Dreams and Nightmares—The Origin and Meaning of Dreams

Drawing on his clinical practice, his research on sleep and dreaming, and over five thousand of his own dreams, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ernest Hartmann proposes a new theory of dreams that shows us how they help us make sense of our emotions and, ultimately, reveal most profoundly who we are. Dreams are meaningful, he argues-and in the process takes on neurobiologists, who believe that dreams are merely random products of the chemistry of the brain, and Freudians, who attribute every dream to the fulfillment of a childhood wish. He shows how dreams, guided by the emotions of the dreamer, make broad connections among our experiences in life. In the end, he concludes, dreaming is immensely useful to the most important psychological task we face-gathering knowledge about ourselves.

Ernest Hartmann, M.D., is a world-renowned authority on sleep and dreaming. He is currently Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts.