Mark J. Blechner - The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation

In The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation, Mark J. Blechner argues that the mind and brain should be understood as a single unit the mindbrain that manipulates our raw perceptions of the world and reshapes that world through dreams, thoughts, and artistic creation.

This book explores how dreams are key to understanding mental processes, and how working with dreams clinically with individuals and groups provides an essential route toward achieving transformation within the psychoanalytic process. Covering such key topics as knowledge, emotion, metaphor, and memory, this book sets out a radical new agenda for understanding the importance of dreams in human thought and their clinical importance in psychoanalysis. Blechner builds on his previous work and takes it much farther, drawing on the latest neuroscientific findings to set out a new way of how the mindbrain constructs reality, while providing guidance on how best to help people understand their dreams.

The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation will appeal to psychologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and cognitive neuroscientists who want new ways to explore how people think and understand the world.

Mark J. Blechner, Ph.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in New York City. He is a training and supervising psychoanalyst at William Alanson White Institute. He has taught at Columbia University, Yale University, and New York University.

Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series

Donnel B. Stern

Series Editor

When music is played in a new key, the melody does not change, but the notes that make up the composition do: change in the context of continuity, continuity that perseveres through change. Psychoanalysis in a New Key publishes books that share the aims psychoanalysts have always had, but that approach them differently. The books in the series are not expected to advance any particular theoretical agenda, although to this date most have been written by analysts from the Interpersonal and Relational orientations.

The most important contribution of a psychoanalytic book is the communication of something that nudges the readers grasp of clinical theory and practice in an unexpected direction. Psychoanalysis in a New Key creates a deliberate focus on innovative and unsettling clinical thinking. Because that kind of thinking is encouraged by exploration of the sometimes surprising contributions to psychoanalysis of ideas and findings from other fields, Psychoanalysis in a New Key particularly encourages interdisciplinary studies. Books in the series have married psychoanalysis with dissociation, trauma theory, sociology, and criminology. The series is open to the consideration of studies examining the relationship between psychoanalysis and any other field for instance, biology, literary and art criticism, philosophy, systems theory, anthropology, and political theory.

But innovation also takes place within the boundaries of psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalysis in a New Key therefore also presents work that reformulates thought and practice without leaving the precincts of the field. Books in the series focus, for example, on the significance of personal values in psychoanalytic practice, on the complex interrelationship between the analysts clinical work and personal life, on the consequences for the clinical situation when patient and analyst are from different cultures, and on the need for psychoanalysts to accept the degree to which they knowingly satisfy their own wishes during treatment hours, often to the patients detriment. A full list of all titles in this series is available at: www.routledge.com/series/LEAPNKBS

TITLES IN THIS SERIES INCLUDE:

Vol. 43 The Mindbrain and Dreams

An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation

Mark J. Blechner

Vol. 42 Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, 1980s2010s

Evolving Interest in the Analysts Subjectivity

Edited by Donnel B. Stern and Irwin Hirsch

Vol. 41 U nderstanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men

The Trauma of Sexual Abuse

Edited by Richard B. Gartner

Vol. 40 H ealing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys

Treatment for Sexual Abuse, Assault, and Trauma

Edited by Richard B. Gartner

Vol. 39 The Voice of the Analyst

Narratives on Developing a Psychoanalytic Identity

Edited by Linda Hillman and Therese Rosenblatt

Vol. 38 I nterpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness

Edgar A. Levenson and edited by Alan Slomowitz

An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation

Mark J. Blechner

First published 2018

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

2018 Mark J. Blechner

The right of Mark J. Blechner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blechner, Mark J., author.

Title: The mindbrain and dreams: an exploration of dreaming, thinking, and artistic creation / Mark J. Blechner.

Description: New York: Routledge, 2018. | Series: Psychoanalysis in a new key book series; 43 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017052166 (print) | LCCN 2017054664 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351185677 (Master) | ISBN 9781351185653 (ePUB) | ISBN 9781351185660 ( Web PDF) | ISBN 9781351185646 (Mobi/ Kindle) | ISBN 9780815394563 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780815394570 (pbk.: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Dreams. | Thought and thinking. | Creative ability. | Psychoanalysis.

Classification: LCC BF1078 (ebook) | LCC BF1078.B564 2018 (print) | DDC 154.6/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017052166

ISBN: 978-0-8153-9456-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-8153-9457-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-351-18567-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Ah, but a mans reach should exceed his grasp, or whats a heaven for?

Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto

3.1 Pablo Picasso, Baboon and Her Young