I realized yesterday that DreamStudies is now 3 years old! This blog has stayed with me as I’ve moved all over the U.S.: from California, to Florida, back to California and now onwards to Pennsylvania later this summer. Also, in that time, I finished my thesis on lucid dreaming, got married, became a freelance writer and Internet consultant, and ate a vast amount of peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Three years is middle-aged for the blogosphere, but still a toddler in terms of covering the worlds of consciousness and dream studies.

Just now, I did a little google-mancy, and typed “three year old toddler” into the box, and up came this quote from Disney’s WonderTime:

By the age of 3, children have had enough personal experience to master many of life’s simple concepts. Their next challenge is to build on them.

That sums up the status of my mission at DreamStudies pretty well.

A Quick Look Back

I’ve laid much of the foundation in the last three years, covered some major dream theories, and ways to work with your own dreams, although neither of those series were as popular as my articles on lucid dreaming, especially the primer on lucid dream sex.

Representing the dark side, I’ve focused on lucid nightmares, sleep paralysis and occasional tale of jungle sorcerers. Representing the light, I’ve looked into geometric imagery in lucid dreams, as well as lucid dreams in Christianity and the paleolithic era, and the importance of big dreams.

Along the way, I’ve covered more esoteric topics, including the prehistory of hallucinogens, head shrinking,  ancestral dreams, the integral science of consciousness, and a seemingly random, but critical to my sanity,  guide to nature awareness.

I’m noticing I need to reorganize my content again, it’s getting long in the tooth.

And the Way Forward

But more importantly now it’s time to start integrating these concepts and schools of thought. In my first post about the interdisciplinary study of dreams, I wrote:

This portal was created because there are few outlets in the blogosphere that address dream studies from multiple perspectives. While I have lots of opinions about dreaming and the realm of consciousness studies in general, my intention here is not to defend a camp but explore the terrain. Further, I am not here to conquer the terrain, but to take notes in a tiny leather journal like a gentle 19th century naturalist who has a quick eye and a slight limp. As depth psychologist Craig Chalquist likes to remind me, “we are cosmographers, not conquistadors.”

A nice intention, but I’m biased as hell towards certain perspectives, so my map of the state of contemporary Dream Studies is skewed, and it must be skewed. I can’t eradicate my biases, and any attempt to try just destroys my relationship to the Other, because my construction of reality depends on my ability to project a pattern into the void — and if I’m lucky — find that pattern mirrored back. So, yeah, I defended camps along the way – and my hope is that I can continue to do so, but consciously and transparently.

What’s coming next for DreamStudies

With a little luck, this next year will see more about my first love, lucid dreaming, as well as more guest posts from excellent dreamers and visionaries. (My guest authors rock!  In fact, an article by Oneirology blogger Lee Adams on “dreams as the original psychedelic” is still one of the most popular posts of all time on this site.)  I’m also hoping to start exploring more connections between dreams, archaeology, sacred sites and the human visionary capability. Throw in some healthy apocalypticism and a wee bit of transpersonal psychology too.

Owlie, my alter ego, at last year's IASD Dream Conference in Chicago.

Besides that, I’m not sure exactly. But the paperback version of my Sleep Paralysis ebook will be out later this summer: no dates yet. I’ve also got a few articles out that explore the role of dreams in cognitive archaeology: but no dates yet.

Here’s some dates I got:

I’ll be at the annual conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams next week in Asheville, NC, June 27-July 2, presenting How to Win Fiends and Influence Demons: Sleep Paralysis as a Portal to Extraordinary Dreaming. If you are in the Southeast U.S., check out the dreams conference. We’re mostly harmless, but then again, dreamworkers do tend to dabble into more shadow work than most sane individuals (hence, the toothy owl-monster guardian of dreamstudies: Owlie).

So, onward, towards the second tier, towards integration, and projecting patterns into the void!

But unlike three years ago, I don’t feel like I’m talking to a void anymore, so I’d like to ask you:

What would you like to see more of at DreamStudies?

The neuroscience of dreaming is a relatively new enterprise but has quickly become the major paradigm of experimental dream research today.  J. Allan Hobson, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard University, is the undisputed celebrity of this scientific outlook, and the author of several popular books on the topic.  Hobson, in his 30 years of tireless work, is also perhaps the greatest provocateur in the field of dream studies, stirring up old philosophical conflicts such as the value of objective science over experience, and mechanism over meaning.

But what Hobson is really known for is sticking it to Freudian theory.  In his break-out 1977 paper, Hobson and co-author McCarley declared victory over Freud (and the entire psychoanalytic community) by reporting their discovery that dreams in the REM state form by grace of neurochemical changes in the brain.  As Kelly Bulkeley notes (1994), Hobson presented his work as a polemic against Freud, whose influence he accused of preventing scientific progress in the study of dreams.  His central beef with Freudian theory is the notion that dreams are full of hidden messages by design. On the other hand, Hobson agrees with Jungian dream theory that dreams reveal more than they conceal, and can be quite transparent in significance.

