Jim Hopkins on Dreams and their meaning in the perspective of current neuroscience
London Neuropsychoanalysis Group
Dreams and their meaning in the perspective of current neuroscience
Abstract: Recent work in neuroscience assigns two main roles to sleep and dreaming: minimising free energy, and consolidating memory and maintaining the synaptic connections in which memories are reallized. These roles can be seen to coincide in detail with Freud’s and other depth-psychological accounts of the meaning and function of dreams. By integrating these accounts we can understand how the significance we assign to dreams derives from their role in unifying the emotional meaning of the past and the present in preparation for the future, a task they accomplish by adjusting emotional significance over the fields of memory in which experiential learning is embodied.
Bio: Jim Hopkins is currently Honorary Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at UCL. He was Kohut Visiting Professor for 2008 at the University of Chicago and since his retirement has been Reader Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at King’s College London.