Deirdre Barrett is an American author and psychologist known for her research on dreams, hypnosis and imagery, and has written on evolutionary psychology.
She has written five books for the general public: The Pregnant Man and Other Cases From a Hypnotherapist's Couch (1998), The Committee of Sleep (2001), Waistland (2007), Supernormal Stimuli (2010), and Pandemic Dreams (2020).
Barrett's studies of hypnosis have focused on different types of high hypnotizables, finding two subgroups, which she terms fantasizers and dissociaters.
[26][27][28] Other research by Barrett focused on the similarities and differences between daydreams and nocturnal dreaming[29] and on the significance of earliest memories as reflecting a microcosm of an individual's worldview.
[33] Most recently, Barrett has written on evolutionary psychology, especially the concept of supernormal stimuli—the idea that technology can create an artificial object that pulls an instinct more strongly than that for which it evolved.