A distinctively human aspect of the mind is its ability to handle both factual and counter factual scenarios. This brings enormous advantages, but we are far from infallible in monitoring the boundaries between the real, the imaginary and the pathological. In the early modern period, particularly, explorations of the mind's ability to roam beyond the factual became mainstream. It was an age of perspective art, anamorphism and optical illusions; of prophecy, apocalyptic dreams, and visions; and of fascination with the supernatural. This volume takes a fresh look at early modern understandings of how to distinguish reality from dream, or delusion from belief. Opening with cognitivist and philosophical perspectives, Cognitive Confusions then examines test cases from across European literature, providing an original documentation of the mind in its most creative and pathological states.

Adolescents are among the most sleep deprived populations in our society. This book explores the genesis and development of sleep patterns at this phase of the life span. It examines biological and cultural factors that influence sleep patterns, presents risks associated with lack of sleep, and reveals the effects of environmental factors such as work and school schedules on sleep. This study will appeal to psychologists and sociologists of adolescence who have not yet considered the important role of sleep in the lives of our youth.

This text is a one-stop resource on modern dream psychology, from the pioneering theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to the revolutionary findings of the sleep laboratory. An introduction to the 20th century's major psychological theories about dreams and dreaming, this work offers a detailed historical overview of how these theories have developed from 1900 to the present. To help readers understand the many different approaches modern psychologists have taken, the book examines each approach in terms of three basic questions: How are dreams formed? What functions do dreams serve? How can dreams be interpreted? The book begins with a brief historical review of the most important ideas about dreams proposed in Western antiquity. It then presents comprehensive descriptions of the dream theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and other clinical psychologists. It further discusses the revolutionary discoveries of the modern sleep laboratory and the most important research findings of experimental psychologists. The book concludes with an examination of dreams in contemporary popular psychology, a multifaceted analysis of a sample dream, and an extensive bibliography on dream research.

This is an important new analysis of the problematic relationship between dreams and madness as perceived by nineteenth-century French writers, thinkers, and doctors. Those wishing to know the nature of madness, wrote Voltaire, should observe their dreams. The relationship between the dream-state and madness is a key theme of nineteenth-century European, and specifically French, thought. The meaning of dreams and associated phenomena such as somnambulism, ecstasy, and hallucinations (including those induced by hashish) preoccupied writers, philosophers, and psychiatrists. In this path-breaking cross-disciplinary study, Tony James shows how doctors (such as Esquirol, Lelut, and Janet), thinkers (including Maine de Biran and Taine), and writers (for example, Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud) grappled in very different ways with the problems raised by the so-called 'phenomena of sleep'. Were historical figures such as Socrates or Pascal in fact mad? Might dream be a source of creativity, rather than a merely subsidiary, 'automatic' function? What of lucid dreaming? By exploring these questions, Dreams, Madness, and Creativity in Nineteenth-Century France makes good a considerable gap in the history of pre-Freudian psychology and sheds new and fascinating light on the central French writers of the period.

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."

Social support and sleep are both health promoting factors and important in the prevention of illness and sick-leave. Promoting healthy work by providing good conditions for strong social relationships and by preventing bullying or harassment can improve sleep and consequently employee health, increasing work productivity and efficiency overall.

aA pleasure to read, well written and full of fascinating examples. It is unique in combining a sensitive and sympathetic understanding of the religious meanings of dreams with a state-of-the-art treatment of the insights that cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology bring to our understanding of them.a
--Wendy Doniger, author of "Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities"

aOffers a sophisticated, yet easily accessible and engaging discussion of how and in what way dreams and a broad range of the worldas religions have enjoyed mutual influence throughout history.a
--Nina P. Azari, Editor-in-Chief of the "Encyclopaedia of Religions and Sciences"

From Biblical stories of Joseph interpreting Pharohas dreams in Egypt to prayers against bad dreams in the Hindu Rg Veda, cultures all over the world have seen their dreams first and foremost as religiously meaningful experiences. In this widely shared view, dreams are a powerful medium of transpersonal guidance offering the opportunity to communicate with sacred beings, gain valuable wisdom and power, heal suffering, and explore new realms of existence. Conversely, the worldas religious and spiritual traditions provide the best source of historical information about the broad patterns of human dream life

Dreaming in the Worldas Religions provides an authoritative and engaging one-volume resource for the study of dreaming and religion. It tells the story of how dreaming has shaped the religious history of humankind, from the Upanishads of Hinduism to the Quraan of Islam, from the conception dream of Buddhaas mother to the sexually tempting nightmares of St. Augustine, from the Ojibwa vision quest to Australian Aboriginaljourneys in the Dreamtime. Bringing his background in psychology to bear, Kelly Bulkeley incorporates an accessible consideration of cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology into this fascinating overview.

