Discoveries
Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep, J. Allan Hobson, Oxford: 170 pp., $22
Freud-bashing is an academic sport, but J. Allan Hobson explains how Freud’s “romantic” dream theories have so dominated the field of dream science that, even in the face of increasing information about the brain and how it functions, our understanding of dreams has remained in the dark ages of symbolism, wish fulfillment and sexual impulses.
Because such science did not exist in Freud’s day, he focused on dream content rather than dream form. It was the acceptable practice: “[T]oo many cultural and private belief systems are threatened by the idea that consciousness in dreaming, as in waking, is a brain function.” But the mind, science now tells us, is not a spirit but the self-activated brain. Among other things, information about serotonin and non-adrenaline cells that modulate the brain during waking hours has led scientists to conduct experiments that showed how these cells cut production of these chemicals by one-half during non-REM sleep and cut it entirely during REM sleep.
While Hobson debunks a number of popular myths about dreaming, he keeps returning to Freud and is at odds with the sexual interpretation of dreams and the idea that they represent the fulfillment of secret wishes. “Dreaming will always be vivid, bizarre, emotional,” he writes, using science to prove his case.
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Not for Bread Alone: A Memoir, Moe Foner, Cornell University Press: 142 pp., $21.95
When Moe Foner, 88, died on Jan. 10, 2002, Ossie Davis, his friend for 48 years, said, “There was nothing left over in this man’s life. Every bit of it was dedicated to the noble and the beautiful. And we’re all the better for it.” Foner was the founder in 1979 of Bread and Roses, the not-for-profit cultural arm of Local 1199 of New York’s Health and Human Service Union. He helped to organize the 1959 hospital workers’ strike that got the Service Employees International Union started and guaranteed collective bargaining rights for hospital employees. He was behind the 1968 strike that resulted in $100-a-week minimum pay for all hospital employees. He was in charge of communication at Local 1199 for 30 years.
Foner grew up in Brooklyn, where his father delivered seltzer. His mother never knew how to read. His older brothers became well-known historians. Everyone in the family worked and contributed their earnings to the family pool. Foner came to politics in the 1930s as a member of the Youth Communist League, graduated from Brooklyn College in 1936 and began working for unions immediately after World War II.
But his lasting achievement was his work bringing a cultural dimension to union organizing. He brought Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Arthur Miller, Shari Lewis, Ossie Davis and Ruby Lee into performances that helped build spirit, inspired other unions and were also instrumental in focusing public attention on the needs of union members. The great purity of his efforts and his steadfastness to the unions make his memoir an important addition to the history of American unions.
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Caught in Fading Light: Mountain Lions, Zen Masters and Wild Nature, Gary Thorp, Walker: 188 pp., $21
I wish writing about Zen lifestyles didn’t seem so hopelessly self-conscious and humorless. Every step has meaning, every phrase has a form dating back to one master or another. In the end, it seems utterly contrived. In “Caught in Fading Light,” Gary Thorp tries hard to offer an alternative in his account of a three-year search for mountain lions in the hills around his home in Marin County. He walks, he drives at night, he visits cougars in captivity, but still they elude him. I can’t say I blame them. Drawing universal precepts from very specific personal experience exhibits too much ego. Maybe tracking the wild is like meditation, which is like writing. You shouldn’t talk about it. You should just do it.
