Tony Crisp Interpretation:
In his book The Dreaming Brain, Hobson presents a well-researched theory of dreaming, based on biological and psychological processes. Through closely examining historical dream theories, and measuring them against present-day findings, he unfolds his new theory that dreams are not disguised urges, but transparent though sometimes scrambled hallucinations. In this theory, internally generated brain signals excite the visual and motor senses, but cannot be checked against external reality. This gives rise to bizarre imagery and discontinuities in the dream that are integrated into meaning by the brain. Hobson is not saying dreams do not hold information about the dreamer, but that such information is as straightforwardly expressed as is possible, given the nature of the brain’s activity during sleep.