Dreaming in the Worldas Religions offers a carefully researched, accessibly written portrait of dreaming as a powerful, unpredictable, often iconoclastic force in human religious life.

Although humans sleep for approximately one third of our lives, sleep itself is vastly understudied. As a biological universal, it is easy to overlook the degree to which culture shapes how we sleep, with whom we sleep, where and when we sleep, and how we conceptualize sleep. This edited volume explores the cultural dimensions of sleep in different societies around the world today, with the explicit intention of providing a comparative context through which we can understand the myriad ways in which sleep reflects, and literally (as well as metaphorically) embodies culture.

A sweeping reconstruction of human consciousness and its breakdown, from the Stone Age through modern technology Why has humankind developed so differently from other animals? How and why did language, culture, religion, and the arts come into being? In this wide-ranging and ambitious essay, Christoph Turcke offers a new answer to these timeworn questions by scrutinizing the phenomenon of the dream, using it as a psychic fossil connecting us with our Stone Age ancestors. Provocatively, he argues that both civilization and mental processes are the results of a compulsion to repeat early traumas, one to which hallucination, imagination, mind, spirit, and God all developed in response. Until the beginning of the modern era, repetition was synonymous with de-escalation and calming down. Then, automatic machinery gave rise to a new type of repetition, whose effects are permanent alarm and distraction. The new global forces of distraction, Turcke argues, are producing a specific kind of stress that breaks down the barriers between dreams and waking consciousness. Turcke's essay ends with a sobering indictment of this psychic deregulation and the social and economic deregulations that have accompanied it.

A study of the history of modern insomnia, this book explores how poets, journalists, and doctors of the Victorian period found themselves in near-universal agreement that modernity and sleep were somehow incompatible. It investigates how psychologists, philosophers and literary artists worked to articulate its causes, and its potential cures.

We all daydream and yet the purpose of waking fantasy, or episodes of conscious and private fiction-making, has never been really clarified. Instead, mainstream psychology characterises the daydream as task-distracted mind wandering, which does little to explain why people engage in creating fictions of often unrealizable proportions regularly for themselves, at times incidentally and at other times deliberately. This work overturns, re-organises and redefines established concepts of the role of waking fantasy in human life. It shows how the purpose of all fantasy is to transform mood states into specific emotional responses, a feature apparent in daydreams, sexual fantasies and even unconscious fantasy structures. Understanding how feeling states motivate fantasy explains why we daydream at all, how repetitive daydreams and sexual fantasies develop to elicit reliable emotional reactions, and even how we at times use and appropriate published or released fictional works to propagate our own fantasies. Along the way, the work explores the relation of waking fantasy to some of our buying practices, attachments to objects in early childhood, preferred genres of fiction and cultural phenomena such as the worship of celebrities.

This collection traces the history of psycho-analytically informed thinking about dreams, using selected contributions from Freud to the present to highlight both the legacy of The Interpretation of dreams and the evolving use of the dream as a research tool- of the mind first, later of the psychoanalytic process and of pathology and loge predicaments, and finally as a tool to be integrated with other methods of investigation.

* Includes chapters on sleep phase disorders, sleep apnea, periodic limb movements, narcolepsy, limit setting disorders in children, enuresis, and night terrors.
* Provides a unique, behavioral approach to sleep medicine.

Cinema--invented just before psychoanalysis formally developed--primed the public and scholars to rethink ideas about dreams. The author describes how surrealist artists purposely applied Freudian dream theories to their art to make the public aware of modern ideas about dreams. Most of our current cultural consciousness about the psychological value of dreams is traced to classical and contemporary cinema. This work examines how residuals of past approaches to dreams make conceptions of dreams in psychoanalysis and science more complex than ever today.

Scholars and students in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, cinema, medicine, and religion may find this volume useful. The book also examines academic psychiatry's increased emphasis in dream study on neuropsychiatry and psychopharmocology, as well as managed care's decreased compensation for dream therapy.

