Rapid eye movement (REM) is a cyclical sleep period, occurring in intervals of 90-120 minutes during the night, occupying approximately 20-25% of total sleep time. During REM sleep, there is active inhibition of muscle activity, leading to complete or near complete atonia. This is a complex process generated by the interplay of multiple neurotransmitter systems, with a decrease in excitatory activity and increase in the inhibitory glycinergic and GABAergic premotor neuronal input to motor neurons. This book discusses the characteristics, disorders and physiological effects of REM sleep.

To what extent does sleep constitute a limit for the philosophical imagination? Why does it recur throughout philosophy? What is at issue in the repeated relegation of sleep to the realm of physiological study (as in Kant, Freud and Bergson), in favour of promoting the critical investigation of dreams and dreaming as a key indicator of modernity? Does philosophy entail a certain repression of the poetics of sleep in all its conceptual impossibility? Through a series of engagements with key thinkers in modern European philosophy, this book rearticulates a poetics of sleep at the heart of some of its seminal texts. From the problematic yet instructive status of a Kantian discourse on sleep to the conceptual contradictions inherent in psychoanalytic thought and the rich possibilities of thinking 'sleep' in the writings of Bergson, Blanchot and Nancy, the book's aim is to dredge the remains of sleep - not to bring its secrets to the surface of waking life, but instead to draw closer to what falls under or away in thinking and writing 'sleep'.

Dreams have been taken seriously in China for at least three millennia. "Wandering Spirits" is a translation and study of the most comprehensive work on dream culture in traditional China - "Lofty Principles of Dream Interpretation" (Mengzhan yizhi), compiled in 1562 by Chen Shiyuan and periodically reprinted up to the modern era. The best introduction to the diversity of ideas held by the educated class about dreams, this unique treatise compiles various theories, Chen's own comments concerning the nature of dreams and their role in waking life, and almost seven hundred examples assembled from a wide range of literary sources. This annotated translation is accompanied by a full-length introduction that surveys the evolution of Chinese dream culture and the role of Chen Shiyuan and his encyclopedia.

How can science and religion co-exist in the modern discipline of psychotherapy? A Dream in the World explores the interfaces between religious experience and dream analysis. At the heart of this book is a selection of dreams presented by the author's patient during analysis, which are compared with the dreams of Hadewijch, a thirteenth century woman mystic. The patient's dreams led the modern woman to an unanticipated breakthrough encounter with the divine, her experience of soul. The experience reoriented and energized her life, and became her dream-in-the-world. Following Jung's idea that the psyche has a religious instinct, Robin van Loben Sels demonstrates that the healing process possible through psychotherapy can come from beyond the psyche and can not be explained by our usual theories of scientific psychology.
Written in flowing, easily-read language A Dream in the World details a classical Jungian analysis of a woman's dreams, and searches the relationship between religious encounter, psyche and soul.

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.

Dreams told in the group are conjoint individual and group creations. They are both influenced by the group atmosphere and may in turn influence it and the individual, promoting change and development. Dreams have a deepening effect on therapeutic work and, due to their unconscious content, they may represent the most authentic exchange between individual and group. This state-of-the-art book provides help for therapists encountering a dream told in their group. It covers the major theoretical perspectives for their understanding, as well as representing different psychological schools and their approaches to the technical issues of group dream therapy. Despite the variety of sources, the clinical approaches described complement each other, and the book details many case studies, including a first dream in the group, an unconscious meeting between women and men, and other polarities within the individual and the group.

These collected essays by the distinguished psychoanalyst Marie-Louise von Franz offer fascinating insights into the study of dreams, not only psychologically, but also from historical, religious, and philosophical points of view. In the first two chapters, the author offers general explanations of the nature of dreams and their use in analysis. She examines how dreams can be used in the development of self-knowledge and describes how C. G. Jung worked with his own dreams, and the fateful ways in which they were entwined with the course of his life.
The rest of the book records and interprets dreams of historical personages: Socrates, Descartes, Themistocles and Hannibal, and the mothers of Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and Saint Dominic. Connections are revealed between the personal and family histories of the dreamers and individual and collective mores of their times. "Dreams" includes writings long out of print or never before available in English translation.

Working with dreams in therapy can help clients establish a focus and reach core issues quickly, and can play an important clinical role in both brief and long-term therapeutic relationships. This accessible volume integrates the latest research on sleep and dreaming with a cognitive-experiential psychotherapeutic perspective, providing a comprehensive guide to dream interpretation. In clear, jargon-free prose, elucidated by extensive case material, the author presents a three-stage model of dream interpretation based on the premises that dreams reflect waking life, that their meaning is best understood in a collaborative effort between client and therapist, and that both cognitions and emotions are important in this process. An Appendix contains a reproducible, self-guided manual on dream interpretation featuring step-by-step instructions and worksheets. This Appendix is an ideal resource for therapists to use with clients.

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.

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.

Spanning over half a century of investigation into Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, this volume provides comprehensive coverage of a broad range of topics in REM sleep biology. World renowned researchers and experts are brought together to discuss past and current research and to set the foundation for future developments. Key topics are covered in six sections from fundamental topics (historical context and general biology) to cutting-edge research on neuronal regulation, neuroanatomy and neurochemistry, functional significance and disturbance in the REM sleep generating mechanism. A reference source for all aspects of REM sleep research, it also incorporates chapters on neural modelling, findings from non-human species and interactions between brain regions. This is an invaluable resource, essential reading for all involved in sleep research and clinical practice.

This volume summarizes the knowledge that science has been able to amass about the world of dreams since Freud first published his book "Interpretation of Dreams" in 1900. Vedfelt reviews, in depth, the large body of research about dreams that has found its way into the literature, from the work of Freud and Jung to that of many other important investigators, including Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Montague Ullman, Calvin Hall and Medard Boss.;Vedfelt also discusses dream-work in gestalt therapy and psychodrama, and describes the results of modern laboratory investigations of sleep and dreaming. How organic diseases and physical symptoms affect dreams, the relationship between dreams and psychosis, parapsychological phenomena, esoteric dream understanding and consciousness-expanding dreams are among other subjects covered.;This handbook should be of interest both to professionals and to those with a general interest in the subject.

Children may not understand where their dreams come from and may even experience terrifying nightmares that stop them being able to sleep, and frighten them when they are awake. What do you do as an adult to help them overcome their nightmares? How do you know what is "normal" dreaming for their age and development? This guide gives a step-by-step account of how to understand and interpret children's dreams. Illustrated with practical exercises it also contains interesting facts about the cultural and spiritual significance of dreams. An analysis of Harry Potter's dreams are included - and a look at dreams children reported having in the 1920s.