Book, Oracle of the Night, The: the history and science of dreams[LS]

Using historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic and literary information, in addition to the most up-to-date references from molecular biology, neurophysiology and medicine, the neuroscientist composes an intriguing narrative about the science and history of dreams. What, after all, is a dream? What is it for? How to extract meaning from its many symbols, full of details and meanings? In this book, renowned neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro answers these and many other questions about one of humanity's greatest enigmas by recovering literary and historical narratives from around the world. He shows how important dreams were to ancient civilizations, such as Egypt and Greece, placing them at the heart of science and politics, or how Amerindian cultures preserve some of the best-documented examples of dream prophecies capable of guiding entire peoples. By mobilizing the main debates in psychoanalysis, medicine, molecular biology and neurophysiology, The Oracle of the Night presents a story of the human mind through the guiding thread of dreams.