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Scientific research confirms what people
have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come
to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned
dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich
collection of examples showing how some of the world's most
creative people have used the revelations of their dream
life to inform their work. From these, she draws lessons
on the applications of our dreaming to our problems great
and small.
In the visual arts, for example, Jasper
Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he
dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador
Dali and his colleagues built surrealism out of dreams.
Today, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, dreams
her extraordinary designs into life. In film, "Twice
I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed
them," confides director Ingmar Bergman; so have Federico
Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and
John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which
became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream
as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless
writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven
to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's
tunes. In science, many dream of winning a Nobel Prize,
but physiologist Otto Loewi worked with the Committee on
the medical experiment that earned him the real prize. In
sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record,
then brought the dream to life. Gandhi dreamed of resistance.
Since Freud, we have taken it for granted
that our dreams tell us something about where we are and
where we have been. Now, in The Committee of Sleep,
Barrett vividly reveals how dreams can also tell us where
we could possibly go -- and how to get there.
Read this book, sleep on it, and see what
transpires!
Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., is on the psychology
faculty of Harvard Medical School. She is the author of
the widely acclaimed The Pregnant Man and Other Cases
from a Hypnotherapist's Couch. She is former president
of the Association for the Study of Dreams, editor of the
journal Dreaming, and has published numerous professional
articles and chapters on dreams. Her commentary on dreams
has been featured on NBC, Life magazine, Self,
and other national venues. She has lectured on dreams in
the United States, Russia, Kuwait, Israel, England, and
Holland. She lives and has her clinical practice in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
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