Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction

I love this OUP series; it fills a nice niche and offers quick reads on important subjects. I have read several books in the series but was less pleased with this one than with the others. First, dreaming is an extremely complex subject and spans the speculations of Freud to the most up to date fMRI-facilitated ‘wet neuroscience’ experiments. Dreaming is a facet of consciousness and consciousness is both highly controversial and one of the most highly challenging subjects of research. Some see consciousness as the essence of identity and the clearest evidence for the existence of the soul. Others see it as a biochemical phenomenon that deludes us into believing in identity, the soul, etc. This is all further complicated by the advances in our understanding of the brain, one of the most important areas of research for the last two generations.Thus, what I wanted to see in this book was a grand synoptic summary of the issues and the manner in which multiple researchers have handled them. Unfortunately, Dr. Hobson’s book is much more of a summary of ‘his way’ and ‘his research’. That way tends more toward biological reductionism, though he expresses his orientation with humor, a little bit of tentativeness and some (potential) reverence. In effect, he says that the evidence is largely going in this direction and he believes that it will end there, but feel free to hold out a little hope for an alternative possibility.Unlike many other readers I found the writing to be an impediment to understanding, though I recognize that he was trying to be as clear as possible. He gave instances of his own dreams, with simple illustrations and he provided pictures of the human brain with pertinent areas highlighted. The bottom line, however, is that this is not an ‘introduction’ in the sense of a book for general literate readers. It is an introduction to Dr. Hobson’s work and it assumes a considerable degree of sophistication with regard to neurobiology. The targeted audience would be advanced undergraduate majors or graduate students in related fields.His position centers on activation: how does the brain go to work once we are asleep? What areas are activated? What areas are blocked? What is the biochemistry of these processes? When we get to key (layman’s) questions such as, why does the brain self-activate and for what purposes, we find ourselves in speculative territory: the brain may be consolidating, re-charging, strengthening areas which are underutilized during waking periods, and so on. At one point he argues that it may well be that dreaming is simply an epiphenomenon and not the crucial part of human experience that many have considered it to be. Thus, the bottom line is that this book is a very good introduction to one approach to dreaming and brain science but not the overarching account that the title implies.

Dreaming is one of the most interesting and ill-understood activities of human existence. Many of us don’t remember most of our dreams—to the extent that a number of people don’t think they even have dreams (while not completely conclusive, the scientific evidence suggests that all of us dream every night—except people who live on RedBull and 2 hours / night until they tragically die young.) However, when we do remember a dream, it’s often a vivid and profound experience. Some people dream lucidly (are aware they are inside a dream as it occurs), and a few people have lucid dreams on a regular basis. This has led people to draw all sorts of conclusions about dreams existing in a realm beyond the physical, and what not.While there remains a lot that we still don’t know about dreams, a great deal of science has been advanced in recent decades—enough to take dreamland out of the realm of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and even away from the weak (and largely wrong) science of Freud, and into the realm of legitimate science. This book summarizes much of that science in a concise package. The “A Very Short Introduction” (VSI) series from Oxford University Press offers this type of guide for many subjects. They’re usually about 100 pages long, and give a quick and gritty rundown of the subject at hand.This book is organized into eleven chapters covering: What is dreaming? Why the Freudian approach (and earlier dream interpretation schemes) failed? How the brain is activated during sleep? What is happening at the level of neurochemistry? Why we dream? What can go wrong with dreams? (i.e. sleepwalking, night-terrors, etc.), How dreaming relates to delirium and mental illness? (i.e. it is, after all, a state of hallucination in which we take often bizarre imagery for granted.) There’s a discussion of the new psychology of dreaming which is based in neuroscience and not on an Austrian with a pipe suggesting that it all comes down to penises and vaginas. (Hobson isn’t anti-Freud, though he does want to make clear that the psychology pioneer was quite wrong on this subject.) There’s a discussion of how learning and memory can (and can’t) be advanced through sleep. Hobson discusses the interaction of consciousness and dreams, e.g. lucid dreaming. And there’s a discussion of interpretation of dreams that is rooted in more modern thought.An interesting feature of this guide is that the author uses his own dream diary entries as case studies to make points clear. That helps make this VSI guide a little less dry than they tend to be by their nature.I do enjoy the VSI series. I’ve read quite a few of them, and find they are a good way to study up on a subject with a minimal of effort or pain. I also enjoyed this volume specifically. It’s certainly one of the most fascinating topics on which I’ve read a VSI, and the author doesn’t disappoint in bringing interesting facts and anecdotes to the table.I’d recommend this book if you want to get up to speed on dreaming in a little over a hundred pages.

