Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind - Softcover

Hobson, J. Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262581795 ISBN 13: 9780262581790

Publisher: Bradford Books, 1999

Synopsis

In this book J. Allan Hobson sets out a compelling-and controversial-theory of consciousness. Our brain-mind, as he calls it, is not a fixed identity but a dynamic balancing act between the chemical systems that regulate waking and dreaming.

About this title

Review:

A cigar is just a cigar again! Psychiatrist and neurophysiologist J. Allan Hobson rouses us from our self-absorption in Dreaming as Delirium, an exploration of what neuroscience has pieced together about our sleeping lives. Freud, after all, was first a neurologist, turning to his theories of symbolic wish fulfillment to cover gaps in contemporary knowledge. While those gaps remain, they narrow a bit each year, and Hobson's unique clinical perspective gives him great insight into what might lie in their depths. Writing with humanistic charm, he weaves personal stories, clinical narrative, and research findings into a wide-ranging theory encompassing attention, desire, motivation, and our nearly desperate need for coherence. Ironically, this need drives us to tell ourselves the craziest stories at night--perhaps, he suggests, because we are experiencing sensations similar to those of hallucinating schizophrenics. While far from conclusive, the evidence Hobson presents strongly suggests that we are closing in on one of the most oldest and most elusive mysteries in human experience. Thoughtful and wise, Dreaming as Delirium shows the reader that hard science can reach the depths of our souls and make us more human, not less. --Rob Lightner

About the Author:

J. Allan Hobson is Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of The Dreaming Brain: How the Brain Creates Both the Senseand The Nonsense of Dreams, Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind (MIT Press,1999), The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness (MIT Press, 1999, 2001), and other books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bradford Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0262581795
• ISBN 13: 9780262581790
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320