Drawing on his clinical practice, his research on sleep and dreaming, and over five thousand of his own dreams, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ernest Hartmann proposes a new theory of dreams that shows us how they help us make sense of our emotions and, ultimately, reveal most profoundly who we are. Dreams are meaningful, he argues-and in the process takes on neurobiologists, who believe that dreams are merely random products of the chemistry of the brain, and Freudians, who attribute every dream to the fulfillment of a childhood wish. He shows how dreams, guided by the emotions of the dreamer, make broad connections among our experiences in life. In the end, he concludes, dreaming is immensely useful to the most important psychological task we face-gathering knowledge about ourselves.
Ernest Hartmann fled Austria with his family after the German annexation in 1938. He was four years old. Steeped in psychology from an early age and fascinated by dreams, Hartmann inherited the intellectual legacy of his father, Heinz Hartmann, and his metaphorical grandfather, Sigmund Freud.
Ernest Hartmann is Past President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD), and was the first Editor-in-Chief of ASD's journal, Dreaming. Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and former Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, he also maintains a private practice. Hartmann is a renowned expert who has written eleven books and more than 300 journal articles on sleep, dreams, personality and boundaries.
