Dream Resources

Dream and Sleep Research

Dreaming
Online articles from the premiere Academic journal in contemporary dream research

DreamTime
Online articles from the magazine published by the International Association for the Study of Dreams

DreamGate
One of the oldest authority sites about dreams with tons of articles, advice, and information

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Science says sleep good

Check out the English translation of this mainstream piece on sleep and dream research just out of Korea. This article about the benefits of sleep is more holistic than the usual reductionist perspective that comes out of New York. Which is to say, the Korean piece succeeded in mentioning dreaming at all. I bring this up to highlight the gulf between dream studies and sleep research. Due to the fracturing of our Western knowledge bases, dreams and sleep scientists never meet in the night.

I always enjoy reading science journalism because it can be so revealing about cultural assumptions and biases. After discussing how tortured mice make a good case for a good night’s rest (Allan Rechtschaffen’s sleep deprivation study), the Korean writer naturally began reviewing the history of dream interpretation in the Western scientific sphere. The discussion slipped from sleep to dream seamlessly and I temporarily forgot my cultural zietgiest that dreams would, of course, be of no importance to a discussion on the benefits of sleep.

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Dream Interpretation and its Discontents

I just uploaded a new essay titled the Trouble with Dream Studies, which is meant to contextualize my perspective about dream research and its place – or misplace – within Western science. The essay also introduces a series of further thoughts about the mysteries of dreaming which explore how our beliefs can construct – and sometimes constrict – what we believe is possible in dreams and waking life.

As always, discussion is welcome.

The Trouble with Dream Studies

This essay introduces a series of articles about the difficulties facing dream studies as a field of knowledge. These difficulties emerge at every level of participation with dreaming, from third-person gathering of dream reports to first-person remembered experience. How do we know what we know? What is the spectrum of possibility for human consciousness? What is real?

In science, these values are usually not transparent. However, in the study of dreams our personal beliefs influence our perception so much that we literally experience different realities. That’s why dream interpretation is dismissed by hard scientists, and also why Freudians dream about their mothers and Jungians dream about Germanic mythological creatures.

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