The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal

by Benjamin Ehrlich

Overview

The Spanish anatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) explored the microscopic world of the brain and found a landscape inhabited by distinctly individual cells, later termed neurons. "The mysterious butterflies of the soul," he called them, "whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind." Although he ranks among the greatest scientists in history, the name of the Nobel Prize-winning "father of modern neuroscience" is not as well-known as that of Darwin, Pasteur, Galileo, Einstein, Copernicus, and Isaac Newton.

The second half of the nineteenth century saw a revolution in the study of the mind. Cajal was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose radical theories would scandalize the next century. Before he was a neuroanatomist Cajal conducted psychiatric experiments and before Freud became a psychiatrist, he worked in neuroanatomy. In public, Cajal spoke respectfully about Freud, but in private, Cajal rejected the man and his theories. In order to disprove Freud's "lies," Cajal started to record his own dreams in a diary, part of a notably personal book project, which he worked on from 1918 until his death in 1934. For reasons unknown, Cajal never published this work. Until recently, it was assumed that the manuscript had been destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.

The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal is this lost dream diary, translated into English for the first time. The text is accompanied by an introduction to the life and work of Cajal, his relationship with the famed Viennese psychoanalyst, and the historical context surrounding the contributions of two great dueling intellects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190619619
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/13/2016
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Ehrlich is a Salzburg Global Fellow. His work has appeared in Nautilus and New England Review. He is a Co-Founding Editor of The Beautiful Brain, an online magazine devoted to art and neuroscience. Ben graduated from Middlebury College with Highest Honors in Literary Studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Translation

Part 1 The Founder of Modern Neuroscience
Chapter 1 Cajal's Legacy
Chapter 2 Cajal and Psychology
Chapter 3 Cajal and Dream Research
Chapter 4 Cajal and Spanish Freudianism
Chapter 5 Comparing the Lives of Cajal and Freud
Chapter 6 The Effects of Hypnosis and Suggestion
Chapter 7 On The Divergence of Psychology and Neuroanatomy
Chapter 8 Cajal's Psyche and His Readings of Freud
Chapter 9 "The Father of Modern Neuroscience" and His Father
Chapter 10 The Dream Diary's Strange Fate

Figures

Part Two The Dream Diary of Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Chapter 11 The Dreams of Cajal

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a great addition to the collection of works translated into English of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. The book has two parts. The first deals with several aspects of the scientific career and thoughts of Cajal, in particular regarding his fascination with dreams and hypnosis. The second contains the first English translation of Cajal's dream diary, which provides great insight into how captivated he was by the mental and physiological processes associated with dreams. In 1908 he published an essay about the Theories of Dreaming, in which, he explores the neurobiological interpretation of dreams, reflecting on the question of what the image of the dream is exactly. Thus, the dream diary of Cajal is a theoretical "experimental" approach to his research. In short, this book provides a window through which English readers can enjoy greater access to the intriguing work, and mind, of Cajal."—Javier DeFelipe, PhD, Instituto Cajal (CSIC), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

"Cajal's castigation of Freud's dream theory is as caustic and cogent as his rejection of the reticularist doctrine of a syncytial brain en route to its replacement with his neuron theory. That Cajal kept a dream journal establishes the validity of self-observation for the modern scientific study of the conscious brain-mind." —J. Allan Hobson, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

"Ben Ehrlich delights with a fresh and engaging look at the intricate relationship between two of my scientific heroes. Both were physicians and both tried valiantly to understand the human mind with fundamentally different styles of analysis. It is tempting to conclude that the histologist Cajal-a fervent believer in 'facts'-would have benefitted immensely from a protracted course of Freud's psychoanalysis." —Larry W. Swanson, PhD, Appleman Professor of Biological Sciences, Neurology, and Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

"Santiago Ramón y Cajal, founder of modern neurology and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis who trained as a neurologist, were both captivated by dreams. While Freud made them the road to the unconscious, Cajal, as he dialogued with Freud in a diary of his own dreams, rejected any notion that dreams had meaning. And yet, as Benjamin Ehrlich suggests, so fierce a repression, particularly in the light of images in Cajal's dreams that seem to cry out for a Freudian interpretation, suggests a begrudging acceptance by the neurologist of the very psychological mechanisms whose existence he denied. On another level, reading Cajal's dreams conveys a fascinating and completely novel window into both his biography and the medical culture of Madrid in the early twentieth century."— Thomas F. Glick, PhD, Professor Emeritus of History, Boston University, Boston, MA

"Anyone who has been inspired by Santiago Ramón y Cajal's scientific brilliance will want to read this sixteen-year record of his dreams, which he transcribed to challenge Freud's theory that dreams are wish-fulfillments. Benjamin Ehrlich's careful translation lets English-speakers explore Ramón y Cajal's dreams, which reveal the vulnerability of one of the world's greatest neuroscientists. In a lucid introduction, Ehrlich lays out the parallels and final divergence of Freud's and Cajal's scientific lives. Do Ramón y Cajal's dreams disprove Freud's dream theory? Readers will have to judge for themselves."—Laura Otis, PhD, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

From the Publisher