AHP Perspective is a magazine published bi-monthly for members of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. It includes interviews, articles, essays, updates on member activities, conference announcements, and book reviews. Members receive the complete AHP Perspective as part of their membership.

AHP PERSPECTIVE February/March 2000 Table of Contents

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES: The New Theory on the Origin and Meaning of Dreams
BY ERNEST HARTMANN New York: Plenum Trade, 1998.
Reviewed by Adam Kay

According to Ernest Hartmann neither Freud’s view of dreams as wish fulfillment nor modern biologists’ emphasis on random forebrain activity during sleep do justice to the nature and functions of dreaming. In Dreams and Nightmares, Hartmann suggests that the brain is made up of neural nets, a complex system of interaction that allows for nonlinear connections, and that dreaming makes broader connection in the brain’s neural nets than does waking.

Boundaries are “thin” during dreaming, even in cerebral cortex neural nets, for biological reasons. Dreaming represents the function of the cortex without the usual inhibition of norepinephrine, active while a person is awake. Dopamine increases during dreaming, hence there is more vividness and intensity in dreams, as well as more connections. (The norepinephrine and dopamine roles play out in wakefulness as well.)

As a result of this broadness of connectivity during sleep, one rarely dreams about well-learned activities such as typing, reading, word processing, calculating.

These tasks rely on very specific connections and are exclusive. However, emotionally toned images and activities are much more frequent in dreams, and Hartmann says it is the emotion that drives the connections made during a dream, creating images that serve as metaphors for unresolved life issues. Emotions are the organizing principle for both dream form and content.

Hartmann suggests that just as rapid eye movement sleep serves biological purposes (e.g., restoration of neurotransmitters), dreaming— when it contextualizes emotions—serves psychological functions (e.g., solving problems, resolving traumas). Hartmann holds that dreaming is a type of therapy, but since dreaming has been around a lot longer, therapy is really a type of dreaming.

This promising theory offers a new way to look at the meaning and function of dreams. Hartmann is currently a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, and has conducted dream research as well as clinical work with dreams for more than thirty years. Dreams and Nightmares benefits immensely from his experience in the field, and every page resonates with expertise. Hartmann admits that evidence supporting this speculation is hard to obtain, but supports his new theory in a reader-friendly manner, using examples and case studies. His writing style is marked first and foremost by clarity. Hartmann is extremely straightforward, so much so that he can sometimes leave his reader begging for a joke. However, he is easy to understand, and can present very complex ideas with a signature clarity that is rare.

ADAM KAY is a writer, editor and playwright who has won numerous awards across the country. Healing Tales, a volume he co-edited with Bova, Gray, and Krippner, is due out in the spring of 2000. He lives in New York.

AHP PERSPECTIVE February/March 2000 Table of Contents

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