Description
Book SynopsisThe Dream Frontier is that rare book that makes available the cumulative wisdom of a century''s worth of clinical examination of dreams and then reconfigured that wisdom on the basis of research in cognitive neuroscience. Drawing on psychodynamic theorists and neuroscientific researchers with equal fluency and grace, Mark Blechner introduces the reader to a conversation of the finest minds, from Freud to Jung, from Sullivan to Erikson, from Aserinksy and Kleitman to Hobson, as the work toward an understanding of dreams and dreaming that is both scientifically credible and personally meaningful.
The dream, in Blechner''s elegantly conceived overview, offers itself to the dreamer as an answer to a question yet to be asked. Approached in thi open-ended manner, dreams come to reveal the meaning-making systems of the unconscious in the total absence of waking considerations of reality testing and communicability. Systems of dream interpretation arise
Trade Review"Anyone who thinks, writes, or teaches about dreams, and anyone who works with them clinically, needs to be familiar with this remarkable and engaging book. Mark Blechner's clinically based ideas about dream theory and the use of dreams in treatment are thoughtful, lucid, illuminating, and often startlingly original as well. The Dream Frontier will be taught and read all the way from undergraduate classes to psychoanalytic institutes. It is a contribution that will endure."
- Donnel Stern, Ph.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute
"The Dream Frontier offers an exciting excursion into the synthesis of various disciplines: cognitive neuroscience, neurology, clinical psychology and psychiatry, and philosophy in the context of their history during the past 100 years. Blechner addresses his concern with the isolation between scientists studying dreams and clinicians interpreting dreams by challenging both to consider the many frontiers of knowledge currentl involved with dream investigations...Blechner brings a broad intellectual scope to his various topics, using diverse, extensive sources and authors to compare and contrast approaches in developing evidence to support his themes."
- Paula Anne Franklin, Ph.D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases
"With psychoanalytic virtuosity and a good deal of originality, Mark Blechner has reformulated dream theory in its relation to the evolving framework of neurocognitive research, neurophysiology, linguistics, and evolutionary theory. In doing so he has provided the clinician with a wide-ranging and detailed approach to interpretive techniques. In 1953 Robert Fleiss wrote The Revival of Interest in Dreams to stimulate the flagging interest of psychoanalysts on dreams. Blechner's The Dream Frontier promises a second revival that now embeds the dream in the rich interdisciplinary matrix it deserves."
- Montague Ullman, M.D., Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiarty, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction and Overview. The Dream Frontier. Part II: New Ways of Thinking About Dreams. The Analysis and Creation of Dream Meaning. Secondary Revision, Tertiary Revision, and Beyond. Who Creates, Has, Remembers, Tells, and Interprets the Dream? We Never Lie in Our Dreams. Condensation and Interobjects. Oneiric Darwinism. Dreams and the Language of Thought. Part III: Clinical Work With Dreams. Vectors of Dream Interpretation. How to Analyze Dreams: Fundamental Principles. How to Analyze Dreams: Special Topics. Homonyms and Other Wordplay in Dreams. Dream Acts: Dreams in Analysis as Actions. Dream Symbols. Kleinian Positions and Dreams. The Patient's Dreams and the Countertransference. Dreams as Supervision, Dreams in Supervision. The Clinical Use of Countertransference Dreams. The Reallocation of Madness. Part IV: Sleep, Dreams, and the Brain. Knowing What We Know in Waking and Dreaming . What Dreams Can Tell Us About the Brain. Endoneuropsychic Perception.
