Dream Life: An experimental memoir, is a new book by psychiatrist and dream researcher J. Allan Hobson wherein he explores his dream theory of protoconsciousness. Tiffany O'Callaghan from New Scientist interviews Hobson on his intriguing new dream theory:
Why did you choose to write an "experimental memoir"?
I think it's interesting to consider both autobiographical details and biological phenomena. Since my life's work has been of that nature, I wanted to emphasise the importance of both.
What is your dream theory of protoconsciousness?
In 2008 I was preparing a lecture and I realised I was still thinking of dreaming as an unconscious mental process, and that that was wrong. The minute I threw out the Freudian idea that dreaming is derivative of waking experience was when I could see it for what it probably is - a prediction about waking experience.
REM sleep is antecedent to waking. It occurs in utero. Now, you can't tell me that's because you're trying to get rid of infantile wishes. It means that dreaming has a developmental function. It is also something that occurs relatively late in evolution: if you don't have a thalamus and cortex, you don't have REM sleep, despite the fact that it's a brainstem function.
REM sleep is in the service of brain function that will ultimately lead to waking consciousness. My theory is that dreaming is not a replay of memory. It is a "preplay" of perception.
Why did you abandon the idea that dreaming is unconscious?
I had to ask myself, why do I say it's an unconscious mental process? The answer was because I'm still a Freudian, even though I've been trying to get over it. The philosopher Willard Quine once told me I belong to Freudians Anonymous. It's true, and it's not just me: I think everyone is addicted to Freudian misconceptions. We've got to take all of these received ideas more seriously, and then take them apart.
How did you become disillusioned with psychoanalysis?
In the first two weeks of my psychiatry residency in 1960, I thought I'd see that my doubts about psychoanalysis had been mistaken. But it was just the opposite. I was told, "There must be something wrong with you if you're asking all of these questions." My chief suggested I really believed in science. I said, "That's ridiculous. I don't believe in science; science is our defence against belief." Science is institutional scepticism. We need to ask these questions.
Yet some people still hold to psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalytic theory is popular because it's easy to understand, but I think it's wrong. I don't think dreams are caused by the release of repressed infantile wishes. There's nothing scientific about psychoanalysis, there's nothing scientific about Sigmund Freud. He didn't do a single experiment, he didn't do any direct observation, he used no controls. The guy was out to lunch.
You argue we should move toward a "science of subjectivity". What is that and what makes it worthwhile?
Subjective experience is a methodological approach to studying the brain: look, keep accurate records and then analyse them. That's how we discovered "dream bizarreness". Everyone said that dreams were bizarre, but nobody really knew what that meant. It doesn't mean you see monsters or that you can fly, but that times, places and persons change without notice in dreams. I think there are other ways this will play out when people take the science of subjectivity seriously.
Where should research into dreams go from here?
One of the main problems is in understanding the brain imaging data in terms of cellular and molecular activity - there's a big gap there.
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