| View Larger Image | Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions during Sleep (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution) | Hardcoverby Patrick McNamara (Author)
| List Price: | $44.95 | | Price: | $35.96 | | You Save: | $8.99 (20%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Praeger | | Page Count: | 200 Pages | | Publication Date: | July 30, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 397,772th |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
We've nearly all been there at least once - awakened with a pounding heart and the memory of frightening scenes that seemed so real, but were conjured up and existed only in the sleeping mind. Nightmares affect people across countries and cultures, with some 10 percent of the world's population reporting recurrent nightmares. Parents have reported, and science has recorded, nightmares in children as young as 18 months old. Up to 40 percent of children aged 2 to 12 experience nightmares, as do some 35 percent of veterans and 50 percent of adults with chronic illness. With this book, a psychologist widely known in his field shows how nightmares evolved and were useful to ancestral populations, and why nightmares may carry beneficial functional effects even today for people who suffer from the pulse-pumping dreams. McNamara brings us up to date on the biology of nightmares and what, specifically, happens in the brain during the event. He also explains the history and development of nightmares and likely causes, including traumatic events, psychological and physical disorders, and commonly consumed medications. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 3 reviews)
|
Nightmares: The Science and Solution by Melissa J. Finley  5 Stars
September 14, 2009
awesome seller. item arrived very quickly and as promised. A++++++ seller. Would highly recommend them. I wouldn't hesitate to buy from them again!
| |
Thin but intriguing by lit crit (Denver)  4 Stars
August 07, 2009
This was apparently a scientific paper fleshed out just a bit for book length, making an already slim volume even slimmer in actual material because it was so repetitive. Nonetheless, it is solid science and quite intriguing in its implications.
| |
Nightmares: The Unfamiliar Threat by M. E. Tappan (Lakewood, CO) 4 Stars
November 26, 2008
The author of this book concludes that a nightmare is: a horrific or disturbing vision of a physiological processes, a meaningless occurrence (in any practical sense of emotional or self understanding), a gender magnet for the opposite sex (at least to our pre-modern ancestors), a schizoid event, a lethal threat to the weak heart, a non-metaphorical construct, a story-line for the ancient shaman, and a real downer.
The author theorizes that nightmares persist in human experience as a vestige of ancestral human pre-history when natural selection gave the advantage to those who gained social prominence, prestige and respect by compellingly reporting their night-time dream struggles and battles. The effect of reporting these nightmarish dreams in the culture of our "pre modern" ancestors, McNamara states, not only acted to elevate social status, but served to funnel these creative individuals (those with a frequent history of nightmares) into spiritual (shamanic) and healing "professions." According to the author, the prestige gained increased the likelihood of survival and "positive selection" within tribal communities. McNamara also theorizes that the stories of nightmares themselves, if believed, could have led to increased vigilance and thus improved chances of survival in a hostile world.
McNamara contends that the figure of a dreamed "supernatural monster" or demon who wants to possess or take over the dreamer's sense of self is central to the understanding of nightmares. Because the dreamer knows nothing about the inner psychic workings of his or her own created nightmare-demon (other than that it intends to do harm), and because McNamara believes that the knowing mind of the nightmare sufferer cannot generate an unknown construct, he reasons that the nightmarish image must come from some other place independent from the dreamer's will or traditional view of a single mind. That other place, he postulates, is from the human genome itself and represents the struggle between two opposing physiological forces to attain homeostasis or balance. The conflicted forces in the case of nightmares, McNamara reasons, are opposing sleep-state inhibitory and excitatory processes that control the movement in and out of REM sleep.
We are thus, according to McNamara, of more than one mind; a mind of maternal origin moving us out of REM sleep, and another of paternal origin moving us into REM sleep. He likens this dual-mind or multi-mind concept especially to dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. And McNamara reports research that describes models of the "...self as comprised of at least two major and distinct subpersonalities or agents with distinct interests that compete for control over the individual's attentional resources and decision-making capacities." McNamara sees this theory of "self" as model for the nightmare: a visual representation of the forces of biology battling for the mind of the dreamer.
Though it could be argued that McNamara views the nightmare (especially those dealing with demonic possession) as a metaphor for biological competition within the human organism (the struggle of one physiological process over another for example), he does not view nightmares as metaphorical. "Unlike dreams," McNamara writes, "nightmares are not particularly metaphorical." Metaphors provide ways that abstract concepts can be understood by likening them to understood concrete terms. But McNamara states that the abstract is not being confronted in nightmares, "Instead," he writes, "the nightmare deals with primal emotional energies and unadorned and terrifying imagery."
