Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness


Book Description

David Foulkes is one of the international leaders in the empirical study of children’s dreaming, and a pioneer of sleep laboratory research with children. In this book, which distills a lifetime of study, Foulkes shows that dreaming as we normally understand it—active stories in which the dreamer is an actor—appears relatively late in childhood. This true dreaming begins between the ages of 7 and 9. He argues that this late development of dreaming suggests an equally late development of waking reflective self-awareness. Foulkes offers a spirited defense of the independence of the psychological realm, and the legitimacy of studying it without either psychoanalytic over-interpretation or neurophysiological reductionism.




Children's Dreams


Book Description

Children’s Dreams teaches readers how to understand and appreciate memorable “big dreams” of childhood. The book introduces readers to the basic psychology and neuroscience of dreaming, then discusses dreams from early childhood through adolescence, exploring why we dream and how dreams can help us enhance creativity and make sense of our lives.




Children's Dreams


Book Description

This book aims to present a study on the actuality and empirical value of Freuds dream theory, even if through the analysis of a specific part of it - the hypotheses about childrens dreams. It provides a systematic description of Freuds observations on child dreaming and presents the results obtained from four empirical studies on childrens dreams that the author conducted during the span of a decade. These studies (two conducted in school settings, one in a home setting, and one based on a questionnaire completed by parents) allow an empirical judgment on Freuds main hypotheses on child dreaming: the hypotheses on formal aspect of childrens dreams, the relationship between dream bizarreness and development of the superego functions, and the issue of wish-fulfilment dreams. The author concludes that it is possible to test empirically Freuds hypothesis on the early forms of dreaming and that this test is not irrelevant for an empirical judgment of certain more general statements of Freuds dream theory (e.g. the dream censorship hypothesis).




Dreaming


Book Description

In this fascinating book, Harvard researcher Hobson offers an intriguing look at the nightly odyssey through the illusory world of dreams. Hobson describes how the theory of dreaming has advanced dramatically over the past 50 years, sparked by the use of EEGs in the 1950s and by recent innovations in brain imaging. 20 illustrations.




When Brains Dream: Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds


Book Description

"A truly comprehensive, scientifically rigorous and utterly fascinating account of when, how, and why we dream. Put simply, When Brains Dream is the essential guide to dreaming." —Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep Questions on the origins and meaning of dreams are as old as humankind, and as confounding and exciting today as when nineteenth-century scientists first attempted to unravel them. Why do we dream? Do dreams hold psychological meaning or are they merely the reflection of random brain activity? What purpose do dreams serve? When Brains Dream addresses these core questions about dreams while illuminating the most up-to-date science in the field. Written by two world-renowned sleep and dream researchers, it debunks common myths that we only dream in REM sleep, for example—while acknowledging the mysteries that persist around both the science and experience of dreaming. Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold bring together state-of-the-art neuroscientific ideas and findings to propose a new and innovative model of dream function called NEXTUP—Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities. By detailing this model’s workings, they help readers understand key features of several types of dreams, from prophetic dreams to nightmares and lucid dreams. When Brains Dream reveals recent discoveries about the sleeping brain and the many ways in which dreams are psychologically, and neurologically, meaningful experiences; explores a host of dream-related disorders; and explains how dreams can facilitate creativity and be a source of personal insight. Making an eloquent and engaging case for why the human brain needs to dream, When Brains Dream offers compelling answers to age-old questions about the mysteries of sleep.