I enjoyed this great intro to the brain and dreaming. I've learned a lot about the history research on this topic but also how we have a long way to go.

This is one of the better books I've read on Dreaming. The details of the neurobiology of sleep was a wonderful surprise, and makes much more sense of dreaming. I've read a lot of books on dreaming, all of which were filled with psychological guesses, speculation, and they just never made sense to me. This book presents excellent arguments and studies for the biological aspects of sleep, and the logic that consciousness is a brain function. This books takes a look from a better perspective, IMHO, sticking to the biology of sleep, and the reality of what we are of aware of and not during dreaming, and the lack of memory thereafter. Great book!

Illustrative, comprehensive, quirky and entertaining, and more than adequate prose. Detailed technical description of sleep science are balanced nicely with more basic but integral explanations about the nature of sleep and dreaming. The insights provided by sleep science extend beyond that narrower field to reveal much else about the mind. Highly recommended both for personal understanding and generally defogging the mirror of mythical mist.

This is the most disgusting piece of drivel I have ever had the misfortune to experience. The author comes across as an unimaginative work-horse of a "scientist". And I use the term scientist loosly because I've never had to wade through so much subjective twaddle in a scientific text before; not even Freud his arch-enemy digresses into such poor self-righteous condescension.I picked up this book because I wanted to know the cold, hard fact about what happens to the brain when one is dreaming. Instead I got some child to prove to me that "dream content" is meaningless because...."dream form". Hobson states "I want to discredit Freud emphatically" (p28) Why? This isn't the time or place for destroying psychoanalytical strategies aimed at getting at the root causes of neuroses ."Can you digest the proposition? Or does it stick in your craw....against the humiliation of having your dreaming reduced to a brain state?"

The Very Short Introductions are a major educational resource. There are presently over 500 small books covering a very wide range of subjects. Although short, the Introductions are substantial in content. Everyone would benefit from reading these books to broaden their knowledge and understanding in diverse areas of life. Perseverance with some subjects may be required but be prepared to be surprised, enlightened and enriched.

As brilliantly written, entertaining, informed and convincing an introduction to a subject as you could ever wish for. It gets to the point very quickly, talking of a 'paradigm shift' in dream science over the last half century brought about by a change in emphasis from dream content to dream form.This formalist account has little time for Freudian psychoanalysis. Dream interpretation is considered unnecessary, and Freud over-speculative because of a lack of detailed knowledge about brain science. Hobson takes an essentially physiological, 'brain as mind', approach that he thinks explains nearly everything we need to know about dreaming and consciousness - a major exception being the notoriously 'hard problem' of subjectivity (ie the unobservable, private states of mind and events - the so-called 'qualia') . Some readers - like the reviewer below, perhaps - may consider the formalism too reductionist, a charge that the author seems to anticipate when he says, 'Much apparent complexity melts away when the science comes up with the correct simplicity. This is the true meaning of reductionism.'Despite the author's own commitment to simplicity, the details can at times be complex, especially to those readers without much neuroanatomy or biochemistry. But Hobson carries the non-specialist with him by clever use of summary and fascinating in-text 'inserts' on questions like: Do animals dream? What is lucid dreaming? and Do we dream in black and white or in colour? His own dream journals are also used to illuminate common features of dreams - like their bizarre discontinuities and character instability, their heightened emotions and sensations, but simultaneously, their convincingly lifelike narratives.According to Hobson, studies show that compared to waking, dreaming involves simply the selective enhancement of certain mental functions and the diminution of others via biochemistry (and ultimately DNA). Essential reading for anyone with even the remotest interest in psychology or dreaming.

Not really an analysis of what dreams mean, but more of a description of the chemical developments that take place in your brain whilst dreaming. Quite interesting, but not gripping.

Loved this book. Listened to the audio version but needed the book too for reference. Such an intriguing area of the mind