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Doors open 6pm. This event is taking place in the Museum. Advance booking is mandatory. Please note that the talk will be held upstairs.
If you wish to join the Facebook Live event, here is the joining link: facebook.com/DreamsID2 . You do not need to register if you are only joining online.
Join us at the Museum for a wonderful free event celebrating dreams in Freud’s own bedroom! Hear about the latest discoveries on how sharing dreams can enhance social bonding.
Psychologist Mark Blagrove and artist Julia Lockheart will discuss their book, The Science and Art of Dreaming (Routledge, February 2023), with BBC science journalist and presenter Marnie Chesterton.
The book examines the biological, psychological and social causes of dreaming and outlines recent advances in the study of nightmares and lucid dreaming. It offers a compelling re-reading of the dreams of Freud’s patient, the feminist hero Dora, and illustrates how the playfulness, originality and metaphorical content of dreams link them to art – and especially to the cultural movement of Surrealism, known for highly valuing dreams. It also describes how films have drawn on dreams and dream-like processes.
The Science and Art of Dreaming (2023, Routledge) Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart
The book has resulted from and describes Julia and Mark’s science-art collaboration DreamsID, in which they hold public discussions of dreams during which dream content is linked to recent memories and concerns of the dreamer. During the discussions, Julia returns the dream to visual form by painting it onto pages of Freud’s famous book The Interpretation of Dreams (with publisher’s permission). Her fascinating artworks incorporate Freud’s words as found poetry. Once finished, the artwork is given to the dreamer, who displays it to family and friends, eliciting further conversations.
BBC journalist Marnie Chesterton, who will interview Mark and Julia on the night, participated in one of DreamsID sessions in 2018. A film of her having a dream discussed and painted is available to watch on the BBC World Service CrowdScience programme website.
The experience of holding public dream discussions and painting events (including online ones during the pandemic) has led Mark and Julia to propose that sharing dreams on waking may enable self-disclosure and mutual empathy. They discuss this proposed post-sleep function of dreams in light of theories concerning the role of dreams in memory and emotion processing during sleep. They also discuss it in the context of evolutionary theories, which hold that due to evolutionary pressures, humans have become domesticated, with reduced emotionality and within-group aggression but increased pro-sociality and empathy between people. The sharing of dreams may have played a part in this human self-domestication, alongside the creation and telling of stories and fiction.
The book aims to encourage this sharing of dreams to promote imagination, creativity, self-reflection and closeness to others. This is mirrored by the book’s engaging format, with each chapter starting with a dream narrative and accompanying painting of the dream, to highlight aspects of each chapter themes.
SPEAKERS
Mark Blagrove is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Sleep Laboratory at Swansea University.
Dr Julia Lockheart is Associate Professor at Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Marnie Chesterton is a BBC science journalist who is a presenter on Radio 4’s Inside Science and the BBC World Service podcast CrowdScience.
*Free admission to this event has been made possible by Swansea University.