The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming


Book Description

A comprehensive neurocognitive theory of dreaming based on the theories, methodologies, and findings of cognitive neuroscience and the psychological sciences. G. William Domhoff’s neurocognitive theory of dreaming is the only theory of dreaming that makes full use of the new neuroimaging findings on all forms of spontaneous thought and shows how well they explain the results of rigorous quantitative studies of dream content. Domhoff identifies five separate issues—neural substrates, cognitive processes, the psychological meaning of dream content, evolutionarily adaptive functions, and historically invented cultural uses—and then explores how they are intertwined. He also discusses the degree to which there is symbolism in dreams, the development of dreaming in children, and the relative frequency of emotions in the dreams of children and adults. During dreaming, the neural substrates that support waking sensory input, task-oriented thinking, and movement are relatively deactivated. Domhoff presents the conditions that have to be fulfilled before dreaming can occur spontaneously. He describes the specific cognitive processes supported by the neural substrate of dreaming and then looks at dream reports of research participants. The “why” of dreaming, he says, may be the most counterintuitive outcome of empirical dream research. Though the question is usually framed in terms of adaptation, there is no positive evidence for an adaptive theory of dreaming. Research by anthropologists, historians, and comparative religion scholars, however, suggests that dreaming has psychological and cultural uses, with the most important of these found in religious ceremonies and healing practices. Finally, he offers suggestions for how future dream studies might take advantage of new technologies, including smart phones.




The Scientific Study of Dreams


Book Description

Domhoff's neurocognitive model helps explain the neural and cognitive bases for dreaming. He discusses how dreams express conceptions and concerns, and how they are consistent over years and decades. He also shows that there may be limits to understanding the meaning of dreams as there are many aspects of dream content that cannot be related to waking cognition or personal concerns. In addition, the book includes a detailed explanation of the methods needed to test the new model as well as a case study of a comprehensive dream journal. Particularly valuable is a discussion of a new system of content analysis that can be used for highly sophisticated studies of dream content. In this provocative book, Domhoff sets forth a convincing argument that will encourage a resurgence in dream research among both new and established cognitive psychologists and neuropsychologists.




Dream Consciousness


Book Description

This book presents three lectures by Allan Hobson, entitled “The William James Lectures on Dream Consciousness”. The three lectures expose the new psychology, the new physiology and the new philosophy that derive from and support the protoconsciousness hypothesis of dreaming. They review in detail many of the studies on sleep and dreaming conducted since the days of Sigmund Freud. Following the lectures are commentaries written by scholars whose expertise covers a wide range of scientific disciplines including, but not limited to, philosophy, psychology, neurology, neuropsychology, cognitive science, biology and animal sciences. The commentaries each answer a specific question in relation to Hobson’s lectures and his premise that dreaming is an altered state of consciousness. Capitalizing on a vast amount of data, the lectures and commentaries provide undisputed evidence that sleep consists of a well-organized sequence of subtly orchestrated brain states that undoubtedly play a crucial function in the maintenance of normal brain functions. These functions include both basic homeostatic processes necessary to keep the organism alive as well as the highest cognitive functions including perception, decision making, learning and consciousness.




Dreaming


Book Description

First published in 1985. This book summarizes the findings of empirical dream psychology and interprets them from a cognitive-psychological perspective.




Describing Inner Experience?


Book Description

A psychologist and a philosopher with opposing viewpoints discuss the extent to which it is possible to report accurately on our own conscious experience, considering both the reliability of introspection in general and the particular self-reported inner experiences of "Melanie," a subject interviewed using the Descriptive Experience Sampling method. Can conscious experience be described accurately? Can we give reliable accounts of our sensory experiences and pains, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotions? The question is central not only to our humanistic understanding of who we are but also to the burgeoning scientific field of consciousness studies. The two authors of Describing Inner Experience disagree on the answer: Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist, argues that improved methods of introspective reporting make accurate accounts of inner experience possible; Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher, believes that any introspective reporting is inevitably prone to error. In this book the two discuss to what extent it is possible to describe our inner experience accurately. Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel recruited a subject, "Melanie," to report on her conscious experience using Hurlburt's Descriptive Experience Sampling method (in which the subject is cued by random beeps to describe her conscious experience). The heart of the book is Melanie's accounts, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel's interviews with her, and their subsequent discussions while studying the transcripts of the interviews. In this way the authors' dispute about the general reliability of introspective reporting is steadily tempered by specific debates about the extent to which Melanie's particular reports are believable. Transcripts and audio files of the interviews will be available on the MIT Press website. Describing Inner Experience? is not so much a debate as it is a collaboration, with each author seeking to refine his position and to replace partisanship with balanced critical judgment. The result is an illumination of major issues in the study of consciousness—from two sides at once.