J. Allan Hobson. Dream Life: An Experimental Memoir. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. 320 pp. $29.95 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0262015325. Zachary Schrag. Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965–2009. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 264 pp. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0801894909. Helen Tilley. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011. 520 pp. $29.00 (paper). ISBN-13: 978-0226803470. Julie N. Zimmerman and Olaf F. Larson. Opening Windows onto Hidden Lives: Women, Country Life, and Early Rural Sociological Research. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 216 pp. $64.95 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0271037288

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 38 KB
• Volume: 47
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.20522

✦ Synopsis

J. Allan Hobson, Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School, is widely known for his revolutionary research and theorizing on sleep and dreams. His outspoken rejection of Freud's theory of dreams has earned him a reputation as "the anti-Freud." This "experimental memoir" is Hobson's account of "what led up to" and what followed his monumental decision to leave his "psychoanalyst teachers" and his psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center "to seek training in brain science." According to Hobson, just as his neurobiological approach to dreams "transcends Freud's Dream Theory" (p. vii), his autobiography is not of "the psychobiography-based form inspired by psychoanalysis," but "neurobiology-based . . . a biopsychography" (p. 11), emphasizing psychological details along with biological forces that he sees as equally important. Hobson's memoir is "experimental" not only in his unusual emphasis on his own neurobiology, but also in his account of his "experimental nature"-evident in his activities in many spheres of life from an early age-and in his account of the experimental research and theorizing that are central to his life's work. However, the memoir is far from a dry, strictly factual scientific report. The first chapter, "Brain Birth: A Non-Immaculate Conception," begins (rather sensationally) with Hobson's vivid imaginative account of his own conception and includes speculations about his prenatal "protoconsciousness" (p. 8). Later chapters relate Hobson's experiences in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood to the development of his brain and to his explanations of different states of consciousness. Although Hobson rejects Freud's suggestion that dreams are messages from the unconscious, he is fascinated by his own vivid dreams and fantasies, and his memoir includes many examples, along with his explanations of their form and content. Hobson also uses his personal experiences of "experiments of nature"-most notably, amnesia resulting from a car accident in 1963, and a stroke in 2001 with effects on his sleep and dreaming that he documented and studied. Throughout, Hobson combines candid accounts of his personal life with an understanding of himself as "a brain whose billions of neurons have been activated by internal stimulation of spontaneous origin" (p. 149) and with his passionate promotion of his functional neurobiological approach to sleep and dreams as a replacement for psychoanalysis. The book concludes with several chapters on the implications of Hobson's work.