The Secret History of Dreaming

Perhaps a better title for Robert Moss' The Secret History of Dreaming would have replaced the gerund with the plural noun form of the key word. It is, after all, more of a history of various dreams than of the act, or the process, of dreaming. The titular nuance matters because the greater part of the book is composed of loosely connected mini-histories involving the dreams or dream habits of historical figures. It's unusual in that Moss is discussing dreams in early Christianity and Islam only a few pages before engaging the same topic with different actors - this time U2 and Lynrd Skynrd.

Moss has written other books on the subject of dreams and dreaming and hosts seminars in the same vein promoting dream awareness. He's something of a modern dream advocate. He comes off as quite knowledgeable as regards his history, but the book initially reads like the leftovers of prior scholarship that wouldn't fit anywhere else now collected and patched together. The first half of the book is vaguely organized but still readable if taken for what it is instead of trying to find a non-existent overarching narrative. The second half is better organized, but still lacking a defining message.

The book might have worked better if Moss had ditched the disjointed first part and simply expanded the second. The second half is a series of chapters each with a central focus, that of dream habits of a given historical figure, sort of an extended and focused version of the sort of mini-histories that make up the first half of the book. Moss covers Joan of Arc, Churchill and Mark Twain among others, and these chapters are actually quite interesting and illuminating. To be sure, a larger narrative is mostly lacking in this part too so it's hard to see the overall message Moss is trying to convey, but the chapters themselves are engaging.

Also, if it wasn't for my somewhat compulsive need to completely finish every book I start I might have set this one aside as soon as I noticed that Moss was using the rather informal "you" to address his readers. This suggested that the book itself might evolve into something rather new age in tone where dreaming takes the place of philosophy, religion or medicine and can solve problems if only we tap into its power and so forth. In this regard I was partly right, but Moss never went quite as far as I thought he could. His tone is ultimately rather "historical-informal" if that makes any sense. Not quite new age, but not rigorously analytical either.

The skeptical reader will find no discussion of confabulation or confirmation bias whatsoever, and Moss also avoids any serious scientific discussion of the dream process save for a quick reference to other texts of interest in his introduction. He's definitely a dream advocate and almost entirely without skepticism as regards the subject matter. Herein lies the major fault with this book - it never gets deep enough or critical enough. Moss skims the top of the dream history and succeeds in fomenting interest the content, but any one of his short segments of history could have been expanded and deepened into something more substantial. This is not the case, however, and the end result leaves the reader intrigued and entertained, but not necessarily flush with knowledge almost as if, having definitely read something, we might be at a loss to remember the details and find ourselves unsure if it really meant anything in the end. Fittingly, the book passes quite like a dream.