Review: The Mind At Night: The New Science Of How And Why We Dream

The Mind At Night: The New Science Of How And Why We Dream by Andrea Rock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subtitle perfectly explains what this book was about...the science of dreaming. It starts with the discovery of the rapid eye movements (REM) sleep correlating with the time during sleep of dreaming. Eugene Aserinsky wasn’t particularly interested in sleep research, but that was where he found himself in 1951 while working on his degree. His lab subject was his eight-year-old son. Other subjects were studied and with his mentor they published their findings that REM sleep correlated with dreaming in the journal Science in 1953. This was the beginning of dream research as a science, as opposed to the psychological aspect, such as Freud.

Freud and his dream theories are mentioned off an on, yet mostly in the way of not accepting that everything is sexual based. Often the book points out ways that proves this is not the case.
The book states the 60’s were the “golden era” of dream research, meaning in the United States, where federal funding started drying up in the 1980s. Then dream research was more of a side-benefit of sleep disorder research.

The book ends with stating there are two main theories of why we dream. One is to work out our emotional states for emotional regulation. The other is dreaming is a way of enhancing memory so as to solidifying learning. More likely it is both.

Although at the time the book was published the research was new, I’ve had this book for a couple of decades so that is no longer the case. The first few chapters the writer wrote some corny lines, like attempts at humor or something. It was awkward reading. But by the end of the book the writing solidifies better, those attempts are gone and just reporting the facts has he found them, and the writing was smoother and worked better.


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