Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D. is a Past President of both the International Association for the Study of Dreams and the American Psychological Association’s Div. 30, The Society for Psychological Hypnosis. Dr. Barrett has written four books: Supernormal Stimuli, Waistland, The Committee of Sleep, and The Pregnant Man & Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist’s Couch. She is an editor of four additional books: The New Science of Dreaming, Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy, The Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams, and Trauma and Dreams. Dr. Barrett has published academic articles and chapters on health, hypnosis, and dreams, and evolutionary psychology.
She is Editor in Chief of the journal Dreaming: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams and a Consulting Editor for Imagination, Cognition, and Personality and The International Journal for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.
Dr. Barrett's commentary on psychological issues has been featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Fox, PBS, The Discovery Channel, and the BBC. She has been interviewed for dream articles in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Life, Time, and Newsweek. Her own articles have appeared in Psychology Today and Scientific American Mind. Dr. Barrett has lectured at Esalen, the Smithsonian, and at universities around the world.
Dr. Barrett teaches 2 courses on dreaming at Harvard: an HMS one through the Cambridge Health Alliance, and an FAS course through the Freshman Seminar Program. Her current research focuses mostly on dreams and evolutionary psychology.