Emotional Selection: How Your Dreams Evolve Your Mind launched December 12th on Amazon!

Introducing a groundbreaking, peer-reviewed dream theory that describes the nightly, mental evolution of your mind through dreaming.

Drawing from extensive research on the dreams of over fifteen thousand participants, the author’s findings include people who frequently dream about romantic relationships are significantly more likely to be in a relationship in the future compared to those more likely to dream about work, being chased, falling, flying, and other dream themes.

These remarkable findings, together with his other study results, suggests we dream to fulfill all of our human needs, from our needs for safety, belonging, love, and esteem to our needs for aesthetics, self-actualization, and transcendence.

This new theory of dreaming explains how the mind uses dreams to self-organize during sleep. Akin to how natural selection tests changes to species, your mind tests changes to your understanding of yourself and your world with dreams. When your mind passes its dream tests, you awaken a changed person.

Ready to harness this newfound understanding of dreaming? In Part Three, discover practical tools to interpret your dreams by deconstructing their themes. As you gain insight into the purpose of your dreams, you influence and shape your mind’s ability to meet your future needs. Enhance your relationships, improve your effectiveness, and boost your confidence and contentment—all through this insightful exploration of dreaming.

If you’re intrigued by dreams and crave solid evidence to fuel your curiosity, this book offers a fresh perspective supported by a wealth of scientific evidence. It’s a must-read for dream enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of dreaming and the mind.

PRAISE FOR EMOTIONAL SELECTION

“This book is such a fun journey! Rich has ducked into all the corners of research related to dreams, systems evolution, schema theory, and much more to develop his theory. He has some great pointers about how to understand this mysterious dream process, and how different themes indicate what your mind is doing behind the scenes to aid your waking life. The last section of the book is an interesting combination of cognitive therapeutic technique and the application of Rich’s dream theory. There is a lot of information and theory here, but it is well balanced and practical. I came to appreciate Rich’s utterly persistent curiosity. He is a true enthusiast and inventive researcher. All in all, the theoretical and experimental work described in this book is a delight!”
— STEPHANIE ISBELL, MA, PhD
Former Editor and Publisher of Psychological Reports, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Comprehensive Psychology, Teaching Psychology

(Full quote from front cover)
“Richard Coutts is a remarkably determined scholar. He has single-mindedly created a truly novel theory on the mysterious, universal human phenomenon of dreaming. His resulting theory of dreams as emotional selection is at least as logical and internally consistent as many theories based on cognitive science, psychoanalysis, or neuroscience… and perhaps more so than many! What is amazing, is that he has been motivated simply by a curiosity. His drive to understand and explain a human behavior is a rare thing these days of specialization when few dare or care to venture outside their intellectual silos. He is thus to be congratulated and read!”
— EDWARD F. PACE-SCHOTT, MA, MS, PhD
Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Author of Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsiderations