The Dream Experience. A Systematic Exploration
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Author(s): M. Kramer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415954460
Format: hardback
243pp
Price: £31.00
Review Date: 13 February 2007
Review: This book aims to provide the reader with a systematic scientific basis for understanding the dream as a psychological event. It also gives a method for examining the dream text in order to extract a figurative meaning for a reported dream. This understanding of the dream will help a therapist to use the dream report to confirm and expand their view of the philosophy of life of the dreamer and make use of the dream in their therapy. The author looks at: the historical reasons that people were interested in dreams; whether dreams actually exist; whether enough dreams can be collected in order to study them quantitatively and – if they can – what measuring devices could be used to study them. He goes on to examine whether dream content is signal or noise (regular or disorganised); what do people dream about; psychopathological dreams and nightmares; the circumstances and events that influence dreams; the relationship between waking and dreaming; and dream translation. The last chapters review the function of dreaming and the biological substrate for dreaming.