Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It

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Its approach is multidisciplinary, featuring both scientific explanations for the phenomena and brief examinations of how they have been perceived throughout history. Dr Vernon said: “In finding examples and case studies from history, as well as being rather brutally honest about my own troubled sleep, I’m hoping to encourage conversations about parasomnias—and for us all to realise that our strange sleep experiences aren’t quite so strange after all.

This was exactly the type of book I wish I had access to when I first started getting sleep paralysis. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Dr Vernon said: “Over the centuries, parasomnias have had a profound effect on the human imagination, shaping both art and literature. Such stories have their own practical uses, too, as with healing trauma and improving waking-hour skills in sports and video games.A welcome addition to the vast library it cites and celebrates, Vernon's work is a compelling guide to the uncanny grammar of our dread and desire.

Parasomnias are surprisingly common and will be experienced by as many as 70% of people at some point in our lives. We also use them to help detect unauthorized access or activity that violate our terms of service, as well as to analyze site traffic and performance for our own site improvement efforts. On one hand, they bring a human touch into this largely academic work, and the mixing of the two is intriguing. Alice Vernon teaches Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, Wales, where she also gained her PhD in 2018. Vernon hasn’t experienced every type of parasomnia, but she gives detailed examples of the ones that are part of her sleep history, including sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, and hypnopompic hallucinations.

Read more about the condition New: An item that is still in its original shrink wrap from the manufacturer and the original manufacturer’s seal (if applicable) has not been removed. Vernon expertly blends history with science, interweaving her own personal experiences with that of the terrible events of the Salem Witch Trials and the Victorian love affair with the macabre among others.

Some film analysis is underdeveloped compared to the literary analysis : for instance, concluding that Kon's Paprika and Nolan's Inception is about "the dilemma of technology intruding in our dreams" and "the existential crisis we might face when technology helps us to control our dreams too well" is a little bit weak and doesn't offer anything interesting or new to say about the way those movies talk about dreams and the things dreams can be metaphors of. For insomniacs, the bed is a cruel tormentor; for those of us with parasomnias, the bed is a haunted crypt. By directly confronting her own strange and frightening nights for the first time, Vernon encourages us to think about the way troubled sleep has impacted our imaginations. The passion in which Vernon pursues discussion to be normalised surrounding our sleeping patterns is something that I think we can all take away from with a sense of positivity, as after all, we all have sleep.I know it informs her own sleep issues at times, but it still felt a little odd that it kept coming back to that. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. I'm finding it difficult to find the words to review such a complex book; perhaps fascinating and disturbing at the same time. By writing this gruelling, honest book, Alice Vernon has done her small bit to try to puncture the power of nightmares.