Youve been described as the antiFreud, and have said psychoanalysisis too comforting it makes you brain-dead. Whats your main objection whenit comes to dreaming? Freud correctly assumed that anyscientific psychology would have to be based on brain science. But in 1895this Project for a scientific psychologywasnt possible, so he turned hisbrilliant mind to the entirelyspeculative creation of his dreamtheory. A century of brain science on, his project is now feasible. In my opinion, Freuds dream theory isincorrect in every important respect,but my main objection is to his ideathat dreaming is inimical to wakingconsciousness.

Yet you started out as a believer.Have you struggled to unshackleyourself from Freud? It is only within the past year that I have felt totally emancipated. First,in June 2008, I realised that dreamingwas not an unconsciousness mentalstate as Freud assumed. Instead it isconscious but unremembered. Viewingdreaming as an altered state ofconsciousness, not so much repressedas unremembered, changes everything.Even more recently, I have come to seehow and why waking and dreaming arecomplimentary not antagonistic.

My new theory of dream consciousnessasserts that dreaming is a state of primaryconsciousness, associated with REM sleepbut also subserving waking (with itssecondary conscious features) as a virtual-reality model of the world, including thesense of self (Freuds ego), the sense ofself-as-agent, movement, a space in whichthe self-as-agent moves, and if that werenot enough integrated emotion. This isall given. It comes with the suit (which is,of course, the brain). Wakingconsciousness takes advantage ofdreaming by borrowing all this ready-made stuff and only needs to instantiateparticular information. This goes a long

way to solving the formidable bindingproblem faced by consciousness science.

Dreaming reveals this process clearly.The dreamer is always me and I amalways moving in a world that hasfeatures of the real world but is entirelyfictive, including the perceptions,movements, and associated feelings. REM

sleep physiology has already revealed the brain sources of the movement, theperceptions and the emotions. Stay tunedand you will see the self emerge in muchthe same way that Rodolfo Llinsproposes in I of the Vortex. There is nolittle Jon in there, just a brain that callsitself Jon in keeping with externalconvention. Jon is, at first, a virtual realityself who becomes a person and, through a no doubt interesting set of events,becomes an editor. Every night he relearnseverything: he is a self, a self-as-agent, etc.and he updates this model with newlylearned data.

I do indeed dream that one day Illbecome an editor! Incidentally, I find

that there are few things moreinteresting than your own dreams, or more boring than other peoples. Speak for yourself! I myself love to readgood dream reports because I have a non-psychoanalytic way of looking at them.There are two problems. One is that thereare far too few good reports. And thesecond problem is that people are far toocommitted to penny-scale typeinterpretations of them. For me, gooddream reports are trying to tell me howthe mind really works and that it works in ways that Freud never dreamed.

But if much of a dreams form andsubstance derive from physiologicalprocesses that occur independently of a dreams apparent meaning, is it stillas interesting to look at dream content? The meaning of dreams and mine aredripping with meaning is transparent,not disguised. You need only keep a

dream journal, as I have for 40 years,to realise this truth. If dreams are a figleaf for my desires they are notcovering much of my own sexualanatomy. I may be a bit more lustythan Siggy, but that cant be why mydreams are so embarrassingly naked. If you read my recent book, ThirteenDreams Freud Never Had, you mightget a chuckle at the view through mypsychic keyhole!

Without disguise-censorship,Freudian dream theory is dead in thewater.

Does the grammar of a dreamappeal more than the literature?Both appeal to me. If I were creating a school curriculum and I am Iwould insist that students study both.I love to speculate too. I do it everyday at the breakfast table; by thewater cooler; over lunch; and even in bed after supper. But when I write a scientific paper, such as my current

project for Nature Neuroscience Reviews, I try to keep speculation to a minimum. I want a scientific psychology as much asFreud did in 1895.

What does your curriculum involve?I teach a 10-session course called TheBasic Science of Sleep and Dreaming. Itcovers the psychology, physiology andphilosophy that was also the content ofmy William James lectures at theUniversity of Roehampton earlier in theyear, but it is much more detailed. It ispopular with graduate students incognitive science. I have taught the coursein one day, two days, or 10 days to eagerstudents all over the world. Havecurriculum, will travel.

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Allan Hobson is Professor of Psychiatry atHarvard Medical School, and Beth IsraelDeaconess Medical CenterE-mail: allan_hobson@hms.harvard.edu

An active, synthetic genius Allan Hobson, one of the pioneers in the field of what sleep and dreaming are for,talks to Jon Sutton

What does it mean to ask whetherdreams have meaning?Damned if I know. Something beyondappearances? Symbol decoding? Truemotivation? My dreams are so laden withmeaning that I need not look further thanmy detailed reports for all the meaning I might need to permit a very thoroughpsychic overhaul. I tried to make thispoint clear in my lectures at Roehampton,but my psychoanalytic discussants weremost unwelcoming. They all acted like I was trying to put them out of a job,which I suppose, in a way, I was!

Why do we dream in non-REM sleep if, as you say, the characteristics ofdreams are paralleled by thecharacteristics of REM sleep?REM is about twice as effective as non-REM in dream production (when definedby the number of experimental sleep labawakenings yielding reports). But REMreports are about six times as long andthey are at least twice as hallucinatoryand twice as thought-impoverished. REMis where its at if you want to figure outhow the brain does it. In science, youcant do everything, so you look wherethe light is. Its brightest in REM.

