Dreaming Reality: How dreaming keeps us sane, or can drive us mad by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell, HG Publishing, 拢16.99, ISBN 1899398368
WHY we, and apparently other animals, dream is a mystery of science. Or at least it would be, if these private phenomena of the night fell within the grasp of science. Scientists as eminent as Francis Crick have had a stab at suggesting why we dream 鈥� what biological or psychological functions dreams might serve. Long before Freud, the ancient Greeks speculated about this, and since then we have had proposals that they are anticipations of the next world (Jung), predict future events (J. W. Dunne), erase erroneous associations (Crick), and other more physiological ideas. The thesis in Dreaming Reality is that dreams are extensions of daytime thinking with metaphors, and emotionally loaded. So thinking effectively and feeling affectively are linked in sleep.
Examples of interpreted dreams are the evidence, together with a brief history of dream studies, and references to the literature. The thesis is interesting, and consequences are suggested and discussed. Yet there is something very strange about this book. It is oddly structured, particularly its frequent adulatory comments on the virtues of the first author, referred to as Joe. (It is as though Joe were a child not supposed to hear comments on his school report, yet which are aimed to please him.) Evidently the second author, Ivan, has written the book from Joe鈥檚 dream experiments and ideas inspired by them.
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They may be right about dreams. Perhaps dreams are useful extensions of daytime planning, expressed with bizarre metaphors of events in often impossible situations. Of course, writers on dreams 鈥渞ead鈥� them with interpretations reflecting their theoretical assumptions, but as this circularity is characteristic of all science, it is not a fair criticism of dream studies or of this book. One may ask, though: who or what interprets and reads our dreams? Is it other parts of the brain? Are we listening and watching in the night hours to brain picture language telling evocative stories in strangely ambiguous metaphors? These are surreal, generally unfocused pictures, but, as Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrell say, perhaps dreaming is an art form.