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Review - Dreaming: An introduction to the science of sleep - J. Allan Hobson

This is a pleasant surprise of a book that could do with a better cover - somehow it looks like a rather dull series book, probably overly academic and not for the general reader. Actually it's an excellent piece of popular science that really plunges you into the reality of dreaming and sleep. The writing style is excellent (especially bearing in mind that Allan Hobson is a researcher, not a writer) - it's conversational and verges on the witty.

Don't get the impression that this book is lightweight because of that style, though - it punches hard, at least as far as Freud and psychoanalysis goes. Hobson makes it very clear that anyone who still claims psychoanalysis (at least as far as analysis of dreams goes) has any scientific validity is a charlatan, on a par with other peddlers of new age bunk. (I said it punches hard.) Freud himself is torn to pieces, though he is at least allowed a pat on the back for recognizing that he had no knowledge of the brain to accompany his theories. Even so, as Hobson points out, Freud was immensely unscientific in his selective approach to data and total lack of interest in proper experiment. He had his theories, and he stuck to them in true pre-scientific fashion.

Hobson, instead, tells us to forget interpretation - little more effective than casting chicken entrails - and concentrate on the brain and its mechanisms, and from that getting to the whys and wherefores of dreaming. It's only now that we're managing to do this properly - and Hobson's arguments are very impressive provided you are prepared to be open minded.

There a couple of small caveats that hold it back from the full five stars. He does occasionally forget his audience and goes into rather tedious lists and tables that add nothing to the useful knowledge of the reader. And he does seem overly pleased with himself for what he sees as reducing the chances that "self" and "mind" can be anything other than workings of the brain - which most readers will either take for granted or be so totally opposed to that this will just be irritating.

Even so it's an excellent book - just a plea to OUP: consider repackaging it in a more popular science jacket and it will do significantly better!

Also in hardback:

Reviewed by Martin O'Brien

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