Dreams and Nightmares

Dreams have a fascination for everyone, partly because of their bizarre nature, partly because these strange imaginings come from within ourselves, and partly because of the effect they have on our daily lives. It is not surprising that efforts at dream interpretation have been made throughout all ages, by the most primitive tribes, who regard them as premonitions, no less than in the attempts at establishing a scientific method made by Freud with his sexual wish-fulfilment theory, Jung with his archetypes from the collective subconscious and Adler with his urge to power. In this book Dr Hadfield attempts to show that dreams have a biological role, and may be useful in the solution of practical everyday, as well as of the deep-rooted, problems of our life. Many mathematical problems have been solved in dreams, and many scientific discoveries made by their means. We cannot, therefore, afford to ignore the significance of our dreaming, just as we cannot afford to ignore that of our intuition. This book, then, is a brief sketch of the mechanism, nature and importance of our dream life.