What, if anything, do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the
relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming
serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental
noise--"unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys"?With
expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan
is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. And in _Dreaming
Souls_ he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on
sleep and dreams and a compelling new theory about the nature and
function of dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear
biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side
effects, "free riders," irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view.
But dreams are hardly unimportant. Indeed, Flanagan argues that dreams
are self-expressive, the result of our need to find or to create
meaning, even when we're sleeping. Rejecting Freud's theory of
manifest and latent content--of repressed wishes appearing in
disguised form--Flanagan shows how brainstem activity during sleep
generates a jumbled profusion of memories, images, thoughts, emotions,
and desires, which the cerebral cortex then attempts to shape into a
more or less coherent story. Such dream-narratives range from the
relatively mundane worries of non REM sleep to the fantastic
confabulations of deep REM that resemble psychotic episodes in their
strangeness. But however bizarre these narratives may be, they can
shed light on our mental life, our well being, and our sense of
self.Written with clarity, lively wit, and remarkable insight,
_Dreaming Souls_ offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of
the oldest mysteries of mental life.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780190286545
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter