Deirdre Barrett

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Deirdre Barrett
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Academic work
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Deirdre Barrett is an American author and psychologist known for her research on dreams, hypnosis and imagery, and has written on evolutionary psychology. Barrett is a teacher at Harvard Medical School, [1] and a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) and of the American Psychological Association’s Div. 30, the Society for Psychological Hypnosis. She is editor-in-chief of the journal Dreaming: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams and a consulting editor for Imagination, Cognition, and Personality and The International Journal for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.

Contents

She has written five books for the general public: The Pregnant Man and Other Cases From a Hypnotherapist's Couch (1998), The Committee of Sleep (2001), Waistland (2007), Supernormal Stimuli (2010), and Pandemic Dreams (2020). She is the editor of four academic books: Trauma and Dreams (1996), The New Science of Dreaming (2007), Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy (2010), and The Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams (2012).

Research

Barrett is best known for her work on dreams and their contributions to creativity and objective problem solving. [2] She interviewed modern artists and scientists about their use of their dreams, documenting dramatic anecdotes including Nobel Prizes and MacArthur Foundation 'genius grants' whose ideas originated in dreams. [3] She also conducted research asking college students to incubate answers to real-life homework and other objective problems on which they were working, finding that in one week’s time, half had dreamed about their topic and half of those had a dream which provided an answer. [4] Barrett describes dreaming as simply “thinking in different biochemical state” [5] and believes we continue to work on all the same problems—personal and objective—in that state. Her research concludes that while anything—math, musical composition, business dilemmas—may get solved during dreaming, the two areas dreams are especially likely to help are 1) anything where vivid visualization contributes to the solution, whether in artistic design or invention of 3-D technological devices and 2) any problem where the solution lies in thinking outside the box—i.e. where the person is stuck because the conventional wisdom on how to approach the problem is wrong. [6] [7]

Barrett has also conducted research on lucid dreams [8] [9] and on helping people suffering from PTSD to incubate mastery dreams to change their nightmares, [10] [11] [12] [13] and published studies tracking the progression of dreams during bereavement. [14] [15] [16] She has studied characteristics of dreams in various disorders including depression [17] and dissociative disorders. [18] [19] During the summer 2010 publicity about the dream-themed film Inception , Barrett was interviewed by media including ABC, [20] NBC Today, [21] CNN, [22] The Wall Street Journal , [23] The New York Times , [24] and USA Today , [25] pointing out that some aspects of the film, like lucid dreaming, control of one's own dreams, and dreams-within-dreams were highly realistic while the control of others’ dreams, time slowing in dreams, and absolute impossibility of dreaming that you die were all fictional premises in the service of the thriller plot.

Barrett's studies of hypnosis have focused on different types of high hypnotizables, finding two subgroups which she terms fantasizers and dissociaters. Fantasizers are people who have vivid imaginations, find it easy to block out real-world stimuli, spend much time daydreaming, report imaginary companions as a child and grew up with parents who encouraged imaginary play. Dissociaters usually had a history of childhood abuse or other significant trauma, had learned to escape into numbness, and to forget unpleasant events. Their association to “daydreaming” was often going blank rather than vividly recalled fantasies. Both score equally high on formal scales of hypnotic susceptibility. [26] [27] [28]

Other research by Barrett focused on the similarities and differences of daydreams and nocturnal dreaming [29] and on the significance of earliest memories as reflecting a microcosm of an individual's worldview. [30] [31] Barrett is interested in film and has written on techniques which films use to represent dreams [32] and on the negative stereotypes of hypnosis in film. [33]

Most recently Barrett has written on evolutionary psychology, especially the concept of supernormal stimuli—the idea that technology can create an artificial object which pulls an instinct more strongly than that for which it evolved. The phrase "supernormal stimuli" was coined by Dutch scientist Nikolaas Tinbergen in the 1930s. Barrett's book Waistland (2007) [34] explores the weight and fitness crisis in terms of supernormal stimuli for food and rest. [35] Her latest book, "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose" (2010) [36] examines the impact of supernormal stimuli on the diversion of impulses for nurturing, sexuality, romance, territoriality, war, and the entertainment industry's hijacking of our social instincts. [37]

Selected publications

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fantasy (psychology)</span> Mental faculty of drawing imagination and desire in the human brain

In psychology, fantasy is a broad range of mental experiences, mediated by the faculty of imagination in the human brain, and marked by an expression of certain desires through vivid mental imagery. Fantasies are generally associated with scenarios that are impossible or unlikely to happen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypnosis</span> State of increased receptivity to suggestion and direction

Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.

In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming while dreaming. The capacity to have lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of volitional control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment, although this control of dream content is not the salient feature of lucid dreaming. An important distinction is that lucid dreaming is a distinct type of dream from other types of dreams such as prelucid dreams and vivid dreams, although prelucid dreams are a precursor to lucid dreams, and lucid dreams are often accompanied with enhanced dream vividness. Lucid dreams are also distinct state from other lucid boundary sleep states such as lucid hypnagogia or lucid hypnopompia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dream</span> Event occurring in the mind while sleeping

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nikolaas Tinbergen</span> Dutch zoologist and ethologist (1907–1988)

Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior.

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.

An altered state of consciousness (ASC), also called an altered state of mind or mind alteration, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking state. By 1892, the expression was in use in relation to hypnosis, though there is an ongoing debate as to whether hypnosis is to be identified as an ASC according to its modern definition. The next retrievable instance, by Max Mailhouse from his 1904 presentation to conference, however, is unequivocally identified as such, as it was in relation to epilepsy, and is still used today. In academia, the expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart. It describes induced changes in one's mental state, almost always temporary. A synonymous phrase is "altered state of awareness".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supernormal stimulus</span> Concept in biology and psychology

A supernormal stimulus or superstimulus is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.

A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing their daily morning routine such as showering or eating breakfast. False awakenings, mainly those in which one dreams that they have awoken from a sleep that featured dreams, take on aspects of a double dream or a dream within a dream. A classic example is the double false awakening of the protagonist in Gogol's Portrait (1835).

Dream incubation is a thought technique which aims for a specific dream topic to occur, either for recreation or to attempt to solve a problem. For example, a person might go to bed repeating to themselves that they will dream about a presentation they have coming up, or a vacation they recently took. While somewhat similar to lucid dreaming, dream incubation is simply focusing attention on a specific issue when going to sleep.

Hypnotic susceptibility measures how easily a person can be hypnotized. Several types of scales are used; the most common are the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales.

In psychology, incubation refers to the unconscious processing of problems, when they are set aside for a period of time, that may lead to insights. It was originally proposed by Graham Wallas in 1926 as one of his four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Incubation is related to intuition and insight in that it is the unconscious part of a process whereby an intuition may become validated as an insight. Incubation substantially increases the odds of solving a problem, and benefits from long incubation periods with low cognitive workloads.

Fantasy-prone personality (FPP) is a disposition or personality trait in which a person experiences a lifelong, extensive, and deep involvement in fantasy. This disposition is an attempt, at least in part, to better describe "overactive imagination" or "living in a dream world". An individual with this trait may have difficulty differentiating between fantasy and reality and may experience hallucinations, as well as self-suggested psychosomatic symptoms. Closely related psychological constructs include daydreaming, absorption and eidetic memory.

Patricia L. Garfield was an American academic specializing in the study of dreams, specifically the cognitive processes underpinning them. She was the author of 10 books covering a broad range of dream topics. These topics include: nightmares, children’s dreams, healing through dreams and dream-related art. Her best-known work is “Creative Dreaming.” Originally published in 1974 it was revised and reprinted again in 1995. She holds a Ph.D in psychology from Temple University.

<i>Supernormal Stimuli</i>

Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for today's densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life. The book takes its title from Nikolaas Tinbergen's concept in ethology of the supernormal stimulus, the phenomena by which insects, birds, and fish in his experiments could be lured by a dummy object which exaggerated one or more characteristic of the natural stimulus object such as giant brilliant blue plaster eggs which birds preferred to sit on in preference to their own. Barrett extends the concept to humans and outlines how supernormal stimuli are a driving force behind today's most pressing problems, including modern warfare, obesity and other fitness problems, while also explaining the appeal of television, video games, and pornography as social outlets.

Antti Revonsuo is a Finnish cognitive neuroscientist, psychologist, and philosopher of mind. His work seeks to understand consciousness as a biological phenomenon. He is one of a small number of philosophers running their own laboratories.

<i>The Committee of Sleep</i> Book by Deirdre Barrett

The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving—and How You Can Too is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by Crown/Random House in 2001. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book describes how dreams have contributed practical breakthroughs to arts and sciences in the waking world. Chapters are organized by discipline: art, literature, science, sports, medicine, etc. There are long examples of dreams which led to major achievements in each area, but Barrett then draws conclusions about how dreams go about solving problems, what types they are best at, and gives advice on how readers can apply these techniques to their own endeavors. Those who are described in The Committee of Sleep as having dreamed creations include Ludwig van Beethoven, Billy Joel, Robert Louis Stevenson, Stephen King, Salvador Dalí, William Blake, and Nobel prize winner Otto Loewi.

<i>Waistland</i>

Waistland: The R/evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis is a book by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2007. The book examines the obesity and fitness crisis from an evolutionary standpoint. Barrett argues that our bodies, our metabolisms, and our feeding instincts evolved during humanity’s hunter-gatherer phase. We're programmed to forage for sugar and saturated fats because these were once found only in hard-to-come-by fruit and game. Now, these same foods are everywhere—in vending machines, fast food joint, restaurants, grocery stores, and school cafeterias—they're nearly impossible to avoid. She describes this as related to the focus of another of her books " supernormal stimuli"—the concept of artificial creations that appeal more to our instincts than the natural objects they mimic—supernormal stimuli for appetite have led to the obesity epidemic. The book opens with a vignette about how zoos post signs saying "Don't Feed the Animals." People respect these orders, allowing veterinarians to prescribe just the right balanced diet for the lions, koalas, and snakes. Meanwhile, everyone stops for chips, sodas, and hot dogs on the way out of the zoo. The book explores solutions from behavior modification to willpower to change diet and exercise habits. One of the main messages of the book is that big changes in diet are actually easier than small ones, that the addictive nature of junk food means that, after a few days, eating no cookies or chips is easier than eating fewer cookies or chips.

Maladaptive daydreaming, also called excessive daydreaming, is when an individual experiences excessive daydreaming that interferes with daily life. It is a proposed diagnosis of a disordered form of dissociative absorption, associated with excessive fantasy that is not recognized by any major medical or psychological criteria. Maladaptive daydreaming can result in distress, can replace human interaction and may interfere with normal functioning such as social life or work. Maladaptive daydreaming is not a widely recognized diagnosis and is not found in any major diagnostic manual of psychiatry or medicine. The term was coined in 2002 by Eli Somer of the University of Haifa. Somer's definition of the proposed condition is "extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic, interpersonal, or vocational functioning." There has been limited research outside of Somer's.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Blagrove</span> British research psychologist

Mark Blagrove is a British research psychologist who specializes in the study of sleep and dreams.

References

  1. ↑ "Harvard Catalyst Profiles". Harvard College. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  2. ↑ "THE WASHINGTON POST; Four Experts Try to Get Inside Readers' Heads Oct 29, 2006; M.4". Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  3. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use their Dreams for Creative Problem Solving—and How You Can Too. NY: Crown Books/Random House, 2001
  4. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. The 'Committee of Sleep': A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem Solving. Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams, 1993, 3, pp. 115-123.
  5. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. An Evolutionary Theory of Dreams and Problem-Solving in Barrett, D. L. & McNamara, P. (Eds.) The New Science of Dreaming, Volume III: Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives on Dreaming NY, NY: Praeger/Greenwood, 2007.
  6. ↑ Oldenburg, Don You: Dream a Little Dream--and Pay Attention, THE WASHINGTON POST; Sep 28, 2000; C.04
  7. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre Answers in Your Dreams, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN; Nov. 2012 p. 26-32
  8. ↑ Deirdre. Barrett, Deirdre. Just how lucid are lucid dreams: an empirical study of their cognitive characteristics. Dreaming: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams, 1992, Vol 2., No. 4, pp. 221-228.
  9. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. An Empirical Study of The Relationship of Lucidity and Flying Dreams. Dreaming: the Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams, 1991, Vol 1, No. 2, p. 129, 133.
  10. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. (Ed.) Trauma and Dreams. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
  11. ↑ Beck, Melinda 'Health Matters' column in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Feb. 20, 2010.
  12. ↑ Conklin, Mike A Plague of nightmares descends on Elm Street, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, October 2, 2001
  13. ↑ http://[www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/health/27night.html?hp THE NEW YORK TIMES Following a Script to Escape a Nightmare]
  14. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre L. Dreams of Death. OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, 1988, Vol. 19, p. 95, 102.
  15. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Through a glass darkly: the dead appear in dreams. OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, 1991, Vol. 24, pp. 97-108.
  16. ↑ Cathcart, Rebecca Winding Through ‘Big Dreams’ Are the Threads of Our Lives, THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 3, 2007
  17. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre and Loeffler, Michael. The effect of depression on the manifest content of the dreams of college students. Psychological Reports, 1992, 70, pp. 403-406.
  18. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Dreams in Dissociative Disorders. Dreaming: J. of the Assoc. for the Study of Dreams, 1994, Vol 4, No. 3, pp. 165-177.
  19. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. The Dream Character as a Prototype for the Multiple Personality "Alter". Dissociation, Vol. 8, March 1995, p. 61, 68.
  20. ↑ "Inside 'Inception': Could Christopher Nolan's Dream World Exist in Real Life?". ABC News . Archived from the original on 2023-04-04.
  21. ↑ Weekend Today 7/24 interview with Lester Holt
  22. ↑ CNN interview with Barrett about Inception
  23. ↑ THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Therapies Teach Sleepers to Alter the Ending of Their Dreams--or Even Take Flight
  24. ↑ THE NEW YORK TIMES Guiding Your Sleep While You’re Awake
  25. ↑ USA Today 7/16 2010 With 'Inception,' Chris Nolan's head games continue
  26. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Deep Trance Subjects: A Schema of Two Distinct Subgroups. Chpt in R. Kunzendorf (Ed.) Imagery: Recent Developments, NY: Plenum Press, 1991, p. 101, 112.
  27. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Fantasizers and Dissociaters: An Empirically based schema of two types of deep trance subjects. Psychological Reports, 1992, 71, pp. 1011-1014.
  28. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Fantasizers and Dissociaters: Two types of High Hypnotizables, Two Imagery Styles. in R. Kuzendorf, N. Spanos, & B. Wallace (Eds.) Hypnosis and Imagination, NY: Baywood, 1996.
  29. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. The Hypnotic Dream: Its Content in Comparison to Nocturnal Dreams and Waking Fantasy. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1979, Vol. 88, p. 584, 591.
  30. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. The First Memory as a Predictor of Personality Traits. Journal of Individual Psychology, 1980, Vol. 36, pp. 136-149.
  31. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Early Recollections as Predictors of Self Disclosure and Interpersonal Style. Journal of Individual Psychology, 1983, Vol. 39, pp. 92-98.
  32. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre 'The Dream Videophile' Regular column in Dream Time magazine and posted online at ASD.
  33. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Hypnosis in Film and Television American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Vol. 49, No. 1, July 2006, pp. 13-30.
  34. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre (2007). Waistland: The (R)Evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis . New York, New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN   978-0-393-06216-8.
  35. ↑ Rimas, Andrew ‘Meet the Minds’ feature about Deirdre Barrett, PhD, Science Section, ‘’The Boston Globe’’, October 22, 2007.
  36. ↑ Barrett, Deirdre. Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose. NY NY: W.W. Norton, 2010
  37. ↑ Wall Street Journal review of Deirdre Barrett's Supernormal Stimuli, Feb. 25, 2010.
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