The Biochemistry of Dreaming

Hobson argues that dreams are clumsy narratives stitched together by the forebrain to make sense of the activation of biochemical changes and erratic electric pulses originating in the brainstem.  This is Hobson’s theory of dream formation in a nutshell, which he has updated many times over the last 30 years, and is still referred to as the activation-synthesis hypothesis of dream formation.

The theory sheds light on several aspects of dreaming cognition.  Most importantly, Hobson’s discovery of the role of neurotransmitters in dreaming has stimulated robust research into the biochemistry of consciousness and revolutionized the way that mental illness is conceptualized in psychiatry.  REM dreaming is characterized by low serotonin levels and high acetylcholine levels, which may explain why dreams are so hard to remember: they are never encoded in short-term memory in the first place.  When we wake up, serotonin floods the brain and our dream experiences from just a moment before are carried away by the tide.

Why are Dreams so Weird?

Hobson’s theory also offers a partial solution to why dreams are so wacky.  In waking life, the brain performs reality checks and strings together logical stories to keep up with our thoughts, emotions and movements as we interact with the world.  But in dreams, this ability is zapped when the serotonin valve is turned off, bringing about a state of consciousness ruled by strong emotions and uncanny sensations.   It’s a chaotic place to be sentient, but the mind is so motivated to construct meaning that bizarre narratives are hastily thrown together so we can make order out of the mess.  It’s a patch-job, at best, says Hobson.

Conflicts and New Solutions

One problem with Hobson’s original activation-synthesis model was that the theory presumes that all dreams occur in the REM state.  However, two neuroscientists, James Foulkes and John Antrobus, have independently shown that long narrative dreams with bizarre elements can happen in non REM states too (see Rock 2004).  Neuro-psychologist Mark Solms (1997) has also convincingly reframed the role of REM as an “alarm clock” for the mind to start dreaming, not as the prime creator.  All of these researchers suggest that biochemical activation is not the sole genesis of a dream’s structure.

Hobson (1999) responded to criticism by modifying his position with some new brain imaging data that shows that the forebrain (specifically the limbic areas) are also highly activated in REM.  The implication here is that emotions may be as big a factor in dream genesis/structure as brainstem activation.  In other words, whenever someone suggests that “dreams are random nonsense,” you can helpfully remind them that view is 20 years out of date and even the anti-Freudians have since changed their tune.

Since then, Hobson has widened his research interests, and is now after the Holy Grail in scientific philosophy: the mind/body problem, also known as the hard problem: how does brain relate to mind and consciousness?  Hobson’s contribution is the AIM model of consciousness.  AIM reaches far beyond REM dreams, and predicts possible states of consciousness by mapping the states along three lines of inquiry (instead of just one as in activation-synthesis).

The AIM Model of Consciousness

1. Activation: how active is the brain, measurable in electrical activity?
2. Input source:  is the generated imagery external, internal, or a combination?
3. Modulation: which neurochemical system is operating – the cholinergic (REM dreams and some altered states) or adrenergic (ordinary waking consciousness?

A fun example for AIM is lucid dreaming, which Hobson describes as a “hybrid state that features both waking and dreaming consciousness.”  Recently, Hobson and his merry band found that while lucid dreaming is similar to ordinary dreams in modulation and input (ie both are cholinergic and made of internally-generated visual imagery rather than taking in information from the senses), lucid dreams have higher activation in the GAMMA (40hz) range in the frontal and frontolateral areas of the brain.

Mechanisms Don’t Trump Meaning

Many have made a straw man out of Hobson by misinterpreting his work as a defense against the meaningfulness of dreams.  I have admittedly done so in the past before reading his primary works, no doubt influenced by all the rancor he stirred up in the psychoanalytic community.  But in real life, Hobson is a dream enthusiast, and is reputed to have over 100 volumes of personal dream journals.

And more to the point, Hobson’s theory suggests that meaning and creativity are fundamental to the experience of dreaming, but that this meaning may not be present in the initial formation of dreams.  Even as early as 1977, Hobson and McCarley suggested that dreams “are not without psychological meaning and function.”  The significance of the dream narrative, in Hobson’s present view, comes only after the powerful neurochemical perimeters are set and interpreted by the higher-order parts of the brain that deal with language, logic and the mapping of emotions with remembered experiences.

However, despite his backpedaling, Hobson still believes dreaming consciousness is an epiphenomenon of biological causes.

