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Dreaming Souls: Sleep, Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind (Philosophy of Mind)

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On the 100th anniversary of Freud's THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, the philosopher/scientist Owen Flanagan has given readers a facinating synthesis of natural selection and depth psychology in the form of an original theory regarding the purpose and function of dreams. Written in a lively and conversational style, the book dissects such disparate dream-work hypotheses as Freud's, Hobson's and Crick's on its way to a realistic yet human understanding of Hamlet's rub. Dreams are not evolutionary adaptations and do not contribute to the species' survival; they are simply by-products of the neuro-chemical goings-on of sleep, but they do reveal ouselves to ourselves and contribute to personality and identity. This book is a worthwhile companion to Antonio Damasio's THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS from a neurological perspective and Gordon Globus' DREAM LIFE, WAKE LIFE from a philosopical one. Flanagan elaborates on the epistomological musings of Descartes (how can we know if we are ever truly awake and not dreaming?), the moral dilemma of St. Augustine (can we truly sin in deams?) and the objectivity challenge of Daniel Dennet (do we actually dream at all or just invent the dream story upon awakening?) While there are interesting examples of dream interpretation here, readers should not look for deep symbolism, creativity wonder stories, Jungian archetypes or a how-to book on decoding one's own dreams. Neither does this book really have much to say about the general evolution of consciousness outside of dreams--Damasio's is the place to go for that. But this is good reading on the cognitive structure of dreams and it is science straight up--an important book as our dreams, along with our lives, move into the next millenium.

Flanagan delivers a theory of dreams that could largely supplant the psychodynamic dream theories of Freud, Jung and others of this ilk. Freud, as is well known, thought dreams release socially unacceptable desires that got repressed in our waking lines. Dreams are a royal road to the dynamic, meaningful unconscious. Is an intimidating theory that makes it prudent either to forget dreams or keep them to oneself, or save to disclose in the confidentiality of therapy. Jung's theories were not so narrowly based, but nonetheless he touts dream material as personally laden messages cast up from the deep coils of our personal and collective unconscious minds.

Flanagan has a much friendlier, sensible view based on modern findings about how our brains actually work, as well as an extensive survey of actual dream content, information not available in the early 20th Century when Freud and Jung cranked out their dream theories. Flanagan's book is well worth the effort to understand. I will attempt a few highlights so as to whet your appetite to learn more directly from his book.

One key concept is that our brains evolved within social groups of our early ancestors. We need to make sense of things while awake, especially what's what in our own social group. We are tuned to take gossip and make the best story we can of it. We're storytellers one and all, making up a story and calling it what actually happened. We hear and see whatever fits in with the stories we have constructed over time.

The brain never turns off. Flanagan credits as dreams any mentation we have while not awake. Let me attempt report to you Flanagan's idea of dreaming in the rapid eye movement part of sleep. If you observe a sleeping person whose eyeballs are moving back and forth under their lids, and then wake the person suddenly, usually the person will report mentation that has a storyline. Flanagan points out that the rapid eye movements are controlled by neurons in the pontine brainstem (rather than a result of a dreamer looking at images of the dream), so rapid eye movements are indicative of PGO waves originating in the pons (P) from neurons that move the eyes. These neurons also signal the lateral geniculate (G) body in the thalamus and the occipital cortex (O), which is the main visual processing area of the brain. The PGO waves are also involved in the neurochemical stockpiling of neurotransmitters secreted by neurons. The puzzle of sleep is far from being completely solved, but most likely restoring the stockpiles is a major function. Prolonged lack of sleep does lead to fuzzy brain functioning. The PGO waves stimulate neurons all over the brain to get on with producing neurotransmitters, and all sorts of mentation bubbles up. However, Flanagan reasons: "but there is no reason...to think that the content of the mentation of the PGO waves is causally related to these processes. The mentation that occurs is mostly noise-at least as measured against what one is trying to learn and remember." (page 118) Flanagan cites research that shows people don't typically dream about what is recently learned, although the so-called "today's residue" does occasionally appear in dreams. The content of dreams and the content of memories we'd like to consolidate do not make a good match.

