Children's Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness [Paperback]

David Foulkes is one of the international leaders in the empirical study of children's dreaming, and a pioneer of sleep laboratory research with children. In this book, which distills a lifetime of study, Foulkes shows that dreaming as we normally understand it--active stories in which the dreamer is an actor--appears relatively late in childhood. This true dreaming begins between the ages of 7 and 9. He argues that this late development of dreaming suggests an equally late development of waking reflective self-awareness.

Foulkes offers a spirited defense of the independence of the psychological realm, and the legitimacy of studying it without either psychoanalytic over-interpretation or neurophysiological reductionism.

Rather than relying on generally accepted beliefs about dream content, Foulkes takes a fresh look at dreaming in children, harvesting dreams by observing children in a sleep laboratory, a procedure he vigorously defends as the most reliable way to secure scientific data. He takes data on both a longitudinal and cross-sectional basis, from groups of children who range in age from three to 15, and he provides an interesting analysis that relates emerging cognitive abilities to both the dream experience and the retelling.The book is well written, intellectually provocative, and easy reading. Though written for the educated masses, the advanced student will find many references to the more detailed academic accounts of both supportive and detractive work. This is a magnum opus of a careful scientist's lifetime work in an area that needs more illumination and less fancy. I recommend it to anyone interested in both developmental science and human consciousness.Reporting on what is by far the most comprehensive scientific study ever done of dreaming in children, David Foulkes argues convincingly that the appearance of dreams during the preschool and early primary years both depends on and demonstrates the development of essential cognitive procels(