The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series)

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. Introduction -- How the mindbrain transforms the world -- The mindbrain creates its own version of the world -- Condensation, interobjects, and categories -- Displacement -- Metaphor -- Introduction -- Metaphor and bodily experience -- How metaphor helps us understand dreams -- Dream as allegory -- Dreams pictorialize metaphors -- Combined metaphors, modified metaphors, and mixed metaphors -- Nonlinguistic metaphor : music, visual arts, and advertising -- Synaesthesia and synkinesia -- Metaphoric mappings between concepts and our bodies -- Blending theory vs. cognitive metaphor theory -- Metaphors gone awry -- Metaphor and transference -- Metaphor and rebus -- Puns : linguistic and nonlinguistic -- Homoforms and homomelodies -- Metonymy -- Symbols -- Dreams and the mindbrain's structuring of experience -- Psychological defenses and dreams -- Working with dreams clinically -- New ways of working with dreams -- The dream guides its own analysis : how to work with dreams over time -- Group dream interpretation -- Dreams, knowledge, memory, emotion, and the mindbrain -- How neuropsychoanalysis and clinical psychoanalysis can learn from each other -- Elusive illusions : reality judgment and reality assignment in dreams and waking life -- When your mindbrain knows things that you don't -- Memory, knowledge, and dreams -- Language of thought and the wakingwork -- List of dreams -- References Cover -- Half title -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- PART I: How the mindbrain transforms the world -- 2 The mindbrain creates its own version of the world -- 3 Condensation, interobjects, and categories -- 4 Displacement -- 5 Metaphor -- 6 Puns - linguistic and nonlinguistic -- 7 Homoforms and homomelodies -- 8 Metonymy -- 9 Symbols -- 10 Dreams and the mindbrain's structuring of experience -- 11 Psychological defenses and dreams -- PART II: Working with dreams clinically -- 12 New ways of conceptualizing and working with dreams -- 13 The dream guides its own analysis: how to work with dreams over time -- 14 Group dream interpretation -- PART III: Dreams, knowledge, memory, emotion, and the mindbrain -- 15 How neuropsychoanalysis and clinical psychoanalysis can learn from each other -- 16 Elusive illusions: reality judgment and reality assignment in dreams and waking life -- 17 When your mindbrain knows things that you don't -- 18 Memory, knowledge, and dreams -- 19 The language of thought and the wakingwork -- List of dreams in The Mindbrain and Dreams -- References -- Index 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. This book will appeal to psychologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and cognitive neuroscientists who want new ways to explore how people think and understand the world