Now, the part of the cortex we use to make up stories during the day is not completely shutdown in sleep. Once the mental contents stirred up by the PGO waves interact with this part of the brain, a cohesive story may result. Flanagan feels most of the time the story is very weak. After all, we have four or five rapid eye movement episodes a night, making up to 35 a week. Once in a while we get a dilly, but Flanagan feels mostly we get noise. Not that this noise is to be disregarded. After all, he points out, the noise of a heart can reveal much about the quality of the heart's functioning. However, it would be ludicrous to believe that noise of the heart evolved so cardiologist could make a living. So Flanagan concludes that dreams did not evolve as releasers of repressed wishes, even though dreams can be used to help ferret out all sorts of things that may be characteristic of the person. As he says, "According to the neurophilosophical view I recommend, most dreams do not express wishes. Most dreams do not conceal their content. Most dreams do not involve sex or aggression, neither on the surface nor deep down inside, neither manifestly nor latently. Most dreams do not have deep meanings -- not sexual or aggressive deep meanings, nor even deep spiritual meaning. Dreams sometimes don't mean much of anything, and they certainly don't, as a matter of policy, mean any one kind of thing. It is predictable from the fact that dreams originate in chaotic activity in the brainstem that most are bungled, as Nietzsche puts it, or that things fall apart because the center cannot hold, as Yeats puts it, and sometimes a thematic center can not even be found or, if found, cannot be maintained in the internal chaos in which dreams are hatched." (page 192) This is not to say dreams are not worth paying attention to. After all, the stories put together from the fragments triggered by PGO waves are put together by your very own "story maker." And remember, your story maker is not fully functioning in sleep. Nonetheless, it is operating, perhaps less critically and more creatively than in your waking state. Your dreams are bound to have your characteristic slant which you may not be aware of unless you study your own dreams. Dreams may be noise, biologically speaking, but just as heart noises are worth attending to, so are dreams. Just don't go ape, oops, don't go Freud!

Reading this book, you want to like Owen Flanagan. He starts out proving he's conversational. He brings his own personal experience or that of his friends to the table when discussing dreams and thought. He transitions from one topic to another in a manner that initially hints that some surprise or awesome entertainment is just around the corner of your reading, titillating you, -- but then he doesn't deliver. He overintellectualizes his subject; he stretches a topic as if it is important and central to the entire original conception he's propounding about the nature of dreams, only to let you discover that it isn't that important, it isn't that central, in the very end. There had been plenty of "talk" (or writing) one could have done well without, one discovers.

The book lacks scientific and philosophical clout. Not that the whole thing is a complete wash, no. There is some useful information. You learn that dolphins sleep with only half of their brain; you learn dreams are generally unpleasant and that adult dreams rarely contain sex. Finally, we learn there are no dreams where whole works of art come to the dreamer completely intact, though they can inspire one artistically. But the philosophizing on difference, on how we can cognitively know we're dreaming from how we know we're awake, was jejeune and illogical. I found one common fallacy in his argument -- begging the question -- which astounded me since in that very same context he had pointed out to his readers another common fallacy that people often use when thinking about dreams and awakeness. To find (even) one common fallacy in his work was a huge disappointment. It confirmed my perspective that Owen Flanagan's on-the-surface personable, conversational writing style was more important to him than the logical flow of his own ideas as a philosopher.

One undergraduate of psychology reviewing this book on Amazon stated he thought Flanagan's 195-page book could be reduced to a 10-page pamphlet. I agree. The style of writing for this work is an odd admixture of conversation and highly technical jargon where words like "pleiotropic" and "PGO waves" are tossed into the discussion without definition, context, or purpose. Reading this book felt like the NREM dreams Flanagan vividly describes in his text: longer-than-the-actual spent time, repetitive, and compulsively nattering on small or insignificant details or events. I think the book could be improved by having more signal and less noise.

"Dreaming Souls" clearly lays out an anti-Freudian way of viewing dream content. Flanagan's focus on dreams as "free-riders" that coincidentally join us each night when we sleep is a fascinating way to interpret the latest in sleep science.

He offers his Laws of Dream Science to help explain the bizarre nature of our dreams without giving them undeserved (in his opinion) importance to our everyday lives. His IUD scale measures the incongruity, uncertainty, and discontinuity found in most dreams. The descriptions of our physiological processes during sleep are presented in easy-to-understand language, with diagrams and an occasional photograph to help discuss these complex ideas.

