Dreams 1900 2000

"Written to commemorate the centenary of Freud's classic work, this illustrated book examines the shifting roles that dreams have played in twentieth century art and science."--BOOK JACKET.

We all dream; we all share these strange experiences that infuse our nights. But we only know of those nightly adventures when we decide to represent them. In the long history of coming to terms with dreams there seem to be two different ways of delineating our forays into the world of the unconscious: One is the attempt of interpreting, of unveiling the hidden meaning of dreams. The other one is not so much concerned with the relation of dream and meaning, of dream and reality, it rather concentrates on trying to find means of representation for this extremely productive force that determines our sleep. The essays collected in this book explore both attempts. They follow debates in philosophy and psychoanalysis and they study literature, theatre, dance, film, and photography.

This fascinating reference covers the major topics concerning dreaming and sleep, based on the latest empirical evidence from sleep research as well as drawn from a broad range of dream-related interdisciplinary contexts, including history and anthropology. While many books have been written on the subject of sleep and dreams, no other resource has provided the depth of empirical evidence concerning sleep and dream phenomena nor revealed the latest scientific breakthroughs in the field. Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams: The Evolution, Function, Nature, and Mysteries of Slumber explores the evolution, nature, and functions of sleep and dreams. The encyclopedia is divided into two volumes and is arranged alphabetically by entry. Topics include nightmares and their treatment, how sleep and dreams change across the lifetime, and the new field of evolution of sleep and dream. While this book includes ample material on the science of sleep and dreams, content is drawn from a broad range of disciplinary contexts, including history and anthropology.

Films with dream sequences, or a dreamlike quality, allow directors to create their own rules of logic and nature to meet a variety of artistic needs. For instance, an opening dream immediately establishes what a character is feeling; a later dream--or series of them--provides viewers with a glimpse of the climax, and a concluding dream ties up loose ends. (In real life, of course, dreams do not occur at such convenient times or serve such useful purposes.) This book explores why science is lost or distorted in the process of representing dreams on film and why audiences prefer this figurative truth of art over the literal truth of science. Part One discusses changes in form and considers the history of dream theory. Additionally, the physiology of sleeping and dreaming, dream structure, sleep deprivation, dreams under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and waking up, as depicted on film, are examined. Part Two investigates changes in content, and delves into the psychology of sleeping and dreaming, dream interpretation, altered states of consciousness, visions and prophecies, dreams as wish fulfillment, sex and death, nightmares, and reality versus illusion. The author uses theories by Freud, Jung, and current experts in her analyses of dream sequences and their use in film.

In the late nineteenth century, dreams became the subject of scientific study for the first time, after thousands of years of being considered a primarily spiritual phenomenon. Before Freud and the rise of psychoanalytic interpretation as the dominant mode of studying dreams, an international group of physicians, physiologists, and psychiatrists pioneered scientific models of dreaming. Collecting data from interviews, structured observation, surveys, and their own dream diaries, these scholars produced a large body of early research on the sleeping brain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book uncovers an array of case studies from this overlooked period of dream scholarship. With contributors working across the disciplines of psychology, history, literature, and cultural studies, it highlights continuities and ruptures in the history of scientific inquiry into dreams.

Designed primarily as a text this volume is an up-to-date and integrated overview of physiological sleep mechanisms, brain function, psychological ramifications of sleep, dimensions of dreaming, and clinical disorders associated with sleep. It is accessibly written with specially boxed material that enhances the text. Authored by a researcher/clinician/professor with more than 25 years of experience in sleep studies, Understanding Sleep and Dreaming provides a solid basis for those who are not expert in this area. It offers a good foundation for those who will continue sleep studies, while at the same time offering enough information for those who will apply this knowledge in other ways such as clinicians in their individual practices or researchers for whom sleep may be part of a specific study. It is an excellent text for courses on sleep at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

This monograph is the product of an interdisciplinary experiment--an artistic experiment and a psychological experiment--focused on dreams. Inspired by the prevalence of dream imagery and "dream logic" in surrealist art, the authors asked 100 art students to create digital images representing critical scenes from one of their dreams, then to create a surrealist collage from the digital images. The resulting collages tend to capture the surreality envisioned in actual works of surrealist art, as two collages included in the book illustrate. Inspired also by the psychological problem of studying other minds, the authors asked the 100 art students to describe their dream in writing, to interpret their dream, and to complete two personality measures: the Short Form of the Boundary Questionnaire and the Brief Symptom Inventory. The art students' scores on particular personality scales were found to be statistically associated with particular dream aspects, many of which are visually observable in the digitized dream images created by art students with particular personalities but are not verbally discernible in the dream descriptions written by those same students. The appendix contains, for each art student, the digitally imaged dream, the written description and written interpretation of the dream, and scores on the Boundary Questionnaire and on the depression, anxiety, hostility, and somatization scales of the Brief Symptom Inventory. The book concludes with a bibliography and an index to some of the visual elements in the 100 digitized dream images.