You have said that the state ofdreaming in many ways matches thestate of being delusional, and includesother cognitive disturbances as well hallucinations, disorientations, bizarrethoughts and amnesias. Do you thinkdreams could help us to build a modelof mental illness?Absolutely. Dreaming is a psychosis bydefinition. Lets figure out how the braindoes it and we will have a blueprint forresearch in mental illness.

In 2001 you suffered a stroke and thistemporarily affected your ability tosleep and to dream. How did thisexperience change your views onscience and dreaming? A speculative theoretical bent has alwayscharacterised my science. I felt impelled and pleased to turn it on myself, AllanHobson the patient. Integrating my wildconcatenation of symptoms into a modelrooted in my lifes work was intellectuallygratifying and quite possibly therapeutic.

Through my stroke recovery I learnedthat my dreaming was tied to mybrainstem motor system. I began todream again on day 36 post-stroke. Atabout the same time I learned to walkagain. The fact that all dreams areanimated was never noticed by the dreamsymbol sleuths. For Freud, riding a horsewas a displacement of a sexual impulse. I myself never ride horses, in waking or

dreaming, but I have plenty ofsex in both states.

You also had a bout ofpneumonia, which youseemed to use as an excuseto try out a variety ofhallucinatory drugs!I was forbidden to takeanything by mouth because ofmy tendency to swallow intomy lungs, but I wasnt sleepingwell so the nurse suggested I try morphine intravenously. I had read de QuinceysConfessions of an Opium Eaterand was anticipating Piranesi-type imagery but saw nothing.No effect whatsoever.

Having just read CliffSapers report about thespecific arrest of histaminergicneurons in REM sleep Isuggested we try anantihistamine [seetinyurl.com/l6cocb]. Theresults were spectacular. Ananimated cartoon, namedThalamosaurus, was projectedon the ceiling of my room. I was completely lucidthroughout. This is a variationon the theme of luciddreaming, isnt it? I was awakebut hallucinating. Amongother things this experimentconfirms my activation-synthesis hypothesis and demonstrates,clearly, that the brain is autocreative.

How has your field changed in the 20-odd years since your book TheDreaming Brain was first published?Not enough to suit me. Psychoanalystswill never recant. We have to wait forthem to die. Freud has entered into theculture, like astrology and religion. Peoplewould rather have facile and evenerroneous ideas than think critically andsuspend disbelief. But science soldiers on.Darwin is now 200 and some folks dontwant to celebrate his birthday. I should beso lucky. When I am 200, will anyoneremember?

Well, you will certainly leave a largeand varied legacy. On the Harvardwebsite you are described as asynthetic genius who translated andtransformed science into accessible artand symbol through Dreamstage andwriting, alchemically melding scientificphysiology and the magical subjectivityof the dream state. I have always been attracted to theaesthetics of natural history, including

brain science. In 1977, I designedDreamstage, an exhibit created by thebrain of a person asleep. I still consider it my finest work, even though thechairman of my promotion committeesaid that they had made me a professor in spite of Dreamstage and in spite of thelousy field that I was in, sleep research.My book, with the art historian HellmutWohl, is entitled Angels to Neurones: Artand the New Science of Dreaming.

Youre also a do-over Dad one batchof kids all grown up, and then a fatheragain, to twins at the age of 68. Howsthat going for you?My wife is Catholic and was absolutelydetermined to have children with meeven though I was already 63. I still thinkits not quite fair to them (since I aminfirm and about to die) but I haveenjoyed being a father again enormously.I have more time now, less to prove, andmaybe a bit more wisdom. The idea ofhaving twins also appealed to myexperimental nature and their two-nesshas also proved rewarding. They willalways have each other even if they donthave me!

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interview

A dream reportI am cycling in heavy London traffic with a six-foot treetrimmer across my handlebars. It seems that I ambound to trim a tree, but where and to what end is notclear. As I proceed it becomes apparent that mydestination is 18th-century Wimpole Street, and when I arrive at their house, I see a girl and then her fatherboth dressed in 18th-century garb. But the tree in theiryard is small and scrawny, hardly worthy of trimming.

My dream is typically illustrative of the increase inprimary consciousness features and the deficits insecondary features. I am the centre of the action and I ride my bike with intense motivation to achieve a goalwhich only gradually becomes clear. I say that thesefeatures self-as-agent, motoric action, vivid perception,and strong motivation are generic. In waking, theyunderlie and are guided by secondary consciousnessfeatures such as orientation, judgement, and self-reflective awareness; features that are conspicuouslyabsent from my dream. The main reason for thesechanges is the radical alteration in brain function thatdistinguishes REM sleep from waking.

This dream is dripping with meaning. I am ambitiousto a fault. I ride my bike with impunity in heavy Londontraffic carrying the tree trimmer that my hard-drivingfather and I used to trim the large spruce tree in ouryard. These meanings are self-evident and undisguised.They are not the cause of the changes in brain functionthat makes dream consciousness so different from, andso complementary to, waking consciousness.