Review of "Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness "

In a sense, one can see in the politics of contemporary dream research a microcosm of the tensions found in the science of psychology as a whole. The concern with being a real science like biology or chemistry is ever present. The near shame at its history is also there, especially embarrassment by those ideas too readily embraced by the public and suffuse with the very subjectivities hard science has reportedly left behind. There seems an almost obsessive need to purge speculation and prune theory to its most austere and linear ends. At a glance, one might suspect that such a thing could not hope to survive outside the walls of a well-controlled laboratory. Those tensions inform, direct and ultimately define David Foulkes text, Childrens Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness.

The text begins with an explanation for its existence. It seems Foulkes earlier works were too technical for the layperson and relegated to the academic ghetto by his peers. Foulkes claims that, as a result, the importance of his findings were overlooked.  More popular (and erroneous by Foulkes data) theories hold sway in both the public and academic arenas, the former still stupid over the likes of Freud and Jung and the latter by Hobson and his neurological reductionism. Foulkes new book is geared to make his results more bite sized for the public and a call to recognition to his apparently lost empiricistic brethren.

The first chapter is a summation of his theory concerning what dreams tell us about development and why it is imperative we study them in children. Foulkes posits that dreams are not the bizarre, surreal images (Dali be damned) that folk wisdom would allow. In fact, Foulkes says he has the data to prove that, novel and creative they might be, dreams are actually just as mundane as the thoughts we think during the day. Furthermore, he asserts that infants and very young children do not dream and, he extrapolates, they do not possess consciousness, at least as it is experienced by adults.

Two chapters follow to initiate the reader into the nature of scientific dream study. Foulkes poses questions expected from a skeptical consumer and answers them deftly. His justification for studying children away from home and in the imposing environment of a sleep laboratory is particularly convincing.

The main body of the text is a description of the two studies Foulkes and his crew undertook over several decades. The first is a longitudinal study in which children ages 3 to 15 were followed throughout the course of their development, with dreams collected on REM awakenings and non-REM awakenings. The second is a cross sectional study, redesigned to validate findings in the earlier study, focusing on children ages 5 to 8. Both also used several cognitive tests to determine general intelligence and visual-spatial ability. With great skill and an ironclad empiricism, Foulkes takes the reader through each age group in the study, building a case for his study and rebutting his critics. Along the way he takes a slap or two at the more subjective and less empirical publics view of dreams.