In article <37fd09b2.1040625 at news.globetrotter.net>, kris oddson
<oddson at odyssee.net> writes
>Sleep is purely and simply a series of repair and test sequences
>throughout the night.
This is opinion dressed up as fact. (Incidentally, someone else recently
posted here claiming to know exactly why we sleep, but when asked to
produce references he did not respond. If he's reading this- I'd still
be interested in any references.)
> No magic,no reinforcement of learning. The REM
>sequences are
>hallucinations while the brain is in a certifiably insane chemical
>state.Like J. Allan Hobson states on page 77 of his book THE CHEMISTRY
>OF CONSCIOUS STATES:" dreaming is not like a psychosis, it is a
>psychosis.It's just a healthy one,"
This is possibly true, although it doesn't seem to me to be a useful
concept. You don't *explain* anything by merely slapping a label on it.
If your preconception is that dreams are essentially meaningless, then
this label of "healthy psychosis" will appeal to you. If your
preconception is that dreams are (or can be) significant, you're likely
to prefer a different label.
>Why anyone pays any attention at
>all to the insane psychotic stateREM sleep, and which Nature programs
>us to forget is beyond me.
Since nearly all of us remember at least some of our dreams, this
argument doesn't make much sense. If (and it's a big if) "Nature's
programming" is to be used as a criterion of usefulness, then presumably
dreams must have some function, otherwise we wouldn't remember them.
(This is not necessarily my opinion, it's just the logical extension of
your argument).
> It seems there are still people who have
>read Freud and can't shake some of his absurdities.
>Well, maybe there are. But one hardly has to belong to the the outer
fringes of psychoanalysis to believe that dreams can sometimes provide
comment on or illustration of mental life. Your position is just as
extreme as the one you criticise.
You seem to be falling into a fundamental trap. Just because we may know
something about the underlying biology of a particular mental state,
doesn't mean we have explained that state and the subjective mental
experiences that go with it. Using terms like "psychosis" doesn't help
in this context- the phenomenology of psychotic illnesses, and the
experiences of people with those illnesses, cannot be explained away by
reference to neurotransmitter abnormalities (although obviously the
biology helps us to understand the underlying process and to design
treatments).
To say that dreams can have no significance because they are products of
a particular brain state is a bit like saying that, for example, being
in love is an illusion caused by a change in neurotransmitters, and
should therefore not be regarded as a valid experience.
Regards
--
Nick Medford