A Duke University professor, Flanagan adroitly explains difficult concepts in simple terms that even a C-student freshman could understand (which may or may not be a good thing for you). Despite this small complaint about style, the substance of this book is so overwhelmingly important that anyone the least bit interested in sleeping, dreaming, Freud, or consciousness should read it.

Leslie Halpern, author of Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science and Reel Romance: The Lovers' Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies.

owen flanagan does it once again in a great naturalistic work that sketches a controversial but logical theory in a controversial field. With experience in the philosophic, neuroscientific, and psychological fields owen is more than capable of proving his theory that dreams are not spandrels of sleep, they are fitness enhancing and although a biproduct of evolution are self expressive. He tackles all the neccessary and interesting questions from all his fields and creates an overal complex but clear and illuminating work that is a extreme pleasure to read

I am an undergraduate psychology student who did my thesis on sleep and dreams. I believe that Owen Flanagan took a great essay and tried to stretch it out into a book. The book does make some good points, but the author seems to restate his basic thesis many times over. Basically, the book is slightly repetitive and drawn-out, but anyone who is studying sleep and dreams will enjoy it, especially if they have read Dennett or Hobson because Flanagan talks about both of those guys.

The book is well written and the thesis is very basic: dreams are noise organized by your brain in a desperate attempt to bring chaos to order but some insights can be gleaned from the noise and how your brain organizes it. What I find disturbing is that, as far as I can discern, Flanagan does not believe in souls. He does not subscribe to the homunculus theory of something other than the human brain that gives us consciousness. He vacillates on the issue of God etc. and has a tendency to use the word "robust" a little too often but his style is accessible to the reader. So, why the title? Maybe a trivial consideration but I think it is important to convey to a potential reader through the title an incredibly compacted summation of the contents of the book. I like that he shoots Freud out of the water to a large extent because it is time to dispense with the psychoanalytical drivel that seems to have permeated so much of the average persons concept of the mind. All this having been said, I enjoyed the book and I would recommend it.

For millennia, the dream has been cloaked in mystery. The elusive memory, the intense events, the apparent ability to foretell the future have all been characteristics of dreams. Fortunes gained, kingdoms and religions established or overthrown, even an important chemistry discovery, the benzene ring, is attributed to a dream. The mystery of dreams was thought to have been exposed by Freud, who declared them expressions of repressed emotions. Owen Flanagan has swept away many of the myths surrounding dreams. His aim is to examine dreaming in an evolutionary perspective. Since human consciousness is the product of natural selection, then dreams, as form of deep consciousness, must have an evolutionary role. Flanagan simply dismisses this assumption as false, arguing that dreams are too random an event be an evolutionary adaptive role. Dreams are a mental "accident" of little value.

In building his case, Flanagan opens with a startling proviso. He resurrects Stephen Gould's outmoded analogy applying architectural terms to biological processes. Gould's famous [and fatuous] use of the spandrel - a triangular form resting on the curve of an arch, derives from a 1976 article. Flanagan uses the analogy to declare dreams as "spandrels" but follows two contradictory themes in expressing it. In one, the spandrel is an necessary part of the arch - true if the arch supports anything like an aqueduct or roadway. In the other, the spandrel is not an essential part of an arch - true if you simply build an arch that has no other role. This issue wouldn't be terribly important except that it's the essence of Flanagan's argument and why he makes it.

Flanagan is at some pains to show there's no apparent evolutionary role for dreams. Sleep, of course, is another matter. Flanagan shows how many "rest" functions occur during sleep, with reduced impact on both brain and body allowing restoration. These are clearly "adaptive" traits to help the body survive. What role does dreaming play, then? Flanagan uses Gould's arguments and tactics to rule out dreaming as an adaptation because he can perceive no reason for dreams' occurrence. Flanagan adopts another Gould phrase, "exaptation," a trait that emerges in the past in one role which changes over time to assume another. No "exaptive" role can be discerned for dreams either, according to Flanagan. With "exaptations," you never know what they are until they've proven their worth as adaptations. By Flanagan's reasoning, everything is a Gouldian "spandrel" until you can properly assess its adaptive worth - some time in the next million years or so. Like Gould in his original essay, Flanagan provides no evidence for his claim since there is no means to discern any.