According to McNamara, nightmares are not only terrifying, but dangerous. He cites his own research indicating that the biology of nightmares, or the dreams occurring during REM dreaming, have negative and even injurious effects on health. McNamara cites other studies too for example, showing a correlation between the time of cardiac arrest and the late morning hours coincident with the final REM period of sleep when nightmares are likely to occur. Of course, heart failure occurs often too during strenuous exercise and sex. And few scientists devote books as warning to their dangers.
Left unexplored in the book are more positive and historical views of nightmares representing a rich history of social and scientific inquiry. We may, for example, see ourselves as comprised of many different parts, or many different manifestations, without questioning whether we are insane or suffer from multiple personality disorder. We may entertain a more complete image of a "self" that does not pathologize behavioral changes (for better or worse) that occur with the influence of time, experience, history and the forces that impact our life.
Dreams (of the benign or frightening sort) have held a particularly important function in world cultures as an always emerging form of knowing. They have been seen as indicative of human reality... if not waking reality, than at least the unconscious reality that underpins our conscious awareness.
We are emotional creatures, even whimsical, willing and able to change as conditions warrant or dictate. Push us into a corner and we can become murderous. Sexism, racism, ageism and classism can make us killers of spirit. Mistaken beliefs can thwart our most authentic selves. Unless we recognize that we can do harm to ourselves and others through our own personal influence and actions, and that the proclivity to do harm does not simply reside in others but resides in us, we will be dumb and blind to the forces that terrorize us in our sleeping visions. If we externalize these frightening visions, we may also miss the symbolic representation of the ruthless spirit we need in ourselves to successfully expunge any life-long beliefs that keep us from mental health and wholeness.
There is danger in dismissing the rich tapestry of information available in our nigh-time dream journeys. The long-time dream analyst Jeremy Taylor says it best. Paying attention to threat, he states, whether that threat shows up in dreams or in waking life, is a survival issue. The nightmare tells us to wake up! Pay attention! Whatever is given symbolic shape in a dream is important to look at. There is always something elegant and meaningful in the nightmare. My own experience in shamanic cultures makes me certain that shamans understood this. Their compass is the psyche, not simply their own, but the psyche of the community of which they belong. They are masters of deriving meaning from the natural world, especially those aspects hidden from the unintuitive. Community members go to the shaman not to be dazzled by the shaman's dream, but to explore their own. And to ultimately face what is feared.
To take the path of dreams, we must take their images seriously, sojourn with them (at a distance if we must), suffer them and travel more deeply into their reality.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Inside Drucker's Brain
by Jeffrey A. Krames (Author)
The most accessible guide to the essential ideas of “the inventor of modern management”.
In late 2003, ninety-four-year-old Peter Drucker invited Jeffrey Krames to his home for an unprecedented day-long interview. He spoke candidly about his seminal management principles, his enormous body of work (thirty-eight books over six decades), and the leaders he had advised over the years (including Jack Welch).
Krames used the insights he gained that day to create Inside...
| 
| Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics (American Presidential Elections)
by Lewis L. Gould (Author)
Imagine a presidential election with four well-qualified and distinguished candidates and a serious debate over the future of the nation! Sound impossible in this era of attack ads and strident partisanship? It happened nearly a century ago in 1912, when incumbent Republican William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt running as the Progressive Party candidate, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs all spoke to major concerns of the American...
| 
| Understanding and Treating Depression: Ways to Find Hope and Help (Abnormal Psychology)
by Rudy V. Nydegger (Author)
In any given year, 10 percent of the population - or about 21 million people - suffers from a depressive disorder. Most do not seek professional help although the great majority could find relief with treatment. And that not only causes hundreds of thousands of dollars in economic costs annually from work slowdown and accidents to illnesses and suicides, the wider picture is that depression hurts not only the person at issue, but millions more who are family members or other loved ones. The...
| 
| Txtng: The Gr8 Db8
by David Crystal (Author)
Text messaging has spread like wildfire. Indeed texting is so widespread that many parents, teachers, and media pundits have been outspoken in their criticism of it. Does texting spell the end of western civilization?
In this humorous, level-headed and insightful book, David Crystal argues that the panic over texting is misplaced. Crystal, a world renowned linguist and prolific author on the uses and abuses of English, here looks at every aspect of the phenomenon of text-messaging and...
| 
| Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (Peterson Field Guide Series)
by Roger Tory Peterson (Author)
In celebration of the centennial of Roger Tory Peterson's birth comes a historic collaboration among renowned birding experts and artists to preserve and enhance the Peterson legacy. This new book combines the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds and Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds into one volume, filled with accessible, concise information and including almost three hours of video podcasts to make bird watching even easier.
|
|
|