World-renowned contributors across several disciplines reveal how dreams can aid and empower children in daily life. Children can feel powerless in waking life, a fact that is often reflected in their dreams. This book shows how to take an active role in guiding children's dreams to help grow their confidence and improve their coping skills for real-life difficulties. Contributors from across various fields provide simple techniques to help children utilize dreamwork as a conduit for creative discovery and empowerment. Each chapter includes case studies and methods for working in practical ways with children, explaining what may trigger nightmares for children and how "monster" dreams can be guided to become "superhero" dreams. Essays encompass a spectrum of children's dreams with experts discussing dreams of trauma, dreams as a reflection of emotional and physical development, dreaming in the community, spiritual or religious dreams, lucid dreams, dreams during wartime, and dreams of death, among others. Throughout the work, the narrative discusses the use of dreams as teaching aids for use in art therapy, storytelling, and self-empowerment. Addresses how video games and today's news media can affect children's sleep/dreams and how trauma can trigger PTSD-like nightmares Details how children's dreams reflect their emotional and physical development Includes vignettes/case studies of children's nightmares from countries around the world, including a heavily war-torn country Explains what may trigger nightmares for children and how "monster" dreams can be guided to become "superhero" dreams Describes how children can interact with dreams by becoming lucid and by engaging in creative dreamplay

Teaching the World to Sleep provides a complete, science-based overview of sleep and sleep problems, from environmental, legal and technological factors to assessment and treatment options. David R. Lee introduces the basic scientific concepts involved in sleep and provides a clear description of insomnias and the parasomnias. Teaching the World to Sleep discusses NICE recommended Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi) and the REST (R) programme and outlines considerations for at-risk groups, sleep and the law, and the application of dreams and dreaming in psychotherapy. This second edition includes a full update on research conducted since the publication of the first edition and includes new information on sleep in the legal setting, the rise of sleep apps and trackers and their impact on our sleep. Lee also considers neurodiversity, sleep in long Covid, rare and unusual sleep disorders and the delivery of treatment using the NHS recommended stepped-care approach. Teaching the World to Sleep will be essential reading for psychotherapists, occupational therapists, and other professionals working with clients with sleep problems. It will also provide an accessible introduction to the science of sleep to readers looking to understand their own sleep problems.

Distinguished psychologist G. William Domhoff brings together-for the first time-all the necessary tools needed to perform quantitative studies of dream content using the rigorous system developed by Calvin S. Hall and Robert van de Castle. The book contains a comprehensive review of the literature, detailed coding rules, normative findings, and statistical tables.

Daydreaming, our ability to give 'to airy nothing a local habitation and a name', remains one of the least understood aspects of human behaviour. As children we explore beyond the boundaries of our experience by projecting ourselves into the mysterious worlds outside our reach. As adolescents and adults we transcend frustration by dreams of achievement or escape, and use daydreaming as a way out of intolerable situations and to help survive boredom, drudgery or routine. In old age we turn back to happier memories as a relief from loneliness or frailty, or wistfully daydream about what we would do if we had our time over again. Why is it that we have the ability to alternate between fantasy and reality? Is it possible to have ambition or the ability to experiment, create or invent without the catalyst of fantasy? Are sexual fantasies an inherent part of human behaviour? Are they universal, healthy, destructive? Is daydreaming itself destructive? Or is it a force which facilitates change and which can even be harnessed to positive advantage? In this provocative book, originally published in 1975, the product of the previous twenty-five years of research, the author debates the nature and function of daydreaming in the light of his own experiments. As well as investigating what is a normal 'fantasy-life' and outlining patterns and types of daydreaming, he describes the role of daydreaming in schizophrenia and paranoia, examines the fantasies and hallucinations induced by drugs and also the nature of altered states of consciousness in Zen and Transcendental Meditation. Among the many topics covered, he explains how it is possible to help children enlarge their capacity for fantasy, how adults can make positive use of daydreaming and how people on the verge of disturbed behaviour are often unconscious of their own fantasies. Advances in scientific methods and new experimental techniques had made it possible at this time to monitor both conscious daydreaming and sub-conscious fantasies in a way not possible before. Professor Singer is one of the few scientists who have conducted substantial research in this area and it is his belief that the study of daydreaming and fantasy is of great importance if we are to understand the workings of the human mind.

