Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction

What is dreaming, and what causes it? Why are dreams so strange and why are they so hard to remember? Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science, J. Allan Hobson provides a new and increasingly complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain. Focusing on dreaming to explain the mechanisms of sleep, this book explores how the new science of dreaming is affecting theories in psychoanalysis, and how it is helping our understanding of the causes of mental illness.

J. Allan Hobson investigates his own dreams to illustrate and explain some of the fascinating discoveries of modern sleep science, while challenging some of the traditionally accepted theories about the meaning of dreams. He reveals how dreaming maintains and develops the mind, why we go crazy in our dreams in order to avoid doing so when we are awake, and why sleep is not just good for health but essential for life.

• Sleep: A Very Short Introduction
• The Brain: A Very Short Introduction
• Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
• Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
• Memory: A Very Short Introduction
• Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind
• Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
• Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst