ABSTRACT

In The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation, Mark J. Blechner argues that the mind and brain should be understood as a single unit – the "mindbrain" – which manipulates our raw perceptions of the world and reshapes that world through dreams, thoughts, and artistic creation.

This book explores how dreams are key to understanding mental processes, and how working with dreams clinically with individuals and groups provides an essential route towards achieving transformation within the psychoanalytic process. Covering such key topics as knowledge, emotion, metaphor, and memory, this book sets out a radical new agenda for understanding the importance of dreams in human thought and their clinical importance in psychoanalysis. Blechner builds on his previous work and takes it much further, drawing on the latest neuroscientific findings to set out a new way of how the mindbrain constructs reality, while providing guidance on how best to help people understand their dreams.

The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation will appeal to psychologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and cognitive neuroscientists who want new ways to explore how people think and understand the world.

chapter 1|12 pages

Introduction

part I|170 pages

How the mindbrain transforms the world

chapter 3|17 pages

Condensation, interobjects, and categories

chapter 4|3 pages

Displacement

chapter 5|55 pages

Metaphor

chapter 6|7 pages

Puns – linguistic and nonlinguistic

chapter 7|4 pages

Homoforms and homomelodies

chapter 8|9 pages

Metonymy

chapter 9|14 pages

Symbols

chapter 11|37 pages

Psychological defenses and dreams

part II|52 pages

Working with dreams clinically

chapter 13|24 pages

The dream guides its own analysis

How to work with dreams over time

chapter 14|15 pages

Group dream interpretation

part III|70 pages

Dreams, knowledge, memory, emotion, and the mindbrain

chapter 16|13 pages

Elusive illusions

Reality judgment and reality assignment in dreams and waking life

chapter 18|14 pages

Memory, knowledge, and dreams

chapter 19|11 pages

The language of thought and the wakingwork