Dreaming : an introduction to the science of sleep /

With this book, Hobson (Harvard Medical School) aims to deliver a deathblow to Freudian dream analysis and replace it with a more scientific approach. The author asserts that analyzing dream content for meaning has no scientific basis, that it is based on a mind/body dualism that is no longer acceptable. In place of content analysis, he posits dream studies based on formal features; he argues for a perceptual, cognitive, and emotional investigation that takes into account the present-day knowledge of physiological underpinnings related to these characteristics. He traces the historical background of scientific contributions: electroencephalograms, sleep journals, sleep laboratories, "nightcaps" (recordings of brain waves in home-sleep environment), REMs, experimental studies with animals, and MRI studies from dreaming subjects. All these findings substantiate his belief that the characteristics of dreaming can be explained by changes that occur during sleep: selective activation of particular neurological sites and the switching on and off of neurotransmitter systems. He concludes that REM sleep is valuable for enhancing memories that relate to survival needs and for thermoregulation of the body. Hobson includes many topics of popular interest, such as disorders of dreaming, relationship between mental illness and dreaming, and so forth. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. P. Barker emerita, Schenectady County Community College

People have always been intrigued by the contents of dreams, seeking to interpret their meaning as either divine messages or the coded communiques of repressed desires, ala Freud, but what about the formal features of dreams, asks Harvard psychiatry professor and sleep expert Hobson. Dreams have specific perceptual, cognitive, and emotional qualities that set them apart from waking consciousness--loss of awareness of self, loss of orientation, loss of directed thought, reduction in logical reasoning, and poor memory--that correspond, as it turns out, to specific modes of brain activity. As Hobson meticulously matches dream features to brain chemistry, he cajoles readers into replacing mystical interpretations with an understanding of the evidence indicating that our precious dreams are the results of the brain's routine processing of an overwhelming amount of memory. Initially this perspective may seem reductively mechanical, but Hobson, who quotes extensively from his own 116-volume dream journal, doesn't deny that dreams offer clues to the psyche, and the complex workings of the brain are every bit as entrancing as the most dazzling of dreams. --Donna Seaman