Mapping the uncharted territory at the edges of psychological knowledge, these fascinating essays explore compelling aspects of dreams and dreaming. They discuss topics as diverse as memorable dreams, lucid dreaming, the role of dreams in the evolution of human consciousness and the relationship between dreams and the waking state.

In ‘The Dream and Its Embedding’, psychoanalyst Patrick Mahoney demonstrates, with absorbing case studies, how dreams can become effective therapeutic tools while dream scholar Kelly Bulkely concludes in ‘Big Dreams’ that ultimately, the function of dreams is to make the brain grow. Luigi Zoja, dream analyst, explores the profusion of nightmares among soldiers, prisoners and other victims of war in ‘Nightmares’. And Madhu Tandan, who lived for seven years at an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas, explains how dreams can access a level of consciousness beyond the psychological.

This volume is the first in the ‘Boundaries of Consciousness’ series, which, under the leadership of Sudhir Kakar, seeks to bring together psychoanalysts, philosophers, religious studies scholars and neuroscientists in order to expand the frontiers of current psychological understanding. Subsequent volumes will spring from symposia held at Wasan Island, Canada, on the supernatural, on death and dying and creativity and imagination.

Edited and introduced by Sudhir Kakar, On Dreams and Dreaming will be of interest to scholars and to all who dream and seek to understand why.



Author Bio: Sudhir Kakar is India’s foremost psychoanalyst and a novelist. His many honours include the Kardiner Award of Columbia University, the Boyer Prize of the American Anthropological Association, Germany’s Goethe Medal, the Rockefeller Residency, the Distinguished Service Award of the Indo-American Psychiatric Association, Fellowships of the Institutes of Advanced Study, Princeton and Berlin, and the Bhabha, Nehru and ICSSR National Fellowships in India.