Flanagan's style is impressive in most respects. His descriptions are clear and his thesis forcefully presented. Prose skills, however, don't replace evidence. He provides a perplexing disclaimer on why only his own dreams are offered as data. He stresses that he sought dream evidence from family and friends, but that all denied him permission. With the wealth of published dream examples in the literature, this singular approach borders on the astonishing. Although examples of particular dreams have but little bearing on his thesis, it remains puzzling why he fails to use them to bolster, or challenge for refutation, his own case. A provocative book in many ways, it will be a challenge to scholars in human cognitive studies. Recommended chiefly for the professional, it yet provides an entertaining, if not informative read.

I really had mixed feelings about Owen Flanagan's book Dreaming Souls. Certainly anyone who expected the operant word to be "Souls" would definitely be disappointed. The focus of the book, as the subtitle "Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind" suggests, is the evolutionary function of sleep and dreams. In general he seems to feel that sleep and its stages probably has a vital evolutionary purpose, but dreaming is simply an emergent property, or spandrel--a Gouldism--that humans have put to various purposes throughout history and across cultures. I could certainly agree with that possibility.

Although the author has a very intimate and conversational style--indeed he seems a pleasant individual and one feels he is talking right to the reader face to face--at times it becomes a bit too much. For instance there was a tendency to repeat key words to the point that one felt brain washed! I counted the use of "dreams" some 14 times on a single page (p. 53)--and least you feel I'm a little picky, the next page continued the pattern, using "dreams" or "dreaming" another 14 times. While the following page only exhibited 10 repeats, 9 of them were in the first paragraph of 11 lines. This gets a little burdensome. I also felt that Professor Flanagan tended to overuse the technique of rephrasing his statements for emphasis a little too frequently. Usually with the first colorful simile or metaphor I've gotten the picture and enjoy the cleverness. By the second I've definitely gotten the idea, but by the third I've skipped on to the next paragraph!

I was impressed with the author's very broad background in the social sciences. He seemed particularly well read among the philosophers. He was also quite current on some of the newer research on dreaming and the physiology of sleep. For instance, he mentions the possibility that dolphins and some birds may sleep with half the brain--something we might all find useful at times. This would definitely have survival value by virtue of an awareness of the approach of predators. The author's suggestion that it might have arisen among dolphins because the breathing process may be fully under voluntary control and a heavily sleeping dolphin might stop breathing seemed unlikely to me. It would be more so that a fully sleeping dolphin might simply sink and drown!

I found the newer information on REM and NREM sleep interesting. I, like many who have studied the subject in the past, believed that all dreaming occurred during REM. I also didn't realize that there were different types of dreams during REM and NREM. Most particularly the physiological data on the brain site activity during the two phases was a surprise to me. The location of the REM site in the brainstem would have suggested to me that this was the older, more primitive form of sleep, since this area of the brain is considered the older portion of the nervous system. This is apparently not the case, as studies of various animals with different levels of nervous function indicate.

The author's footnotes were very informative. I don't always read end of chapter notes, but one of them caught my eye about mid-point in the book, and I actually went back and read those from the earlier chapters. The bibliography is quite good, with volumes ranging in date from 1910 to 1998. There were a number I added to my own wish list for the future. Journal articles included were from "Philosophical Review," "Journal of Neuroscience," "Science," "Psychological Review," "Brain," "Trends in Neuroscience," "Nature," "Behavioral Brain Research," and so on, mostly from the 1990s. Many of these might be a little more intimidating for the average reader--many may simply be unavailable unless the reader has access to a university library--but for anyone doing a school research paper they might make an additional source for study and follow-up.

I wrote my honors thesis on the structure and function of dream sleep. I have read a lot of books about this subject and Flanagan is not on my list of recommended titles for other people interested in dream study (Read J.Allan Hobson if you want to know what's up). Flanagan's book is watered down, repetitive and not origional in thought. He could have condensed it into a nice 10 page essay and maybe then I wouldn't have been so irritated and bored with it.