Personally, I think that Hobson’s work cannot comment on issues of meaning, because his scientific paradigm has already bracketed out those subjective queries.  And, besides, armed with an integral approach to science, learning about the material correlates to an extraordinary experience is not threatening to the value of the experience itself.

But if you believe in an immortal soul or a higher self that is unsullied by our gray matter, Hobson may disagree, after he offers to scan your brain.

For some great introductory reading by Hobson, check out:

Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep by J. Allan Hobson

13 Dreams Freud Never Had:the New Mind Science by J. Allan Hobson

Additional References:

The Wilderness of Dreams by Kelly Bulkeley (1994)

The Mind at Night: the New Science of How and Why We Dream by Andrea Rock (2004)

Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel by Robert Bosnak (2007)

Allan Hobson and R. McCarley, The Brain as a Dream State Generator: an Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis,” American Journal of Psychiatry 134 (1977), 1335-1348.

Allan Hobson, “The new Neurospsychology of Sleep: implications for Psychoanalysis,” Neuro-psychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 1(2): 159.

Mark Solms, The Neuropsychology of Dreams: a Clinico-anatomical study, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.

Introductory image (CC): Synapse by Mark Cummins

Hi Ryan, Here is a quote I read from your bio: “Principally, I am interested in pursuing a more radical materialism for both the sciences and the arts.” Would you say more about what you mean by this? I’ve studied material religion & theology, but I”m not sure if it’s anything like this.

I have to admit that “radical materialism” does sound like goobledy goop. The ideas behind it are too critical to be ill-defined, though, because this is the way science and the wisdom traditions of the world are beginning to merge.

Image credit: Synapse by Gasboyen

Radical Materialism – An Interdisciplinary Approach

So, radical materialism to me is a call towards good science, which means investigating not only what fits our current paradigm (or model of reality) but also the frayed edges of our knowledge, especially the anomalies that call into question our assumptions about how the world works.

Radical materialism relies on traditional methods of data recovery (third-person methods such as brain chemistry) as well as first person methods (personal experiences and phenomenology) and finally the science of relatedness: these are second-person methods that reveal shared observations and experiences (such as extraordinary co-arising cultural events or “group mind”).

Essentially, radical materialism combats the “scientism” of today by giving voice to experience, process, and observable phenomena. The assumption behind this term is that materialism has been infected by a false dualism that prevents access to the conscious events that actually are the doorway to our observations in the first place. In other words, the cognition of experience (also known as consciousness if you really don’t want to get funding) is off-limits from traditional science.

A second assumption here is that the observations we often call “supernatural” will turn out to have material correlates that have to do with our human sensing apparati. But in order to get there, we as a culture are going to have to relax our defenses about what is and isn’t “physically possible.”

Sleep Paralysis Pushes the Envelope Of What’s Real

An example is the subject of sleep paralysis, which is the terrifying sleep experience of feeling like being held down by an oppressive force — sometimes accompanied by a full-blown vision of alien Others. Medical doctors realized in the 1980s that sleep paralysis is a biological condition, governed by muscle paralysis in REM sleep that over-steps its bounds into waking, consensual reality. Until then, the thousands of stories about this condition (not to mention the rich cross-cultural literature) were tossed aside as “quaint fairytales.”

But of course this biological explanation does not reduce the chilling visions to random mechanical farts; rather, the experiences are psychologically real, and may even represent an entryway into shared (or archetypal) spaces. This is what I said about sleep paralysis a year ago:

These meetings have provided countless dreamers with deeper understandings of the psycho-spiritual realms that may be open to them. From my perspective, this isn’t evidence of the “supernatural” but an indication that we still need a more radical materialism to account for what is natural.

Integral Science Becoming Mainstream

I hope this gives some insight into what I mean by radical materialism. I am sharing what I learned from the work of Ken Wilber, B. Allan Wallace, David Hufford, and other philosophers of science who are mapping out the meeting grounds between knowledge and wisdom.

The good news is that this perspective is becoming more mainstream every day. For example, check out this recent Science Daily post about a research team composed of philosophers and cognitive scientists who are investigating consciousness with multiple methods. Professor Paul Coates from the University of Hertfordshire explains:

“When we see a sunset or hear a symphony our sense organs, brains and bodies are moved in ways that are well understood by the physical and biological sciences. But during such experiences we also enjoy distinctive forms of conscious awareness. Yet this undeniable fact about our conscious lives is stubbornly resistant to scientific understanding. How is it even possible for purely physical brain activity to produce conscious experience? How do the qualities that manifest themselves in experience relate to the very different properties that are referred to in scientific descriptions of the physical world?”

Now that’s what I’m talking about! So what do you think about this trend? Can it invigorate our fractured knowledge base? Or do you think an “integral science” is doomed to the sidelines of history?