Dreaming Reality

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View books by Joe Griffin, Ivan Tyrrell.

psychology for the man or woman in the street - Rated
This book outlines the origins and principles behind the Human Givens theory and philosophy. I found the first half of the book rather uninspiring to read but it's well worth keeping going because a light really does seem to come on about half way through. Joe Griffin discovered a few years ago that our dreams are the outworking of unexpressed emotions from the previous waking day and as such the brain's "recovery time". If there are too many unexpressed emotions we spend too much of our sleep time in dreaming and not enough time in non-dream sleep which is when the body achieves the physical restoration needed for good health. Simplistically put, this in turn leads to depression and increased worrying (which is an unexpressed or unfulfilled emotion in itself) and potentially other more serious mental health problems. The book also summarises the Human Givens principle in that as humans we all have a number of resources and needs ('givens') that need to be met in order to achieve positive mental and physical health. This is psychology that the man and woman in the street can understand.

UNPUTDOWNABLE! - Rated
If you are interested in psychology read this beautifully written book. It will do more than fill you with wonder at how cleverly nature solved the problem of dearousing emotions. Dreaming Reality shows why psychology is an exciting science operating at the frontier of knowledge. As well as explaining why we evolved to dream it describes several new insights about mental health, perhaps the most remarkable being about what causes schizophrenia. In a word, for the curious person, unputdownable!

Give the man a medal! - Rated
I've just finished this book and found myself yelling, 'Yes!' It's the first book about the mind I've read in ages that really has something new and profound to say.

Since I was a child I have wanted to know why we dream and whether my dreams are as significant as they often feel. I've read Jung, Freud, Jouvet, Hobson and I've looked at dream symbol dictionaries to try and make sense of dreams. But they never got close. So 'Dreaming Reality' was a revelation. Not only do my dreams now make sense to me, it also shows how dreaming takes place in the REM state, but is separate from it. It explains the role the REM state plays in constructing our internal model of reality and why our dreams are so often weird and surreal. (This is because every element in a dream has to be a metaphor.)

I think Joe Griffin really has done what someone wrote on the cover and made "one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last hundred years." But what really surprised me was the authors' findings about the workaday role dreams play in keeping us sane. For example, they offer the first clear explanation for the symptoms of psychosis, something I have not found yet in the many other books I've read about the subject.

Revolutionary light on dreaming - Rated
For anyone who has speculated on the meaning and purpose of dreaming, Griffin and Tyrrell's astounding insights light up the dark corners of the mind. Not since 1964 when Carl Jung's book Man and his Symbols was published has anyone set out to write so conclusively on dreaming for a wide audience.

Jung proposed a compensatory role for dreams to re-establish 'the total psychic equilibrium'. Griffin and Tyrrell leap ahead of this to the notion that dreaming functions to cleanse the undischarged emotional arousals of the day and they explain how this happens through metaphorical pattern-matching. From this one sets off on the journey to understanding the true causes (and routes to healing) of depression.

In a moment which ranks with the most stunning in scientific discovery, they observed a patient undergoing a psychotic episode. Their linking of this to the REM state will undoubtedly provide the breakthrough to real understanding and lasting healing of psychoses.

This book is revolutionary in thought, revelatory in content and will be established as the most important twenty-first century milestone on the road to accessible mental health treatment for all. It's a must for all who live with mental illness or work for its relief.