An engaging account of the science of dreaming. Written by a leading sleep researcher and a professional dream artist. Makes the biological, psychological, personal, and cultural causes of dreaming accessible. Surveys current theories of the function and meaning (or lack thereof) of dreams. Covers all current scientific work on dreaming, from what happens in the brain when we dream to how dream content relates to our waking life experiences * Each chapter tackles a different type of dream, illustrated through a scientific overview and a professional colour painting

The war in the Middle East is marked by a lack of cultural knowledge on the part of the western forces, and this book deals with another, widely ignored element of Islam-the role of dreams in everyday life. The practice of using night dreams to make important life decisions can be traced to Middle Eastern dream traditions and practices that preceded the emergence of Islam. In this study, the author explores some key aspects of Islamic dream theory and interpretation as well as the role and significance of night dreams for contemporary Muslims. In his analysis of the Islamic debates surrounding the role of "true" dreams in historical and contemporary Islamic prophecy, the author specifically addresses the significance of Al-Qaeda and Taliban dream practices and ideology. Dreams of "heaven," for example, are often instrumental in determining Jihadist suicidal action, and "heavenly" dreams are also evidenced within other contemporary human conflicts such as Israel-Palestine and Kosovo-Serbia. By exploring patterns of dreams within this context, a cross-cultural, psychological, and experiential understanding of the role and significance of such contemporary critical political and personal imagery can be achieved.

The Interpretation of Dreams and of Jokes provides a unique and integrative introduction to dream science. It addresses a notable gap in cognitive psychology on the subject of dreams and explores significant overlaps between the phenomena of dreams and jokes. Bringing together extensive research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the book provides a balanced approach to dream science that is underpinned by experimental and theoretical research. It considers the significance of dreams and their relationships to jokes, examining how both require an understanding of latent content in which context and individual differences play a large part. The book outlines a history of dream research and dream science and includes several original dream extracts for discussion. The book's chapters explore how we can interpret meaning in dreams, how dreams might be indicators of inner psychological and somatic states, whether dreams can be used in problem-solving and the relationship between dreams and aphasia, memory and waking consciousness. This groundbreaking book will be essential reading for researchers and students from psychological and psychoanalytic backgrounds who are interested in the analysis and science of dreams.

1. Unique format (myth-busting) which emphasizes the application of empirical skepticism. 2. Broad range of topical subjects written by globally renowned academics. 3. Number of Pseudoscience in Psychology modules are on the rise, and there is a need for a core textbooks - this book seeks to fill that gap.

Over the years there has been growing interest among the scientific community in investigating sleep and how it affects the memory and other brain functions. It is now well established that sleep helps in memory consolidation and induction of neural plasticity, and that short-term deprivation of either total sleep or rapid eye movement sleep alone can induce memory deficits very quickly. Quantitative and qualitative changes in sleep architecture after different training tasks further suggest that discrete memory types may require specific sleep stage/s for optimal memory consolidation, and studies indicate that sleep deprivation alters synaptic plasticity and membrane excitability in the hippocampal neurons and synaptic up-scaling in the cortical neurons. Further, sleep alteration during pregnancy may increase the risk of depression and adversely affect maternal-child relationships, parenting practices, family functioning, and children's development and general wellbeing. This book coherently discusses all these aspects, with a particular focus on the possible role of sleep in memory consolidation and synaptic plasticity. It also highlights the detrimental effects of sleep loss on mental health, the immune system and cognition. This book is a valuable reference resource for students and researchers working in the area of sleep, memory, or neuronal plasticity.

The Sunday Times bestselling guide to using the science of the body clock to create your optimum personal routine: sleep better, work better and feel better.

In the twenty-first century, we increasingly push our daily routines into the night, carrying out work, exercise and our social lives long after dark. But we have forgotten that our bodies are governed by a 24-hour biological clock which guides us towards the best time to sleep, eat and think.

In Life Time, Professor Russell Foster shares his life's work, taking us on a fascinating and surprising journey through the science of our body clocks. Using his own studies, as well as insights from an international community of sleep scientists and biologists studying circadian rhythms, he illustrates the surprising effects the time of day can have on our health: how a walk outside at dawn can ensure a better night's sleep, how eating after sundown can affect our weight, and the extraordinary effects the time we take our medication can have on our risk of life-threatening conditions, such as strokes. With knowledge of this astonishing science, we can get back into the rhythm, and live healthier, sharper lives.