
With special boxed features that highlight intriguing questions--Do we dream in color? (yes), Do animals dream? (probably), Do men and women dream differently? (no)--Dreaming offers a cutting-edge account of the most mysterious area of our mental life.
Synopsis
What is dreaming, and what causes it? Why are dreams so strange and why are they so hard to remember? Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science, J. Allan Hobson provides a new and increasingly complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain. Focusing on dreaming to explain the mechanisms of sleep, this book explores how the new science of dreaming is affecting theories in psychoanalysis, and how it is helping our understanding of the causes of mental illness.
J. Allan Hobson investigates his own dreams to illustrate and explain some of the fascinating discoveries of modern sleep science, while challenging some of the traditionally accepted theories about the meaning of dreams. He reveals how dreaming maintains and develops the mind, why we go crazy in our dreams in order to avoid doing so when we are awake, and why sleep is not just good for health but essential for life.
About the Author
J. Allan Hobson is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Sleep Research Society in 1988.
His major research interests are the neurophysiological basis of the mind and behaviour; sleep and dreaming; and the history of neurology and psychiatry, with his most recent work focusing on the cognitive features and benefits of sleep. He is the author or co-author of many books, including: The Dreaming Brain (1988), Sleep (1995), Consciousness (1999), Dreaming as Delirium: How the brain goes out of its mind (1999), The Dream Drugstore (2001), and Out of its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis (2001).
Table of Contents
1. What is dreaming?
2. Why dream content analysis failed to become a science
3. How is the brain activated in sleep?
4. Cells and molecules of the dreaming brain
5. Why dream? The functions of brain activation in sleep
6. Disorders of dreaming
7. Dreaming as delirium: sleep and mental illness
8. The new neuropsychology of dreaming
9. Dreaming, learning and memory
10. Dream consciousness
11. The interpretation of dreams
Conclusion